Five company bright spots and one reason we do what we do.

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 12/19/23 2:00 PM

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.

Read More

Tags: New Release

New!  How to keep your data clean and your donors happy

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 11/14/23 2:00 PM
How would you feel if your contribution statement was emailed to a friend instead of to you?  It might not be a huge deal because of the relationship you have with your friend.  But if you were the financial administrator of the church, you would hate the mess and clean it up.
 
It doesn't happen a lot, but it can happen.  The problem is that the email the church has on your record is your friend's, not yours.  There are several ways this might have happened.  The most common one is when your friend signed you up for an event and used his/her email for you instead of your real one.
 
The answer isn't to stop emailing statements because you will have the same problem with mailing addresses.  The answer is to keep your data clean.
Read More

Tags: New Release

New!  Get the App.  Check on follow-up tasks.

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 11/7/23 2:00 PM
Two of these five recent new releases are especially useful for your staff.  The first release below puts a prompt in front of staff who've not downloaded the App anytime they are using Churchteams on their phone.  You don't have to keep reminding them to install it.
 
Number four in the list provides a great way to see how staff or volunteers are doing on their follow up assignments.  Use the Save and Schedule features to automate the report so that notes on follow up tasks and conversations just show up in your inbox whenever you want them.
 
Here is the full list to preview.  Just click to read more or read through them all!
Read More

Tags: New Release

New in the App!  Chat, your logo on login, and remove features.

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 10/5/23 8:00 AM

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.

Read More

Tags: New Release, Communication

New!  Texting, deceased actions, and registration upgrades.

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 9/26/23 2:30 PM
 
Headphones are an amazing invention.  They allow us to tune out the noise and listen to the music we want and often need to hear. 
 
We've learned that putting headphones on to really listen to our users blesses both us and them.  
 
We get to connect with fantastic people and hear how our service is serving them and their church.  We also get to understand what's really going on and discover ways we can do what we do even better. 
 
They discover a software company that really cares and then see a tool that works even better for them as the result.  All four of the changes in this new release blog post came from these kind of conversations. 
 
If you're not a client, these won't mean much to you except that Churchteams listens and adapts.  If you are a client, check them out.
Read More

Tags: New Release

How to measure discipleship.  Take the FREE, NEW look Growthfinder assessment.

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 9/12/23 2:30 PM
Does the vision of your church revolve around making disciples?  If so, you may have a clear definition of what one looks like; but what about a way to measure how well you are getting the job done?
Read More

Tags: New Release, Groups

3 reasons the new, staff access upgrade to the Member App is significant

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 9/5/23 2:32 PM

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.  

Read More

Tags: New Release, Communication

3 ways to use our new Member App to improve church communication

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 8/22/23 5:00 AM
I am excited to announce that we released our Member App last night.  It has been a long journey of observation, evaluation, and development of an App that fits how churches and people are really using them.  I covered some of those big questions in last week's blog post.
Read More

Tags: New Release, Communication

Answers to 6 important questions about our Member App coming next week

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 8/15/23 2:00 PM

We built and have promoted the use of texting in church for a very long time.  There are things we do with Text-to-Church that are amazing.

But, for many months now we've been working on a "not so" top secret project that is ready to launch next week,  our brand new - MEMBER APP.  It is designed to give your church members and regular attenders easy, contemporary access to everything they need. 

We plan to release it next Monday night, then Tuesday morning send you an email introducing the app with a list of specific features and an introductory video that will demonstrate the User Experience.  We will also release Knowledge Base articles for customizing what groups, events, and resources are included in the app.  In addition, we are going to offer a couple of  Zoom webinars with our team to overview and discuss it live.

Register for Member App Briefing (8/24 or 8/30)

In preparation for that, here are answers to 6 questions behind our vision for this latest, very exciting upgrade.

Read More

Tags: Church Management Software, New Release

How to clean up messy bookshelves, reports and email templates. (Tags)

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 8/1/23 2:30 PM

My bookshelves used to be organized by topic and alphabeticized by author.  I could find anything quickly.  Not so much anymore.  I could give excuses, but they're a mess and make it a challenge to find something when I need it.  

Read More

Tags: New Release, Best Practices

New!  Feature upgrades that make your work a little easier

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 4/18/23 2:30 PM

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."

Read More

Tags: New Release

The top 10 highlights of 2022. Is church communication software the future?

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 12/13/22 2:45 PM

This is the time of the year most of us like to look back and  review what the Lord has done in our lives and work.  I know this exercise helps me put things in perspective and realize again that everything we do comes from Him.  I'd like to invite you to join me in a time of gratitude and praise for what He has done in 2022 at Churchteams.

Here's a top ten highlight list of new features pretty much in order of their release.  Keep reading for my 30,000 foot view of where we're headed and how this year prepared us for 2023 and beyond. 

  1. Text-to-Chat - Two way texting.
  2. Ten digit mass texting, scheduling, history
  3. Pledge campaign management and self-registration
  4. Pre-print name tags and security labels
  5. Automate deceased actions
  6. Guardrails for data - registrations, merges, deleting an attribute, changes to pledges
  7. Content Pages - Links, Emojis, Tags
  8. Landing pages
  9. Reports - performance, tags, saved areas
  10. Text-to-Chat notifications
Read More

Tags: Church Management Software, New Release

Subscribe to Email Updates