The mission of the church is simple: go and make disciples. But there is nothing easy about that mission. The value of walking alongside each person and encouraging their faith steps by being able to make personal connections with guests, provide individuals serving and community opportunities, and empower the community to care for one another is priceless. A church management system is good stewardship of the people God brings to your ministry, your finances, and time from leaders and volunteers.
Finding a church management system that can support all of your ministries will equip your leaders and empower your volunteers. A unified ministry is an effective ministry. Find unity in these five areas:
- Attendance: Attendance is an important first step of engagement and discipleship. If we are not prepared for new attenders, they will most likely stop showing up. By watching attendance metrics we are able to plan for seasonal influx, know how many bulletins to have on hand or when to plan for overflow seating. With a unified system, we can set up a follow-up process (process queues) to recognize visitors and follow their involvement.
- Giving: With an accurate picture of monthly giving, we can project for next year’s budget. With a unified system, we will see attendance, serving history and giving in one location. A dip in any of these areas can alert us to potential opportunity to care for a family. Turn a common giving report into an opportunity to relationally care for the people God has entrusted to us.
- Serving: Go beyond understanding your need for additional volunteers, seasonally and regularly. With connected systems and side-by-side total involvement, gain a good picture of total engagement of individuals. Run reports to find people that are attending, but not serving. Based on their interest and skills, also found in a unified system, personally invite those individuals to serve in an area that they are qualified to serve.
- Saving Time: With data flowing into one system, we spend less time looking for information. Reports are more easily accessed and can be scheduled. With the decentralized model of event planning admins are freed up to put out other fires, and ministry leaders are freed up to do the ministries they were set apart for.
- Discipling More Effectively: While it’s difficult to quantify a person’s walk with the Lord in a database, Church Community Builder can help you follow and track an individual’s involvement. Notes in the system add an additional layer and allow us to know and disciple our people more effectively.
If our church begins to drift towards ministry silos, it will ultimately affect the processes and systems of our church. When churches aren’t willing to unify around their processes and systems, the cost of these 6 pain points will be hard to overcome:
- Lack of Insight - We don't know which data is truly accurate so therefore we don't have clarity.
- Lack of clarity — We don't know which data is truly accurate so therefore we don't have clarity.
- Lack of wisdom — Wisdom comes from the Holy Spirit working in concert with our experience and access to information. When the last ingredient is missing, we trust our "gut" too often and make uninformed, unwise decisions.
- Lack of value — People feel valued when you "know" them (what makes them unique). Disconnected data makes it hard to know people.
- Lack of community — How can we expect authentic community and care to happen in the absence of accurate information?
- Lack of retention — The ultimate affect of all the above is a lack of ability to connect and walk with people in their faith journey. Find the right software to support your staff and leaders to truly care for the people God leads to your church.
What other ways can a lack of unity affect a church’s ministry? How have you created unity around your church’s systems or processes to increase your church’s impact?
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