Happy new year to you and your church teams.  May the Lord give you new insights for reaching people in the almost post-pandemic world of 2022.   

As part of our planning for the future, we recently contracted a Voice of the Customer researcher to interview eight of our most active customers.  There were lots of insights but two stood out to me that I'd like to address talk about in this blog post. 

If you ask around, I think you'll find that our clients love our software not just because of the technology, but also because our team cares about them.  Here's an excerpt from an email I got just last week from a Media Arts and Tech staff person after James helped them set up check-in.

"My friend was 100% right. ChurchTeams has been fantastic as we have gotten set up.  If you ever need an example person for a new church getting started please consider giving them my contact information. I would be happy to talk to anyone who has questions about what it is like to work with your software and your team."

Back in January I announced that we were going to start a weekly Roundtable for clients to discuss topics of interest.  The idea was to create a collaborative learning environment for clients and our staff.  We admitted up front that it would be an experiment and that we would be learning as we go.  I thought you might want an update.

We all know that trust is foundational to successful relationships.  It is also foundational to a successful relationship with your database.  If you don't trust the data, you don't trust what the data tells you.  That's a problem.

"Great things in business are never done by one person; they're done by a team of people."

Steve Jobs

Last fall we automated the Academy training webinars that I had done almost every week for years.  They are now available on-demand 24/7. 

For most of us, a new year represents an opportunity to identify any potentially harmful habits that have crept into our life and purpose to do something about them.  You know, habits like eating, exercising and daily time in the Word.  The Bible calls them "little foxes that spoil the vineyard."

In the same way, an organization has a way of creeping toward sloppy software habits - many times for good reasons.  For example, we have had one software to help us host videos and another one to manage marketing for many years.  Early last year, we found  a software that excels at automated webinars. We started using it to learn how to effectively automate our webinars.  A few months ago, we realized we could do the same thing by combining features we already have with our video and marketing software.  So, last week we built the required landing pages and went from 3 back to 2 software applications. (See the results by clicking the links on our Webinar page.)  It felt like we lost 10 pounds.

For nearly every church, the second or third largest line item in their budget is related to facility operations.  This includes the care, maintenance, energy consumption, capital reserves, etc.  All of this can be lumped into the cost of facilities. 

Many ministry events and mission trips have been cancelled this summer due to Covid 19 and social distancing.  But as churches begin to re-open for worship, they are doing so with a renewed passion for their calling to make disciples of all nations.  

We have an incredible team.  For a number of months now, in addition to all the Covid 19 upgrades we've done, we've been working on upgrading our Navigation Bar buttons to make them more user-friendly.

If you are a long-time Churchteams user, you know what the software does, so you will be able to very quickly re-route from older paths to these new ones that we hope are more direct and more intuitive especially for new users.

If it weren't for Covid 19, our staff and many of you would be looking forward to being together in North Fort Worth next week.  Barbecue and Tex-Mex were on the menu along with 2 days of fellowship and learning.  

I started this series more than a month ago but got sidestracked on topics related to the Covid 19 crisis.  The pandemic has only ramped up.  But, for a moment, let's refocus on how we help a church measure how well they are multiplying disciples.

Jesus didn't mentor his disciples just to make them better men.  His goal was for them to mentor other people who would do the same thing.  Paul was super clear on this multiplication model of mentoring in 2 Timothy 2:2.

We who are captivated by the privilege and challenge of this calling are part of a growing movement of churches owning the multiplication vision.  Our experience has shown us that consistency and conversations are two powerfully helpful measures of multiplication.