For me, Christmas sheds a great light on the previous year.  Does it you?  I have been a journaler for decades.  During the month of December I review my entries for the year and narrow them down to a few highlights that the Lord has said to me and is working out in my life.  These become my objectives to review and work on the next year.

I just did a similar thing by reviewing the New Release blog posts and reflecting on our business process improvements.  I looked over them and narrowed them down to these five bright spots for 2023.

For almost 2 years now, my friend Steve Caton of Altezza Solutions has been coaching me on Sales and Marketing.  I need all the help I can get.  From my recent reading I've been thinking about a topic that actually comes up in conversations all the time ...

"what makes Churchteams different?"

I recently emailed a stewardship survey to our clients to get a pulse on online giving and stewardship in their churches.  The first part of the survey was to collect some basic numbers.   

In addition, we ran some numbers based on data across all our online giving organizations.   You might find it interesting to see how your church compares to these findings.  You'll see how to do that below.

The second part of the survey asked about the use of features and for stewardship stories.  One feature lags behind the others.  One idea and one story provide insights into helping people better use the online tools you provide.

Part of our job as co-founders is to pray about, evaluate, and navigate our way forward as a company.  Our initial calling and the Lord's leadership each step along the way are helpful indicators of the plans He has for us. 

In the past month or so I've started thinking about the history of our company in three stages.  Each one building on the previous one.  Here is a short version of each of these. 

My hope is that you not only get to know us better, but also that it might be useful for you to think about how God is leading you.  As Proverbs 16:9 says, "In his heart a plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps."   Here's how He has done that for us.

Sometimes we hear about really creative ways churches are using our software for ministry.  I've shared a few before, but I need to do it more. 

In fact, from now on, anytime you see Epic! in the subject line, you'll know it's an interview or a story from a user.

This one is from Stetson Baptist Church in Deland, FL where Dan Glenn is the Sr. Pastor.  Dan wanted to do a series on "The Power of Routine" to help his church establish some essential habits for spiritual growth.

In August, 2021 we released a feature that allowed clients to color code member attribute, drop down responses for quick recognition on a member profile page.  Check out the blog post to see my suggestions back then for how to use these.

Our support team has been hearing and sharing ideas on these and thought it might be interesting to share how some of our clients are actually currently using color-coded attributes.  I asked our Users Group on Facebook for their thoughts as well.  

Out of these, here are four of the best ways churches are using color-coded attribute responses.  All of these are screenshots of pinned attributes on real member profiles.

1. Discipleship
2. Volunteer Background Status
3. Health Alerts
4. Pastoral Alerts

I recently updated some of my old blog posts about Text-to-Church.  In them I made the case that people already text and many don't want to download or use another App. 

However, with all our work preparing for and launching our Member App, I have a different perspective.  

Using these two features together adds depth to your overall church communication strategy.  By that I mean it enables you to more effectively reach people at different places on their journey and respect their different preferences.  

Some people prefer to Text since they know it and use it so much already.  Others prefer the App so they have one place to go for church stuff.

Six weeks ago we released the Member App.  Many of our clients have jumped in with both feet using all of the features.  Some have other systems in place that are similar and are still in process of evaluating how to best use the Churchteams App.  

Still others haven't jumped in.  If that's you, come on in!  The water is great.  You'll love the functionality for staff as well as members.

As is usual in a release of this magnitude, new insights and ideas come up as people swim around in it.  We've already done several upgrades and just released four more.  The first two add to the App.  The last three are settings that hide extra parts of the app.