Two Reasons Your Church Needs a Proven ChMS

Ditch the spreadsheets and get your church running smoothly on proven ChMS.

Administration, data, and software aren’t the first topics people consider when they think of ministry. But back-office systems play a huge role in supporting front-line ministries by keeping track of volunteers, events, and key details. A good system will show ministry leaders which parents belong to each child in the nursery and where people are in the discipleship process. 

As a church grows, the effort it takes to monitor each aspect of ministry also increases. Many church leaders start off using spreadsheets to track these details. While that can work for a while, the complexity and amount of information you need to maintain soon becomes too much to manage in a spreadsheet. That’s why many churches of all sizes are using church management software (ChMS). ChMS is a tool that makes church ministry easier to manage. 

There are many different ChMS products on the market, each with its own key features to help a church stay organized. Here are two overarching benefits:

Two Reasons Your Church Needs a Proven ChMS

Benefit #1: Quick Access to the Right Information

A good ChMS tool will put all of your church’s ministry details at your fingertips. Do you need to know who signed up to serve at the community outreach next weekend? Want to see who requested a call from the pastor? Are you trying to make sure your worship team vocalist isn’t double-booked to serve in the nursery? All of this data is stored within your ChMS, ready to access at a moment’s notice. 

Without a centralized ChMS tool, church members’ contact information is often stored in multiple databases—one for each ministry area. For instance, if Joe volunteers as a greeter on Sunday morning and leads a small group on Thursday night, his information is probably tracked by two different staff members in separate spreadsheets. Multiply that scenario across all the people and ministries in a congregation, and it’s easy to see how data management becomes a problem.

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It’s much more effective to have a single place for storing every church member’s contact information and other details (such as family relationships, small group rosters, and volunteer assignments). By adopting one management system, anyone with access can find the most current information whenever they need it.

Benefit #2: Support for Pastoral Care and Discipleship

In a growing church, it’s all too easy for people to fall through the cracks. A ChMS tool can help your entire staff work together to make sure needs are met. If a church member is in the hospital, you can keep track of who visited them and when. When someone decides to follow Christ, you can connect them to a class for new believers to make sure they’re invited to be baptized. As people return to your church, you can see whether they’re plugging into a small group and building relationships. 

When you have a central system for tracking important details, you can see how people are participating in the life of the church. This helps your staff members coordinate their efforts to provide discipleship, training, and growth opportunities to the people who need them. By organizing your church’s information, a ChMS tool will equip your church for ministry.

Selecting and implementing a ChMS product will require an initial investment of your time and energy (and yes, money). Thankfully, many ChMS vendors genuinely care about ministry and serving the church. To keep their products affordable, some vendors offer discounted pricing for church plants and scaled pricing based on church size. 

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Pay attention to each tool’s system requirements. Some ChMS products are traditional software running on a church’s computer network, but many are now cloud-based, so your church staff can do their work over the internet. Some ChMS products even have apps that work on mobile devices. A well-implemented ChMS tool can help staff members serve people more effectively and empower the whole church to grow in faith.

Learn how to keep your database clean and easy-to-use when you read Church Tech Tip #14: Database Clean-Up Tips

This article has been adapted from an article originally featured in Ministry Team Magazine.