Accelerating the Dynamic Church

Year-end Report (January 2008)

jhook — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:34:00 GMT

We have run all the final numbers on 2007 and are happy to report the results of a very good year. This blog post also highlights some of our past year’s major accomplishments. Our customer count at the end of the year was 706 church partners. Of those current customers, 30 churches are on Outreach’s recent list of Top 100 Largest Churches in America. We are happy that in that list we can now count LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK), one of the most technologically advanced churches as a customer along with Phoenix First Assembly (Phoenix, AZ), New Birth Missionary Baptist (Lithonia, GA), Brooklyn Tabernacle (Brooklyn, NY) and Community Bible (San Antonio, TX). We also expanded into new countries and are now in a total of six (6) countries (US, Canada, United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand). We ended the year with 61 employees.

Our product, Fellowship One, made significant strides in 2007 including automatic address verification, new email functionality, a rapid data entry module for new households and contact cards, self-check-in capabilities, bulk uploading of individual and family pictures, as well as the start of an entirely new Groups module that will become the basis for many new features in 2008. We also began the development of a new Reports module that will allow our customers to write their own reports. The new Reports feature is scheduled to be available before Dynamic Church 08 in May.

We did not add as much functionality as we had hoped because we did a lot, and I mean a lot, of work improving the technical aspects of the system. We upgraded the entire application to .NET 2.0, implemented the latest version of MS SQL Server and deployed a 64-bit architecture, both hardware and software. These upgrades provide significant performance improvements across the board. In fact, the systems average render time is down to 0.2 of a second – that is a fast ping-pong ball coming at you! If you were not at my keynote speech at DC ’07, do not even attempt to understand that last comment.

We also invested significantly in building a new MVC application architecture. This new architecture provides us a great foundation for rapidly adding new functionality to the system. We can already see this paying off in the new capabilities we have recently developed. As the architecture matures, we should see even greater improvements in developer productivity.

We added some specific user experience enhancements that allow us to provide a better overall service. We now provide enhanced recorded videos for training purposes. We have divided these up into “chunks” so you can take training “as you need it” for individual parts of the application. This will save you time and help in knowledge retention. This also allows part-time staff and volunteers to take training whenever their schedules allow.

We have also added some things to help the broad overall customer experience. We launched Experience.FellowshipOne.com that helps build community among our customers’ staff members and allows you the customer to “vote” on desired new features. We also launched our RUGs (Regional Users’ Groups) to help encourage these communities on a more local level and hosted our first Users’ Conference with over 330 in attendance. This year’s conference is going to be even better as we roll out advanced and basic training tracks to offer something for everyone’s learning needs. We hired an experienced network support person whose primary job is working with customers to ensure that a customer’s Internet connectivity is not an issue for access to the system.

In Delivery Services, we modified our implementation methodology to improve the adoption of the application across the church pastoral and administrative staff. We understand what it takes to make a successful Fellowship One implementation and developed “best practices” that we incorporated into the system conversion process. We will continue improving these best practices as we begin to roll out process diagrams and recommended procedures to help you take advantage of all that Fellowship One has to offer.

To quote an old Frank Sinatra song, it was a very good year! But 2008 is going to be even better. Now that we have a critical mass of employees, we will be rolling out further enhancements to all areas of our solution offering. We are also making a concerted effort to better incorporate partners in an overall solution that provides added value to help you accomplish your mission of reaching a lost world and developing full-time followers of Christ. We want to be like BASF; we don’t do church, we make the church better

Grace to you,

jhook

CEO/President
Fellowship Technologies

Change or Die?

jhook — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:35:00 GMT

We have seen over and over that the biggest hurdle to embracing the real value of better information systems in churches is change management, or should I say the lack thereof? Amongst us church management software vendors, it is even a point of occasional conversation at industry conferences. “If only churches would learn better how to change.” Improvements require change! It is said that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

I titled this blog entry Change or Die? But adopting new systems and processes in churches is not really a physical life or death situation, is it? So why change? There is not even a profit motive involved to motivate change. What’s the urgency? Why the importance? A better question might be, “If we know we need to change, can we?”

In a recent book called Change or Die, the author, Alan Deutschman, points out that research shows even when change is a life or death matter, change only occurs about 10% of the time! So that is the human state, for every 10 times we need to change, we only accomplish it 1 time! How do we know this? What do we base this on?

In Mr. Deutschman’s book, he refers to the following statistics: about 600,000 individuals have heart bypass surgery every year in the United States, and 1.3 million heart patients have angioplasties – costing our society billions of dollars. These procedures temporarily relieve chest pains, but around half of the time, the bypass grafts clog up in a few years; the angioplasties, in a few months. Why? According to Dr. Edward Miller, the dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at John Hopkins University, “If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyles.” So even in a life or death matter, people refuse to do the work to change.

The church is an institution that asks people to change their lifestyles as well. Not for physical reasons, but for spiritual, emotional and relational reasons. We know this can be hard to accomplish, yet all things are possible through Christ. But, as an industry, I am not sure we understand change well enough to do so because we in fact have difficulty changing ourselves.

Dynamic churches take change seriously. They understand that it will not happen by itself. They understand that it takes leadership, planning and continuous improvements. They know that momentum can be sustained by creating a sense of urgency, by focusing on short-term wins and then communicating and celebrating the positive effects of change. They also know that there are bumps along the way that must be managed through instead of allowing the small setbacks to bog down the ultimate goal. Effective change requires everyone looking forward, focusing on the future, and not allowing people to relish the past and desire to, as one of our customer puts it, “go back to Egypt to make bricks.” Remember, that’s what some of the Israelites wanted to do once they were out in the wilderness heading to the Promise Land. For some of them, the change was simply too hard!

Change management cannot be delegated like some administrative process! To make ministry work, the leadership and ministers must provide firm direction to the staff, not delegate it to their administrative assistants like many other things they tend to do.

Change or Die? Progress or Die? Perhaps it is our flesh and sinful nature that avoids change. But if we don’t learn to change, if we do not learn to embrace better ways of caring for and growing people, the church will become irrelevant and perhaps even die itself. Even more critical, people will die – spiritually.

Grace to you,

jhook

2007 OnDemand Conference

jhook — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:50:00 GMT

One of my commitments to our partner churches is that Fellowship Technologies will stay current on what is happening in the overall software and technology industry. I came from that market and want to bring the best business and technology concepts from the commercial world to the church world. Along that vein: we are currently moving Fellowship One to be more Web 2.0-like; we are building our new functionality on a new architecture (MVC) that will allow us to develop new functionality rapidly and be more agile; and we are committed to put custom reporting tools in your hands so that you can directly access the data. And that is just the start!

One of the ways we all stay up on technology is via the Internet, through articles, blogs, etc. But that is not enough! I believe it is imperative to attend technology conferences and events to learn, affirm and network with others within the industry. One such conference is SIIA’s OnDemand Conference.

I wanted to attend last year, but chose not to due to the cost and timing. This year I took the plunge and made the trek to San Jose last week. I am glad I did!

In short, the opportunities and challenges other SaaS’s and their customers have are very similar to what we all together are experiencing. There were numerous presentations about: how processes are essential to successful application change; what was once hard to accept concepts about data being stored off-site are becoming non-issues; and it is not just a way to deliver software over the web more cost-effectively, it is about collaboration across departments, business partners, even competitors; and putting the customer at the center of the experience.

I am convinced that Software as a Service is the future of many application solutions, especially for the SMB (small and medium-sized business) market. By the commercial definition, that includes nearly all churches. The total cost of ownership, the integration capabilities via the Internet and the future of computing, all point to the fact that this is the way. Like other forms of new computing, it may that some time to truly take hold, but the value proposition is enormous and, in the long run, cannot be denied.

Grace to you,

jhook

What stops a church from fully Experiencing Fellowship One?

jhook — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:29:00 GMT

As I write this blog entry for our new community site, I contemplated the above question: What stops a church from fully experiencing Fellowship One? There are many different answers for the various customer situations ranging from 1) lack of leadership to drive change, 2) staff turnover, 3) lack of infrastructure for proper Internet access, etc.

Is it ever Fellowship One? Sure, when what a church wants to accomplish is not supported by the product, but situations like that should be determined during the sales cycle, not during implementation; or worse, after six months of trying to use the system. We try our best to help a church discern whether our product is a fit for what they are trying to accomplish because our desired end-result is not a paying customer; but, instead a delighted, “reference-able” customer that pays. Profit is not the goal of our business; it is the result of providing value to the customer.

Back to the question at hand - I believe the most common issue among churches having problems fully experiencing Fellowship One is the change management around processes required to implement the level of change required to implement a true ministry tool rather than a “back-office” system. In other words, business process management.

Recently we hosted Tim Vineyard, Lifeway’s CIO (www.lifeway.com), and some of his key staff members here in our offices to update each other on the progress within our respective organizations. I have met with Tim a couple of times over the course of our business life now and have always been impressed with him personally and professionally. I say this as a big compliment – Tim is a southern gentleman in all ways. He is articulate, engaging and personable.

One of the things that Tim and I agree on is that many churches simply use their church management system as an electronic Rolodex, primarily used for name and address look-up, labels, giving statements, etc. - the simple stuff. This requires very little process or process management. Let’s face it, access to a Rolodex is primarily ad hoc.

We agreed that one thing missing in churches is well-defined business processes. What we have found lacking in churches that attempt to implement change (and implementing Fellowship One, if done right, requires change) is well-thought out, well-documented process diagrams defining who does what resulting in what metrics to measure. Once these metrics can be measured, they can be “baselined” and then tracked to determine whether programs and ministries are being successful. Are people being reached, touched and impacted based on the resources expended?

One of our new goals within our Services group is to document a set of “best practices” business processes to augment the implementation of Fellowship One. By providing swim lane diagrams showing inputs, process flows, outputs, participants, inspection points, etc., church management and staffs can have a visual view of what forms are required, what metrics should be measured, what reports are run when, etc. For the Dynamic Church, hopefully, these process diagrams will function as living documents that are modified as business processes change to incorporate new goals and operations of the church, and to educate new staff members so that the entire church staff can get on the same page when it comes to measuring metrics that reflect the mission and vision of the church.

Grace to you,

Jhook

So what is a Dynamic Church?

Jeff Hook — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 21:02:00 GMT

Dynamic, simply put, means change. When we say we accelerate the dynamic church we mean we help it accelerate in growth. So how do we do that? We help it accelerate in growth by helping its processes scale so that it takes less people to do more things, such as contact follow-up, activity registration, activity check-in, etc. If a church does not invest in some forms of automation, then as it increases in size, it takes more people to accomplish the same things just from a volume standpoint. Sometimes this is achievable through volunteers, up to a point; most of the time, it simply breaks down in execution.

A thriving, healthy church should be changing all of the time. The Christians who have been attending for a while should be maturing in their faith. That maturing should enable them to accomplish things that they were not able to accomplish before – remember, faith can move mountains! These same mature Christians should be mentoring younger Christians who are maturing as well. In both cases, the maturing is change. Both of these groups should be inviting and bringing in seekers and sinners, thus changing the landscape even further. This changing body, if done at a successful rate, is thus creating a dynamic environment. A church that is not dynamic is dying.

Having everyone who enters the church doors, who is going to stay, conform to the culture of the congregation is no longer valid. Even middle class America is changing and no longer as we once knew it. Whatever made us think that God produced us using some standard assembly line in heaven like some car manufacturer putting black hair on some, blond on others, white skin on some, and then brown skin on others? As our mommas always taught us, we are ALL unique. This uniqueness (we now also refer to it, in some cases, as diversity) adds to the dynamic nature of a healthy church.

Some say that being accepting of others and how they live will be the downfall of Christianity. The fact is we are all sinners and we all sin; it is our nature. Some of us sin very publicly; others sin in private and then others even without our own knowledge. For example, many prideful people do not even recognize their own sin, which at times includes me; sometimes it has to be pointed out by someone else or perhaps the Spirit. The “Church” (that is you and me, we make up the church) needs to get past judging people because they are not like us, their skin color, their political party, or their sin. Jesus’ second great commandment is “love your neighbor as yourself.” He did not add any qualifiers to that statement.

So what does that have to do with a dynamic church? We can all become more dynamic if we embrace change by embracing others who are unlike us. What does that have to do with Fellowship One? This diversity can be better serviced if those differences are tracked and then catered to by addressing the individual needs of each segment of the congregation. Even though some of our needs are universal, we are all different and have some different needs. Not only that, because we are always changing, those differences that are tracked are dynamic as well. Without a strong church management system, the church can lose track of the needs of the different groups within the body of Christ.

Grace to you as you embrace change,

Jhook

Dynamic Church 07 - phenomenal!

Jeff Hook — Thu, 24 May 2007 18:12:00 GMT

It has been a week now since the Dynamic Church 07 conference commenced. What a great time! I want to publicly thank the Fellowship Technologies staff for all the hard work they put into making this conference better than I could ever imagine. The energy and sense of cooperation from everyone was fantastic! And the attendees from our church partners were outstanding! If you get the sense that I was happy with how it all turned out, you would be correct.

We had 330 attendees including folks from either partner churches or prospective churches, plus our staff and guests – in total around 400 people. Some people enjoyed the breakout tracks that dealt with strategic issues while others enjoyed the hands-on training classes. The feedback was positive from both; yet I agree with some comments I heard, so next year we will have both beginner and advanced tracks for training.

I sat in on several of the strategic breakouts and was very impressed with how some of our partner churches are addressing areas like volunteer management, change management and Fellowship One champion teams. I hope it came out in my keynote, I really have a passion for the local church and it warms my heart to see church staff members and volunteers serving others and “passionately attacking” how to help people learn to live fuller lives. See John 10:10.

Tony Morgan’s keynote was on target (he blogged about it on May 19th). Although I think one of the missing items on the list could have been "a church writing their own ChMS system." To dovetail it with my presentation, developing complex computer applications are typically not one of a church’s “core competencies.” I actually told Ed Young this several years ago not knowing I was actually commenting on the development of a system that eventually became Fellowship One. Terry Storch can vouch for the fact that I caused him and his team some heartaches around trying to justify the development of the system. In the end, I think Terry would agree that if possible "buy versus build" unless it is strategic to your mission and the end result offers a competitive advantage to attracting or serving your customers, or in churches' cases your congregation. This is rare in the church market that the ChMS system provides such.

This does not mean it cannot be done. It just takes a lot of time, energy and money to accomplish the full breadth of what a church management system needs to do. The first several features and functions are easy and there can be some quick wins. But the maintenance of the system as complexity of integration is added begins to bog down the progress of additional functionality. When looking at the stewardship of resources, custom development is probably the most costly alternative there is; perhaps not in the short run, but definitely in the long run - requirements and technology simply change too quickly for a small staff to keep up with and large staffs are expensive.

If you were in attendance at Dynamic Church 07, thank you for making our first conference successful – it is all about helping you be better at helping the church and your community! If you did not make it, we welcome you to join us next May when we all get together again for Dynamic Church 08! I have heard several people say that next year they are bringing even more of their staff. So make plans, set aside your budgets because we are already working on what should be another great conference!

Grace to you,

Jhook

Dynamic Church 07 is almost here!

Jeff Hook — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 02:56:00 GMT

Are you a Fellowship One customer, but you ask yourself whether your church is really using the system to its full potential? Have I got a deal for you!

Many of our customers have been asking us to sponsor a users’ and developers’ conference and so this year we are. It is being held May 17-19 in Frisco, Texas (just north of Dallas). We are calling it Dynamic Church 07 and it is really going to be worth your while.

I will be speaking about how information technology plays an important role in the Dynamic Church. This is not fluff. After 3 years of observing how some churches succeed wildly with Fellowship One while others underachieve, I will provide in my keynote what it takes to be one of the former and how to avoid the latter.

I will also address how to increase giving without focusing on giving. The lessons to learn from that alone are worth the price of admission! We are talking a definite Return on Ministry for this conference compared to other conferences in that what you learn here will be implementable at your church using Fellowship One.

But there is more! Education tracks from the professionals at Fellowship Technologies who are in the trenches everyday, as well as customer presentations about how they made it work for them. We will also have “hands-on” training and partner exhibits from some companies that can help take your Fellowship One experience to that next level.

And to top it all off, Tony Morgan – you know him as one of the Simply Strategic guys - is the Saturday morning keynote. Tony recently left Granger Community Church, (a Dynamic Church in Southbend, IN), and is now with Newspring (a Dynamic Church in Anderson, SC) – both Fellowship One customers! I consider Tony one of the rock stars of the industry. If you want to understand how to do church better, he can help you understand what is possible. Come see for yourself.

But you better register now, the early discounts are going away soon. The fee for the conference goes up next week. The cheap hotel rates are only guaranteed until then as well. Don’t miss this opportunity to work face-to-face with your favorite voice on the other end of the Technical Support line, or to ask the developer of Data Exchange how to use our API to its fullest, or to ask Product Management about where the product will end up three years from now (if they won’t tell you, I will). All the right people will be there. Don’t delay, register now! I cannot think of a better way to get free consulting.

I hope to see you there! Believe me, it will be worth it!

Grace to you,

jhook

Fellowship Technologies – three years old!

Jeff Hook — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:37:00 GMT

Three years, over 500 customers and counting! This week Fellowship Technologies is celebrating a milestone – completing our third year in business. We use this time to reflect on how far we have come - to celebrate our many successes, and also to introspect in order to learn from our occasional failures. But, wow, over 500 churches; 20 of which are large enough to be considered in the top 100 largest churches in America – that is quite an achievement for such a young company! But what I am most proud of is our people and their constant efforts to improve the level of customer service to our church partners.

I believe 2007 will be even better for us. We are no longer “the new kid on the block.” We have established ourselves as a proven thought leader in the church software market, one that offers a quality service for a reasonable cost that in turn provides a superior value. The processes we have in place and are always refining will help us implement customers more quickly and the product features that will be released will offer churches some exciting capabilities that they have not had in the past. We employ 52 people; about 1 person for every 10 churches. Is there another services vendor in the industry that is providing that level of support?

For those of you keeping a box score at home, as of this month, we are averaging the following processing volumes per week:

Check-in transactions - 171,000 +
Check scans - 112,000 +
Connection items / contacts - 154,000 +
Staff users of Fellowship One - 17,000 +
Church web users - 107,000 +
Reports - 16,000 +

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our church partners for helping us get to where we are today. Your desire to do more for Christ’s church is what drives us to be better. Thank you! I look forward to seeing you at the Dynamic Church 07 conference in May.

Grace to you,

jhook

One church or a loose confederation of ministries?

Jeff Hook — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:43:00 GMT

We get to know a lot of churches in conjunction with our implementation of Fellowship One; currently we have sold over 500 churches. Plus we have talked to a whole lot more through the selling process. Clearly there are two different kinds of churches; those that act as “one church” and those that simply act as a loose confederation of ministries.

So how are they different? The “one church” church is concerned about the overall brand of the church and desires to have the overall brand’s “fingerprint” on everything that is done concerning that church. This should not necessarily be stifling to the ministries. It should provide some level of support concerning the overall level of excellence that is required when that brand is associated with an event, a mailing or a website? You might look at the different ministries as different “product lines” which are being used to attract and serve a different type of audience based on age, demographics, etc.

The “one church” also is more concerned about the coordination of the information flow as well as the information contained within the church database. They believe that the chances are if a parent’s phone number changed in the children’s ministry, perhaps that family would be better served if the general church database also reflected that change. The “one church” also helps people move from one ministry to the next as their life stage or circumstances change.

The “one church” is concerned about the overall workload of a volunteer across ministries, not allowing a person to get overworked and overcommitted. The “one church” does not allow a “problem” volunteer to move from one ministry to the next passing on a person who could be creating issues that are detrimental to the overall church, having the attitude, “as long as it is not in my ministry!”

We have also run into churches of the other sort, where the staffs do not have a process of on-going information sharing that allows them to all get on the same page as far as how ministry will be accomplished, what the common goals might be, or even how ministry is to be measured. Each ministry is an island; perhaps each ministry has a different formal database. If not, then at least a different informal database. You know the one that the staff and volunteers really rely on. And instead of taking the energy to fix the real issue of people allowing bad information to get into and stay in the system, they just create a database or spreadsheet that they can control. In other words, they go around the problem.

To me, the church that is a confederation of ministries is shortchanging the congregation. Within it, certain ministries will thrive; but others will flouder or even fail. Not because the congregation does not see a need or want to participate, but because the island of people will not feel connected to the church. This uneven experience that people feel will break the congregation into parts, and parts are not as strong as a whole. However, it takes strong leadership to get all ministries on the same page. Leadership that is willing to stand up to the different forces that want to do “their own thing.”

Grace to you as you go out to be one,

Jhook

Solution Selling includes educating the church on Best Practices

Jeff Hook — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:43:00 GMT

Last night I received a call from the field from one of our Delivery Managers. For Fellowship Technologies, a Delivery Manager is a consultant who works with a church partner (customer) to assist them with their implementation of Fellowship One. The purpose of the call was that the Delivery Manager wanted me to know that the church partner could not say enough about how much they learned about church management from our sales consultant during the sales cycle.

BTW, we now have 12 different editions, all the same software, but twelve different ways to license Fellowship One because not all churches want to use it the same way – but I will save that post for another day. The point of this post is how much the partner learned during the sales cycle.

To me, this was very rewarding. Why? Because it says that we are being successful when it comes to our mission of not just selling church software but also helping churches understand what good church management is and, in the end, improving churches’ ability to help people! When people talk about the business of the church too often they talk about the “back office” aspects of the church.

However, the real “business” of the church is people; from helping deal with their “heart” conditions to their “life” conditions. Church management software needs to be ministry-focused software, not administrative-focused software. Sometimes we run into a church that has documented all of these features that they want their software to have but these features are all about how to make the software perform better to their “work habits” around reading email, keeping their calendar, or even turning on the HVAC 2 hours before the service time. Now all of these might be well and good, but I truly think they miss the point.

Our sales consultants try to convey the need for the software to focus on the needs of the people attending the church – that is where the real value is. In his book, “How to Increase Giving in Your Church,” George Barna says that people who share an ownership or personal connection to a church tend to give more. In other words, the more connected a person is, spiritually and emotionally, the more generous the giving. The more generous the giving, the more resources the church has for quality services and reaching more people. So if this is true, shouldn’t church management software help track how connected a person is and help then encourage additional connection?

If all church management software is just alike (like some of our competitors want you to think), why aren’t our competitors selling the same way? Instead they sell on “features and functions.” I can say this because I have seen their sales demos. It is not about features and functions; it is about how you use those features and functions. It is about processes and the impact of those processes – both on the church congregation and church staff.

Grace to you,

Jhook

Good Software Stewardship?

Jeff Hook — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 21:20:00 GMT

Sometimes we come across a church that puts a halt to a software selection process because they come to the realization that they may not need a new church management software solution. Why? Because they find out that they are underutilizing what they currently have. Of course, many times they are encouraged to not look for another solution by their current vendor who claims the system they have can do exactly what Fellowship One does, they are just not using those features. It is rarely the case that this is actually true. But the church must go through the process of looking at what their current vendor has before buying off on another purchase. Case in point: why buy new if you are not using what you currently have? Maybe you do not need a new system to get the benefits you are hoping to get with a new system if your current software has the capabilities; you are just not using them!

Now my contention is that there is perhaps a reason why a church is not using its current system to the max that still requires a change – maybe the system does not do what you need it to do to support your ministry; or perhaps it is not user-friendly; or costs too much to maintain or breaks when you do try to maintain or upgrade it; or performs so poorly it is practically unusable! If any of these are the case then shopping for a new solution is warranted. However, many times a system is not used to its full extent because the staff does not have the discipline to change or learn something new or even, heaven forbids, the staff has become lazy or complacent.

If this is the case, changing systems will not provide the benefits desired no matter what solution is in place; the staff is not willing to do what is required to get the desired results. It is like the athlete who wants to win the Olympics but is not willing to do the amount of training required to really compete. Becoming a “world class church” is similar to becoming a “world class athlete,” it does not happen without doing the right things, doing the right things right and then doing the right things better. Continually!

As an example, I will use a tale of two churches who are both current customers of ours. This is an actual case study of true circumstances, but I will spare the names to protect the innocent. However, there probably more than one church of each type within our customer base. Do not be offended if you think I am using your church as an example; if it is your actual church, I did get permission.

Both churches held a “Fall Festival” as an outreach event into the community and to show a less “gruesome” way to celebrate Halloween. Both churches subscribe to a Fellowship One edition that allows for “check-in” of any and all activities. However, only one of these churches chose to “check-in” their Fall Festival. That church checked in nearly 2,000 attendees to their event; more than what they serve during their typical weekend services. The other church chose not to conduct “check-in” at the event even though their license agreement encourages them to do so – it does not cost anymore!

The church that chose to conduct “check-in” put their best foot forward because they showed their community that it was technologically savvy and showed that safety of their kids was job #1; but more importantly, even before the event was over, because of real-time attendance tracking, they knew that 92% of those in attendance were 1^st time visitors to their church. 92% - I would say that was a successful outreach event! The church that did not conduct check-in can only guess at how many attendees were first-time visitors and can only surmise as to whether its event was successful at bringing in new faces.

The real key to growth and determining success of the Fall Festival for the first church mentioned will be to track how many of those people actually make it to church within the next month and then how many are still there in six months. From that, the church can determine its ROM (Return on Ministry) for that event for that year which will help determine if that event was a good use of funds and whether none, less or more money should be budgeted for the next year. The second church mentioned cannot do any of that analysis because it did not capture who attended in the first place. There are perhaps other ways to capture the information (roll cards, etc.) but none more accurate and efficient than at the POS (Point of Service).

Everyone can make better decisions when they have more and better information. I encourage you to take the guess work out of the decision-making process at your church by capturing, tracking, and analyzing as much information as you can. Capturing the data does not need to be laborious. A check-in station can be used as a POS device for more than just “children’s check-in.” By checking in all of your church’s activities, you build a foundation of data that can help capture how successful an event is and how “plugged-in” people are – now that’s measuring assimilation! Using all the capabilities of your church management system will help you truly know whether it is the right one for your church or not. It also allows you to get the most "value" out of your solution. It is just good software stewardship!

Grace to you,

Jhook

Could your church learn something from Google?

Jeff Hook — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:28:00 GMT

Google is arguably one of the most successful software companies of the new millennium. No offense meant to Microsoft (I am still a very big proponent of .Net), but since Y2K, Google has evolved from simply a search engine to one of the most powerful and ubiquitous platforms of the Internet; and I get the feeling they are just getting started. Can a church look at what drives Google's success and apply some of the lessons learned to impact their own success? Let's take a closer look at some of Google's characteristics and you decide.

If you look at the information readily available from Google's corporate website (investor.google.com) as well as read the books published about their success such as The Google Story by David Vise and Mark Malseed or The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle, or talk to some of the folks who work at or with their employees, you can see many of the following traits:

Sense of Moral Obligation - "Do no evil" is Google's motto to the point that they live and breathe by it. Each employee has a strong sense of moral awareness and responsibility to their end-users, who have placed their trust in Google to deliver the best user experience possible. Being a part of something that matters and working on products that you believe in is remarkably fulfilling. If working on a search engine coupled with an "advertising revenue model" is fulfilling, how much more fulfilling is helping people deal with the challenges of life and their long-term soul disposition? Isn't it important for the church to help each person have the best "life experience" possible?
Servicing End Users - One of Google's original goals is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. The goal of the church and how it measures itself needs to include the obligation of providing service to the congregation. When I talk about the business of the church I am not talking about the back office functions of the church - the business of the church are the people and helping them live life to the full. How's your customer service?
Creativity - Innovation is definitely in Google's bloodline. They approach problems differently and thus their solutions are innovative. One of their strengths comes from the fact that they encourage every employee to bring forth creative, unique ideas. Is your church encouraging innovation within its ministries or is it just the same old thing?
People Investment - Google makes their employees feel like they are important and valued simply because they are people - sounds like the Christian thing to do! Not only do they provide great benefits, Google tries to create a workplace environment that is fun and can contribute to inspiration. They try to put in place an environment where people will want to actually enjoy coming to work. How many churches create such a fun, yet spiritually inspiring environment? If the staff and volunteers are happy, perhaps even having fun, aren't they showing the good side of Christianity? Isn't that life to the full?
Attitude - Google sets the bar extremely high and always strives to deliver more than expected. They do not accept the best as an end-point, but instead as a starting point. What a great perspective! How can a church view excellence as a starting point not an end point? You can examine that in your church from how the budget is established through how the strategy is executed. Too many churches settle for mediocrity - in their Sunday service message to their follow-up on inquiries to their children's curriculum to their __( you fill in the blank )__.

The formula for success at Google is not necessarily new. Look at other companies with similar success stories and you will find many of the same characteristics. But in examining Google's success, isn't it reassuring to know the formula still works. Now if we can only remember this as we deal with each other on a day-to-day basis - it is all about execution!

Grace to you,

Jhook

Return on Ministry statistic . . . how fast are you growing?

Jeff Hook — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 19:10:00 GMT

On Tuesday, October 17^th, 2006, the United States passed the 300 million mark in population. We are only the third country to ever pass this mark; the other two being China and India. This is amazing growth when you think of the modern age and where recent historical birth rates seem to be heading in most of the industrialized world. What does this have to do with a dynamic church?

Too often, when a church tracks its success, it only looks at the internal growth rate; how the church is growing compared to itself in previous weeks, months, or years. But in business, a thriving company looks at how well it is growing compared to itself but also how well it is growing compared to the overall market growth. In other words, how the company is growing compared to the all companies in that segment and to the market potential.

When compared to the population growth, shouldn't successful churches be growing at a more rapid pace than the overall population growth? Perhaps the overall US population is too broad, but shouldn't the standard then be the local population growth rate? Conversely, if a geographical area is in the decline and the local church is shrinking at a lesser pace than the population, is that not success? In that case, the percentage of the population going to church would be increasing.

If a company is not growing as fast as the marketplace, it is looked at as failing; even if it is the fastest growing company in that vertical space or industry. Is attendance growth rate against population growth rate a metric your church is tracking? To have an honest assessment of a church's health, I believe it is one that should be.

Question to ponder: Can a dynamic church exist in a dying town?

Grace to you,

Jhook

It takes LEADERSHIP to change . . .

Jeff Hook — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 20:56:00 GMT

In my last couple of blogs, I have been writing about how to make change happen. One of the essential elements of organizational change is leadership. I am convinced that in order for a church to thrive it requires leadership. But just like there are different types of intelligence, leadership takes on different forms as well. Churches that want to maximize their efforts need all forms of leadership.

For example, within a thriving church there are probably one or more people who are spiritual leaders. These are people who are mature Christians who are prayerful and can provide a discerning spirit to issues that might arise within the congregation or staff. Spiritual leaders help move people towards where God wants them to be. Then there are the ministry leaders. These are people with a true calling to help others and can establish programs that reach out into the community to reach souls for Christ.

Although both of these groups of individuals play important roles during the implementation of a new church management system, the thing that is so often missing is someone who can drive process change and understands enough about how technology can be leveraged to make the right decisions to encourage change within the organization. These administrative leaders are good decision-makers when it comes to organizational issues, help prioritize conflicting ministry objectives, can design business processes and establish metrics to help track progress.

We have found that the best Fellowship One implementations are by churches that are firing on all these leadership cylinders. When a church attempts to change and grow by better caring for its congregation, the evil one will attempt to throw the church into chaos because he of course wants that effort to fail and for the church to continue like it always has. As Paul says, we are in a spiritual battle. Spiritual leadership will help guide the church through the onslaught of trials brought on to discourage church improvement. Ministry leadership is required to create the vision for how the new system can help address the needs of the congregation. Better information about the congregation can help deepen the intimacy of the relationships within the church and can help target more directed communication. And finally, administrative leadership can establish the framework for the change to occur and helps guide the project through the rough waters of changing processes and technologies.

Grace to you as you go out to lead,

Jhook

Building from your church’s vision

Jeff Hook — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 00:18:00 GMT

In my last blog I wrote about change management and how it takes leadership and determination to motivate a church's staff to change. Experience and research teaches us that people have a difficult time changing unless confronted by one of two scenarios - the first being that of a "burning platform." The term 'burning platform' is used to describe a situation where people are forced to act because the alternative to "do nothing" will result in foreseeable doom. The second compelling scenario that motivates change is the desire to realize a compelling vision of "The Promise Land" that is strong enough to energize the staff to take the risk to move forward. Whether change is simply a desire to improve or is caused by a burning platform, one of the best foundational steps to motivate change is to build a vision from which to rally the staff around.

The role of the vision is to inspire and guide future staff decisions. If an organization is to constantly improve, then the basic dynamic of a visionary church is to preserve the core and stimulate progress - the vision determines the context and sets the direction for the change to happen.

So how does a church go about building its vision? One of the first places to start is to determine and document your church's core ideology. In other words, what are the church's purpose and core values? This core ideology is what helps decide what direction to take as other more tactical aspects of the church's existence are discussed. The church's core purpose is in essence the church's reason for being and should reflect the staff's idealistic motivations for trying to be the church that they want to be a part of. The church's core values are guiding principles that have intrinsic value and importance to everyone on church staff.

One of the most important aspects of your church's purpose and core values is authenticity. They need to really reflect how the church truly behaves? You should not confuse values that you think the organization ought to have - but does not - with its actual core values. Your set of core values is part of your vision that cannot be faked; they have to be real or over time their impact will get watered down and become meaningless.

Once the core ideology is established, it can be incorporated into a strategic plan or vision document that outlines the church's organization and governance structure, staff behavioral guidelines, the target demographic market, as well as programs, ministries and services definitions that are or will be in place to support the target congregation. From this, the strategy can set forth the activities, timelines and major deliverables for the next 12 to 18 months that include the metrics, measurements and methodologies which will be used to determine the plan's success. A church's information systems, as well as its process and organizational infrastructure, are a key component to tracking many of these metrics and measurements.

Grace to you as you go create vision,

Jhook