Check this out. I ate lunch at this restaurant today with the team from Sevier Heights Baptist Church. We left the restaurant about an hour before this picture was taken.
A lot of water came down this afternoon. Don’t worry about me. I’m home safe in ATL. Pray for the folks that are being impacted by today’s rains. Crazy…
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been highlighting Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms), an open source church management system. Here’s a real-life case study of a church that transitioned into using BVCMS. Bellevue Church Management System interviewed Rob Lamarre, Administrative Pastor/Business Operations Manager of Point Harbor Community Church, about his experience with the system. Point Harbor, located in Chesapeake, Virginia, was established in 1976. Approximately 850 people attend Sunday morning worship, and the church has 16 staff members.
Q: What problem or challenge did you face that led you to use bvcms?
A: Nobody at the church could look up information remotely. This was overburdening a few of the staff because they were constantly getting calls from people asking them to look up information. In addition, the check-in system was terrible.
Q: Did you already have a church management system in place? If so, what compelled you to seek a different solution? If not, what compelled you to see a church management system?
A: The church was using a system, but it wasn’t adequate – it was really just a big phone book. Being a data guy, I always want to analyze things and know about our trending, such as how many 35-year-old dads came to our church last summer. But the data in our old system was not very good. There weren’t many people that understood how to use it, so there weren’t a lot of checks and balances as to how data got entered or how valid it was. There were occasions when we had three different records for the same person because that person’s name was entered differently. Although that’s still possible with bvcms, it’s less likely because of the way it’s set up.
Q: How did you learn about bvcms?
A: I started looking around at different systems, and was introduced to bvcms founder/developer David Carroll though a vendor I met while working on an unrelated project. I was concerned about David being a “small shop,” but he put our fears to rest and showed us how we could use Bellevue Church Management System to do all the things we were trying to do. There were so many features that it was a lock for me.
Q: How did bvcms meet your needs?
A: The biggest win I had was with children’s check-in. We have between 200-300 kids each week, and we would have kids stacked back as far as the eye could see trying to check in. I noticed a lot of parents get upset and leave the line, so the bvcms children’s check-in feature with the touch screens, and the way it provides management for the staff and ministry leaders to be able to login from anywhere and see the names of the kids they are working with, was very appealing.
Q: What do you like best about bvcms?
A: I love the fact that even though I’m miles away, I can login and provide support. The ability for everyone to work from wherever they are is huge. Children’s check-in runs smoothly every Sunday now, and we are capturing the parents’ data as well. Now when they come to register for the first time, we register the whole family.
Q: What difference has bvcms made from a financial, operational and ministry perspective?
A: David has given us excellent support, and financially it’s been a big win. When we have an issue, David takes ownership and stays on top of it until it is resolved. The only reason I would ever be hesitant to notify David of a problem is because I know he’s going to stop whatever he’s doing to work on it. We have a system better than anything I knew was out there.
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This is a sponsored post from Bellevue Church Management System, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com.
Many churches have a vision for getting more people to volunteer and serve in the ministry. Fewer churches actually make it happen. One of the reasons is because they lean on staff to do ministry.
A few weeks ago I was at Lifepoint Church in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Their ministry needs to be on your radar. They’ve grown by over 50% in the last 12 months. But that’s not what’s most unique about this ministry.
What’s unique about Lifepoint is their commitment to giving ministry away to volunteers. They have several strategies for making that happen, but let me highlight the most obvious one — they don’t hire staff to do ministry.
Of all the churches I’ve worked with over the last couple of years, Lifepoint has the lowest staff to attendance ratio. They only have 1 full-time equivalent staff member (that includes all staff, not just ministry staff) for every 150 people in attendance. Only about 35% of their budget is spent on staff expenses.
As we recruit volunteers, typically we ask them to sign up for a ministry or a program. We highlight opportunities like being a junior high leader or helping with the hospitality team.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how we might connect more volunteers if we offer folks the alternative of serving on a per-project basis. I know of one woman who travels extensively because of her career. Because she was out of town often, she could never commit to a long-term or ongoing volunteer opportunity. The church’s communication’s director saw an opportunity for this woman, who used to be a journalist, to write for the church’s monthly newsletter. The woman was able to serve her church in a way she was gifted without having to be in the walls of the church on a weekly basis.
In the Bible, there are several times people were assigned projects rather than asked to commit to long-term ministry opportunities. Nehemiah was to build the wall. Noah was asked to build the ark. Simon carried Jesus’ cross.
Are there people in your church who have maybe shied away from serving, but could plug in to a project that uses their gifts and connects them to playing their part in the Body? Join the conversation by sharing your comment.
Sometime earlier today the counter on the Twitter followers clicked through 50,000 followers. Most of those folks could care less about what I have to say on Twitter, but I’m believing that Josh Bingaman isn’t in that camp. Whether he was or wasn’t, I’ve decided to make Josh the honorary 50,000th follower.
To mark this moment, I’m asking you all to pull a “bingaman”. (I just made that word up in honor of Josh.) A “bingaman” is when one Twitterer encourages all his fellow Twitterers to follow another Twitterer. Do it. Go to Josh’s Twitter page and follow him.
Let’s make this the biggest bingaman ever!
Earlier this week, I shared a new conference talk for the very first time at Velocity. The whole talk was on systems. If you didn’t hear it this week, you’ll have an opportunity to catch it either at Exponential or Whiteboard later this spring.
I thought it might be helpful if I walked through the process I use to write a new talk. This is what works for me. Obviously, it may not be the best solution for you.
One of the questions that popped up on Twitter recently was related to hiring a campus pastor. The senior pastor who contacted me was curious to know what to look for in a campus pastor.
It probably won’t surprise you to know that I don’t think there’s a magic formula for finding that right person to fill this type of role at every church. The “right” person at one church may be completely the wrong person at another church.
For example, if your multi-site strategy includes trying to replicate everything exactly the same at every campus, you probably don’t want a strong visionary leader. Instead, you need more of a manager. If, on the other hand, you need someone to act more like a church planter to help shape the ministry in a different community than your current campus, then you probably need someone who is more entrepreneurial. You don’t want primarily a person who is always waiting for specific instructions from the top leadership team on what to do next.
That said, I think there are a handful of common characteristics you need to prioritize when finding your next campus pastor. The right campus pastor will:
I’m teaching a couple of sessions at Velocity 2011. This is a brand new talk on systems. It’s so new, not even my wife has heard it. (She’ll be at Velocity as well.) It’s something that’s been brewing for several months. Here are the notes for my session:
Of course, what the notes don’t include are all my clever illustrations, pictures, group discussions, interactive exercises, sarcasm and the rest of the not-your-typical-breakout-session strategies I plan to deploy. What I can’t deliver with keen oratory skills I plan to make up for with “shock and awe” workshop tactics. Yes, I will also explain what the recently purchased leisure suit has to do with your church’s ministry strategy.
I hope to see you at Velocity. It’s going to be groovy.
This excerpt from Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s recent book Rework keeps reverberating in my mind today:
“When you stick with your current customers come hell or high water, you wind up cutting yourself off from new ones. Your product or service becomes so tailored to your current customers that it stops appealing to fresh blood. And that’s how your company starts to die.”
That’s consistent with one of the key attributes of churches in decline that we talked about a few months ago. When churches become inward focused and start making decisions about ministry to keep people rather than reach people, they have also started to die.
Jesus said it this way:
“If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? (Luke 15:4, NLT)
Why do you think some churches slip into the mode where they’re so focused on keeping people that they neglect trying to reach people who are outside the faith? Join the conversation by sharing your comment.
This time last year, I was at my wit’s end. For the first time in my life and ministry, I was depressed. Not just down. Not just discouraged. Depressed. It had been coming for months, and it lasted for months.
So how did it happen? It is a gift of God, first and foremost, just to be clear. But I think (to quote an old Hamburger Helper commercial) “I helped.”
Here’s how I helped:
