When I turned 60 a couple of years ago I began thinking more seriously about this next 20 year section of my life. 

I've read a ton about retirement, finishing well, and similar topics.  I've spent even more time talking to friends who've gone before me.  The most encouraging thing about all this work has been that it affirms what I've given the last two 20 year life sections of my life to.  

During this time of reflection I recognize that there have been some value-laden lessons that the Lord has taught me about ministry, business, technology, story, and family.  I have a real desire to write about these lessons.  But, writing a book seems daunting when there are plenty of other demands for my time.

In this blog post, I'm excited to share with you an interview with my long time friend, Rick Howerton about his new book.  We got to know each other well years ago traveling to small group training programs across the country as part of a fledgling collective of friends that has become the Small Group Network.

His book, The Perpetually Growing Church, is a practitioners guide to building a healthy, growing church.  He knows a thing or two about this. 

He has been a campus minister, a staff pastor and a discipleship consultant (Navpress, Lifeway, KY Baptist Convention).  He planted The Bridge Church in Nashville, TN.  He has been a frequent speaker and trainer at churches, conferences, and training programs before and since our small group conference days. He has written multiple books and now serves as the Central Group Pastor for Lakepointe Church in Rockwell, TX.

Most of us would prefer to take a shortcut than to have to walk the long way around.  It conserves both time and energy while taking us directly to our desired destination.  At its best, church software is a shortcut for staff and church members. 

Just as landscape professionals consider traffic patterns when designing sidewalks, software professionals analyze usage patterns when creating action walkways.

These five recent upgrades are the result of patterns we've seen and been alerted to in recent months.  Three of them are based on staff usage.  Two of them are based on member usage.

1. Mass update group role from within a group (Staff) 
2. Mass update group info from the browse groups page (Staff)
3. Require recurring payments (Staff)
4. Spouses can see and manage family volunteer schedules (Members)
5. Edit recurring contribution designation and amounts (Members)
   

Managing enrollment, especially payments, for events like preschools, camps, or Christian School tuitions is a time-consuming challenge for many churches.  These programs require registrations, forms, initial payment, accounting, payment reminders, attendance, email or text communication, and syncing at least some of the information in the church database. 

This is the third in a series of three blog posts on using church management software for stewardship development.  In the 101 blog post we looked at filters that help you recognize first, second, and lapsed givers.  In the 201 blog post we looked at how to automate feedback and follow-up using scheduled reports.  

In this blog post we want to share with you the mechanics not only of giving, but also of helping people feel good about their giving.   2 Corinthians 9:7 says, "the Lord loves a cheerful giver."  So, it is important for church leaders to do everything they can to help people feel good about their giving.

In mylast blog post I mentioned that most churches don't have a stewardship development system in place.  Some will have a philosophical reason for this.  For others it's a matter of priorities and resources. 

I have no idea how many articles, books, conferences, and capital development programs I've been around through three (okay, four) decades of ministry.  I do know that they have been extremely helpful to churches I've been a part of and so many churches that we have served through the years. 

Our role as a church management software is to help churches set up and automate the best practices for which they have received training.  Last week I showed you the three filters in our reports to help with first, second, and lapsed contributors.

I recently gave a talk to a group of community and business people on values.  I chose this topic because our values for service and innovation are so important to our company being what the Lord wants it to be.  Behind each one of the upgrades below is a commitment on the part of our team to listen to our clients, really hear their needs, and innovate solutions that serve them well.

Data clarity and confidence is a real problem for churches.  We've implemented lots of checks and balances through the years to help with this.  Upgrades 1-3 mentioned below are just the latest ones.

The last two focus more directly on people.  One on making payments due and recurring payments more visible in the App for things like camp and school tuition.  The other provides a bit more clarity for those responsible for creating volunteer schedules.

There are two parts to every event registration or survey form software.  The first part is the design of the form itself.  In Churchteams this includes:  member attributes, registration fields, member notes, payment, fund designation, embed code, hyperlink, text keyword, header, completion response, confirmation email, multiple registrants, and redirect links.  I have written a lot about the abilities and upgrades of these features in previous blogs.

However, it occurred to me recently that I have never written a blog dedicated to the second part of registrations and forms software which is the spreadsheet that houses the results.  In Google Forms this is the responses page.  That data can also be exported into Google Sheets or Excel.  

Values-building in an organization is hard work.  I'm not talking about the work of writing something down for a business plan.  Nor the work of an executive team on a retreat wrestling over what is most important.  The result of this kind of work is a set of aspirational values.  These are just seeds.  

I'm talking about the hard work of cultivating, planting, watering, fertilizing, weeding, and protecting these seeds.  There's no shortcut for this work.  It takes time for values to put down roots, sprout, mature, and bear fruit.