This might sound like a crazy question, but it is a real one for pretty much every church, "which option for calendar software is best for our church?" 

The reason it can be confusing is that there are so many voices and solutions out there. 

Most websites offer calendar features options.  Many Church Management Systems have a calendar option or even are built around a calendar.  Event management softwares offer calendars.  Facility management softwares offer calendars.  And, of course your office management software like Outlook and Google integrate their calendars into everything.

A support email came in the other day asking if we had a way to create private notes for a pastor or staff members.  I suspect he was thinking about pastoral care or counseling notes that need to be secured. 

But, there are many other conversations you have with people that are important not to drop the ball on.  Consider these:

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.

Yes!  We've been on an exciting journey the last couple of weeks as we rolled out the new Member App.  Our thanks to so many of you for sharing your time in the briefings (recording), your excitement about the feature,  and your kind words.

In a previous blog I mentioned that there are always tweaks, and often new ideas that come after a release.  This one was no different.  The most significant one empowers staff in a completely new way on their mobile phones.  They can now use the full software through the Member App.  Yes!

By staff, I am referring to anyone that has been given access to the software at the coach level and higher.  These are assigned under Settings > Users.  

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!    

What do you think about your website?  Does it accomplish what you wish it would for your church or organization?  This past year we spent a lot of time asking and analyzing these questions for our website.

That's why we were so excited last week to publish the results of our work.  Check it out.  There are all kinds of articles and blog posts out there from professional marketing and website design firms that are incredible.  We don't pretend to compete with them.  But, we did learn some things along the way.

All of us realize that email marketing and website hosting are two different things. However, as we talked about last week's release of email links for text and social with our development team; we recognized that hosting email content was just a half step from being able to provide hosting for landing pages.  

It was so close in fact that we decided to build a Landing Page feature and released it with Email Links last week.  You can find it on Content Pages option under the Communicate button.