Management (ChMS)

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.

Slack is a great platform for messaging and communicating real time. It is described as a “messaging app for teams.” Better yet, it’s free for up to 10 apps and up to ten thousand searchable messages. If you are looking for ways for your ministry teams to collaborate more efficiently – Slack may be the tool for you.

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.

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.

We've written many times here on ChurchTechToday about cloud computing, first known as SaaS or web-based software. While many church management software systems began as desktop, or installed software, most offer some kind of hybrid options these days, or have gone even completely cloud-based to be accessible anywhere, anytime via the internet.

It's a win-win for all involved when technology can assist organizations in working well together for a common good. Such a thing has been accomplished by Simon Solutions, a software firm in Florence, Alabama. Built to reduce and eliminate duplicating resources to people and agencies in need, both by accident or fraud, the software they created called CharityTracker enables churches, nonprofits, and relief agencies to share resources and work together online.

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.