In June, I did a breakout with about 25 SBC Association Missions Strategists on these features. If this isn't your bunch, basically, these are people who oversee from about 20 to 200 or more churches in a local geographical area. Normal is around 40.
It was a really great time for me to hear their hearts and needs. Almost all of them had a hodge-podge of software and paper they use for managing data, emailing people, texting people, forms, and events. They clearly expressed their frustration that everything wasn't working together and some things were even missing.
We hear this frustration all the time with pastors and this isn't the first time with network leaders like this. I had a little time to dig in further that day, but not enough. So, I set up a couple of follow up times this summer to listen and learn more.
I learned that these leaders wanted a way to track their preaching topics for each church to make sure they don't preach the same sermon next time they are invited to fill the pulpit. I learned that they are made up of not only member churches, but affiliated churches, and church plants.
I learned they want to be able to see pastors, staff, and contacts by church along with their roles; but also to communicate across churches to those with specific roles like Senior Pastors or Youth Pastors. I learned they wanted a way to track prayer needs and conversations and be automatically reminded to respond or follow-up.
I also learned that many of them were using church management software but had to add on other communication tools for things like email marketing and texting. I knew we could take care of all these needs, but also recognized that there would be a ton of work involved for those leaders to learn our software well enough to customize the language and structure to fit their organization.
Fortunately, I've been around awhile and am somewhat familiar with this world of church networks. That experience was just enough to give me the vocabulary to ask questions to clarify the needs and retrofit our software to reflect their language and structure.
We adapted a sample account in real time with them and fine-tuned it afterwards. So, we now have a church network or association template that we can preconstruct for these leaders when they sign up for a free trial with us. This will make it so much easier for them to learn and get started with Churchteams as their one source for data and communication.
So, if you are a pastor or church staff and are part of an association or network, share this blog post with them. Who knows they may be looking for software to help them launch into the fall ministry season.
If you are a network leader reading this and are interested in learning more; email me, boyd@churchteams.com, and we'll set something up to talk further.