All across the country today, churches are empty because of the Coronavirus pandemic. 

I've loved reading  notes from pastors encouraging their people to trust God and then love and care for one another.  

This is a time for the church to shine!  And we built Churchteams to be the light on the hill for decentralized ministry.  Our team started talking about that and we came up with some ways beyond the Sunday experience that Churchteams can help your church be the Church (not a cap typo) during this crisis. 

Last night the President  banned at-risk travel and made available loans to help businesses through the Cornovirus Pandemic.  The NBA season is over.  And the NCAA tournament won't have spectators.  What!  March madness without the crowd?

Last week we were at the Exponential Conference in Orlando.  It is an exciting gathering of thousands of people devoted to multiplying leaders and planting churches. Our many conversations with men and women enthusiastically pursuing a life of significance through mentoring and multiplication reminded me again of why we started Churchteams. 

We recently released an upgrade to our contributions system that includes the ability to archive the image of a check that is scanned into Churchteams.  We now offer this service to our clients for an additional $15 / month for up to 7 years of check storage.  The video below shows you how this service works.  But, let's start with some context.

NOTE:  As of 3/18/20, because of Covid 19, we are delaying a final decision on whether to continue with the User's Gathering until April 15th.  

Join our staff and so far over 40 other Churchteams clients for a couple days of focused training to improve your Churchteams skills at our User's Gathering this Spring.  Our goal is to provide not just a fun time together with CT staff you've interacted with, but also with other people doing exactly what you do.  

The Dashboard release last fall brings all kinds of efficiencies to accessing what you need as soon as you login.  The most visual of the these is the Metric Card.  In this post, I'm going to take you step by step adding two of the most common reports used by pastors and staff to the Metrics Card. You'll see how to do this so that even pastors and staff that don't need access to giving can have the giving summary on their dashboard as soon as they login.

It has been a busy last few months listening to clients, working on upgrades, making Churchteams continually better.

"How do I set up check-in for our church?"  The answer to that question continues to evolve as we continue to adopt newer and better technology.  I'm going to skip the history lesson and jump right into the decisions you need to make now about check-in and then give you a general process for implementing them.

Watch this NEW, very creative video to see how church management software is being used to help pastors and staff mobilize their church for ministry.  

Last  fall I started a blog series on Small Groups called Aim Small.  My hope with this series is to bring together our best learnings about managing small groups that make disciples. 

In the last post, I showed you how attendance helps you recognize the trust level in your groups.  Like heat  is vital to baking bread, so trust is essential to authentic relationships.  

For Church Geeks like us, January means it's time to send out giving statements.  You could send out the familiar "thank you and here's what happened last year" cover letter that you  print, stuff in an envelope, seal, stamp and mail.  But, it's 2020 and there are some creative things you can do to spice it up this year.  Here are some thoughts on how to salt your giving statement content and  pepper your process.