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. 

If you're reading this, you've been there.  In the middle of putting together a stellar email.  The layout was mostly done.  The content was clean and crisp.  Then you get a phone call. Without thinking you look up information in the database or look at a Churchteams registration on your website.  As soon as your done you try to go back to the email and it's gone.

One of our advantages in the church management market is our agile culture.  There is just one degree of separation between clients and our development team.  As soon as a need or even a suggestion is vetted by a support team member, it is shared with development. 

Development keeps a running evaluation of these suggestions.  Some are as simple as a software edit and are immediately addressed.  They don't even make it to the list.  Others need affirmation, thought and evaluation.  As they come up again and are mulled over, they make their way to the investment of a few hours or days.  Others are much more involved and may take months or years to rise to the level of investment of weeks or even months of coding.  This set of releases fit into the first two categories.

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.