If you follow this blog, you know that last week we released an important change to our look and feel.  The post focused on the ability to quickly look at a series of pinned attributes to have a sense of where someone is on your discipleship profile spectrum.

As you can see it gives a picture of their involvement with just a glance.  And it's fully customizable to accommodate the attributes you define as discipleship measures.  (Check out the Discipleship Signs series for more on that.)

Six years ago we released an initial version of our volunteer scheduling feature.  It has been updated many times since then, but nothing like we are rolling out tonight.  Tonight's release of SERVICE VOLUNTEERS fills in the gaps to elevate this feature to the very top tier in the industry.

Our Volunteers feature lets you create a group and then schedule that team to serve.  With SERVICE VOLUNTEERS you create Templates made up of all the groups serving during a given service. 

Using the template you can schedule volunteers across all teams, see blocked out dates, potential conflicts, email or text everyone, and choose from 3 options for volunteers to get their own substitutes.

We got some great ideas from the Roundtable we did for 3 months earlier this year.  Many of these upgrades came from that as well as great ideas from our clients.  

Our relationship with you guys is the secret sauce to Churchteams truly being a software that we are building together!  Here are 10 upgrades in the past 2 months.  

In discipleship discussions, we often quote 2 Timothy 2:2 as a pillar text for understanding discipleship that multiplies disciples.  The idea, of course, is that Paul invested in training Timothy and was encouraging him to invest in other people who would invest in others.  

Notice the adjective that Paul uses to describe the people in whom Timothy was to invest his time.  Depending on your translation, the word is generally reliable (NIV, NLT), or faithful (ESV, NASB, KJV).  It is someone in whom you trust.

Another huge benefit of the Roundtables that we've been doing the past couple of months has been the amazing ideas for upgrades and tweaks we've gotten as we interact with our most engaged users.

Many of the upgrades in this post came from that environment.  Some came directly through support.  All of them are a picture of our commitment to build the best software for churches in the context of community.

The story of 2020 will always be the global pandemic of Covid-19.  All of us are different.  It's worth the time to log what we've lost and grieve it well.  It's also worth the time to examine what we've gained and how to build on it. I hope you're doing that personally and as a church. 

The upgrades we've released the past few months reflect insights gained from working closely with clients in 2020.  Some of these are really minute, but the first one in particular positions us well for the post-Covid expectations of performance at the peak time of Sunday mornings.

Workflow - noun - a series of emails, texts, personal notifications, or data or group changes scheduled to occur over a selected time period.  Used to track a follow-up process.

Reports - noun - Information gathered or actions to take related to families or individuals based on their group involvement, member attributes, or giving data.

Like sparks from kindling wood promising warmth and light against the darkness, Advent starts with prophetic voices announcing hope for a coming messiah in the midst of a dark time.