Web-Based

Recently, a friend of mine began to plant a church in a city 700 miles away from his current church where he knew no one. He is either really brave or incredibly oblivious. He has read most of the books, investigated many planting models, and planted a successful church before.

When researching technology partners for your ministry there are many different variables. What I'm going to talk about today are the five most important things you should consider when evaluating potential technology partners. If the technology partner you are considering values these five things, you can rest assured that everything else will fall into place. It's also important that the design looks nice and the user experience isn’t clunky. But if these five things are executed well, you can be confident the design and user experience will be of quality too. What I want to stress is that it's more important to understand why the company does what it does and how it does it, rather than whether or not they have a nice website with good sales.

In the past several years, the church technology industry has undergone many changes that have encouraged some, while discouraging others. As technology advancements continue, new companies start up and newcomers to the church tech industry enter and acquire firms to consolidate and rebuild. More recently, private equity firms have entered the space getting involved in acquisitions and shifting resources to various technology firms in order to position for growth and financial gain. All these moves cause disruption - to tech companies as well as the churches they serve; change is never easy.

I remember watching a friend lead a church planting team that was made up of some unlikely friends. He had a diverse team. He had 19-year-old college students, married couples in their 30’s with young kids, professionals, and older adults in their early 70’s who just retired. It seemed to be a lot of fun. They ate together, they prayed together, and worked hard to reach their community with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I learned a few things about communication from watching this diverse group. I learned that a good leader must communicate well in order to lead well.

Have you ever had a conversation where you thought you were being totally clear? Only to realize later, that the person you were talking to understood the conversation differently. You both were talking about the same thing, but what was communicated was very different. Unfortunately, church communications can be this way too.

What's really great about working in the same industry for nearly 20 years is that every so often a company comes along that really shakes things up and redefines what can be done. One such company is Rock RMS, run by Spark Development Network, a nonprofit organization that built the powerful, open-source Rock RMS software. Rock RMS is somewhat of a newcomer in the church management software space, having gone through beta and version one release in 2014, then becoming financially independent as Spark Development Network. With more than 1,000 downloads and church plants on up through mega multisite churches hopping on board (such as Willow Creek), it's hard to not pay attention to what they're doing.

Bob Goff founded a law firm, wrote a New York Times best-selling book and serves as the honorary consul for the Republic of Uganda. The guy gets things done. But every Thursday he quits something. We could learn something from Bob. Maybe your church needs to quit: Quit that social media account with three followers. Quit locking up your Wi-Fi with a password. Quit pretending email isn’t important. Whatever your church is struggling with, give yourself permission to quit.

So you want to connect with your church online. It seems so easy, just about everyone is already there, and you’d really love to feel engaged with your congregation. There’s just one problem… creating and maintaining an online community can be very tricky, not to mention overwhelming. Here are a few rules for you to follow to create a thriving community that wants to engage with you: