During a recent podcast with EST, we delved into the reasons why churches tend to fall behind when it comes to utilizing technology. As always, spending time with Sam and Josh was a pleasure.

Although the conversation with EST had a life of its own, I like to come prepared. With the assistance of GPT, I compiled four reasons why churches often lag behind in technology adoption.  You might find this a helpful evaluation tool.  It is followed by a single idea to help you get ahead.

There has been a lot of conversation since Covid about the challenges of recruiting volunteers.  I've written a few posts on it, but my favorite one was Seven Steps To Deal With The Stress of Volunteer Management from last July.  It outlines the process for everything from recruiting to caring for volunteers.

This one is much narrower in scope.  In fact, I'd like to zero in on the first month or two after a volunteer is placed by looking at 3 common problems with new volunteers and how to solve them.  Here are the problems followed by a recommended solution:

I talk about the use of Notes all the time in these blog posts.  However, a few months ago a long time user / friend pointed out that I had never done a blog post on it directly.  It's time.

Let me give you an idea of how important this topic is.  In my view, getting everyone on your team to use the Notes feature will increase staff use of the software by 200% and make your team as a whole 50% more efficient! 

Those numbers are based on my experience and gut feeling.  If we were to actually create an experiment to calculate them, those rates of improvement might be low.  Imagine that!    

Millenials have been surrounded by technology, computers, the Internet, social media, and mobile devices since birth.  They are digital natives and they are starting to lead churches full of members who are not. 

Left unattended, this difference in attachment to technology could bog down the effectiveness of the vision and strategy of younger leaders.  As a company that builds technology for churches; we think, talk, and pray about issues like this.

The oldest millenials turned 40 the last few years.  For as long as I can remember, 35-45 has been the sweet spot for churches looking for new staff, especially a senior pastor. 

Our friends on the EST podcast focus specifically on helping this new generation of leaders serve established churches.  A couple of weeks ago I was on with Sam talking about bridging the technology gap with older members.  Here's that podcast.

I did a workshop recently at  the Disciple Leaders Network conference on the topic of "How to think about and map out an effective assimilation strategy."  The host team asked us to make it a working time so that participants could walk away with some tools on our topics.  I thought I'd share mine here as well. 

I started by introducing our view of assimilation as a network of buckets and workflows.  Buckets are the groups, events, responses, steps, etc. in which we gather people with the same interests.  Workflows help us move them from one bucket (group) to another.  Here's the illustration I used in the workshop.

The French writer, poet, and aviation pioneer, Antoine de Saint-Exupery famously said, "A goal without a plan is just a wish."  

Easter was just a couple of weeks ago.  Hopefully, your church saw lots of visitors and twice-a-year attenders. How has your follow-up with these people gone?  Are you working the plan or was your goal for them to return really just a wish?

Feature upgrades / new releases often come from users' input and end up making their work a little easier.  Here's what Mary shared with us recently.  (Stock photo, not really Mary.)

"Adobe wouldn't let me save my latest email newsletter because it was too big to save the way I always used to do it (8 steps 😝).  So, I decided to try your “create a link” feature in Email Templates.

It worked beautifully! And in the future will save me SO MUCH TIME! Thank you for providing this tool!  You guys are so wonderful at providing what we users need to do our work for God’s Kingdom."

About a year ago I met Sam Rainer at a Discipleship Pastors retreat.  He is a pastor, author, and President / Sr. Consultant with Church Answers.  His books include "Obstacles in the Established Church" and "Church Revitalization Checklist."