Churches have always addressed the needs of families.  Priority is often given to worship and the education or discipleship of not only children, but also their parents. As the role of marriage and family continues to denigrate in our culture, churches are taking up the slack to help people better understand and align with God's design.  Although we don't do content for training, another question on the minds of these churches is how can a church database help manage family ministry?  Here how we do it.

*Okay, yes, I did make up the phrase "Text-TO-Church".

Receiving a text FROM a church is nothing new.  Lots of churches use text to send updates, news and reminders. This feature has been part of Churchteams for a number of years.  

In the last blog I shared ideas on how to best use our church database to recruit volunteers.  This is a huge effort for many church staff every late summer and early fall.  But, the rest of the year is about helping these volunteers thrive and succeed in their ministry.  Here are some ideas on how to use Churchteams to help you make sure your volunteers have as positive an experience as possible.

 August is the time of the year that many church staff are feeling the pressure of recruiting for their fall ministies.  The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers few.  And the staff are feeling the pressure of both.   I remember this season well from my many years as a small group and family pastor.  My wife and kids remember it as well.  Dad was always a little more amped up.  

In the last blog, we talked about how to organize your church volunteer teams by answering a few basic questions.  Once you have those figured out and have created your teams, you are ready to schedule and manage them.  Here's how that is done in Churchteams.

A client/friend set up a call with me recently to talk about the best way to set up their groups for volunteer scheduling.  As we talked, I realized that it might be helpful to do a blog post to help church volunteers and staff consider how to set up volunteer teams to make scheduling as easy as possible.  

I often talk with church staff and pastors about the discipline of taking attendance and why it matters.  Neither,  "because we've always done it that way",  nor "we've never done it before" are persuasive arguments.  

Have you ever been on a trip and heard that familiar robotic voice…rerouting? The implication is that you’ve made a wrong turn somewhere and you need to get back on track. Sometimes, it’s not that you made a wrong turn, but the GPS that you are following found a faster, better route to the same destination.

A few weeks ago one of our clients was having an issue with a company that was purchased a couple of years ago by a private equity firm.  He contacted me to see if we might have an idea about what was going on.   When I emailed the company to learn more, I discovered that they were training new frontline support staff.  They had hired young people with a great heart who did not yet have the experience our client expected and needed.