The advent season is upon us which, for church finances, means end of year giving is here, and sending statements season is a month away.  These are important parts of a church stewardship development plan.

Asking people to make a pledge or giving commitment is another, common practice for many churches going in to a new calendar or fiscal year.  There are several benefits to this practice:

From my experience, there are around 200 Bible verses worth memorizing for quick access in any situation throughout the day, every day.  One of these is a familiar verse that you likely already know - Philippians 4:6-7.  

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Jesus."

So far in this series we've looked at using registrations (forms) for Connection Cards, New Members Class, and Membership Commitment.   Most churches expect fully engaged members to be part of a small group where they belong and grow; and that they will serve somewhere using their talents and spiritual gifts.  That's why we included small group and serving questions in the membership form. 

In a perfect world members stay engaged in groups and serving, but in the real world they don't.  You need on-ramps for these members and for regular attenders who prefer to engage before they join.

The Connection Card is the way to capture information from guests and regular attenders who are interested in learning more about your church.  The Membership Class is the most important call to action in your communication to these people because it directs everyone to a single place to share their faith, identify their people, and begin to live out their purpose.

Here's one way that I've illustrated the importance of the New Members class.  It is the endpoint for the outreach and assimilation process, but it also marks the beginning of the equipping and engagement process.

The New look! launch went really great last week.  If you're a client and haven't made the switch, login and give it a try.  After a day or two of using it, you will join hundreds of others who see and feel the difference.

Last month I also started a series I'm calling the Top 12 ways churches use Registrations & Forms.  We did a deeper dive into the why and how of Connection Cards then.  This week let's talk about the New Members Class.

Connection cards are the best way to capture people's information.  Use this information to set up a series (or workflow) of emails, texts, and personal calls.  Besides getting to know them, the goal of this workflow is for people to register for a New Member's class.

The next few weeks are going to focus on the exciting announcement I leaked last week.  You are going to love what's coming.  But, today and after the upcoming release blogs we are going to share insights on the use of registrations and forms.  

After interviewing our support team, and looking at church websites that use registrations and forms well, I've come up with 12 of the top ways churches are using this amazing feature.  We're going to start today talking about Connection Cards.

Managing enrollment, especially payments, for events like preschools, camps, or Christian School tuitions is a time-consuming challenge for many churches.  These programs require registrations, forms, initial payment, accounting, payment reminders, attendance, email or text communication, and syncing at least some of the information in the church database. 

There are two parts to every event registration or survey form software.  The first part is the design of the form itself.  In Churchteams this includes:  member attributes, registration fields, member notes, payment, fund designation, embed code, hyperlink, text keyword, header, completion response, confirmation email, multiple registrants, and redirect links.  I have written a lot about the abilities and upgrades of these features in previous blogs.

However, it occurred to me recently that I have never written a blog dedicated to the second part of registrations and forms software which is the spreadsheet that houses the results.  In Google Forms this is the responses page.  That data can also be exported into Google Sheets or Excel.  

Just this morning I was talking with a friend who is incredibly busy with end of the school year activities for his kids.  It's a great time of the year to celebrate, but it's also a season for church staff and families to start planning for summer activities. 

It's great to see how the vaccinations and our new habits seem to have turned the tide on Covid-19.  But, as you're planning for Easter, 2021; do you wish there was a way to do a better job of managing the numbers of people attending services.  Maybe our Covid lessons from last year can help.  Here's a slight reworking of the blog post from May, 2020 on how to use Churchteams to set up a worship reservation system.