Tag Archive for: communication

How to Choose a Church Management Software

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So you’ve decided to look into a church management software (ChMS), but aren’t quite sure where to start? When trying to decide which ChMS is right for your church, there are a few things you need to consider.

You do a lot for your church. Your responsibilities include managing volunteers, leading your staff, event planning, keeping your website up to date, adding events to the church calendar, staying in constant communication with your members, and so much more. With such a wide range of responsibilities, you need to pick a ChMS that can do just as much as you do!

But when it comes to deciding which management software is the right fit for your church, there’s a lot to consider. Not every ChMS offers the same features and some have expensive add-ons to use all the bells and whistles. 

So here are four major things you need to consider when choosing a church management software:

Security

It is the 21st-century and the days of giving your tithes by check or cash are gone for the majority of churchgoers. That means your church needs to offer the ability to give online. But the number one concern when it comes to online giving is security.

You don’t have to be an expert in online security or know all the lingo and latest vulnerabilities in fraud, but an easy way to confirm security is to check to make sure the system you’re considering is a PCI-Compliant Service Provider (like One Church Software). PCI stands for Payment Card Industry and they represent the highest set of security standards in the industry.

Here at One Church Software, our giving platform uses 256-bit SSL technology for data transactions. All personal, credit card, and bank information is submitted using 256-bit encryption. There is no stronger form of protection than this encryption.

Read More: How to Know if a Church Giving Solution is Secure

Customer Service + Training

Regardless of which ChMS you choose, you will have questions along the way. Whether you need help setting up a feature, contextualizing a feature for use, or reporting an issue you’re running into, you’ll want to know in advance that you can get help.

Check to see what contact options each church management software offers before you buy. Do they have a phone number where you can access support easily? A chat feature? A good test is to try their support contact information and see how quickly you get a response.

You should also double-check to see if they offer training for the software or if they have an online help center. (This is also a great way to get a look under the hood before you commit!)

Integration & Functionality

There are some features every church should have like volunteer management, kid’s check-in, event management, and service planning. One of the mistakes often made when choosing a ChMS is picking one that only does one thing or requires costly add-ons to get access to additional features.

When you choose a ChMS with too few features, you typically end up with numerous monthly fees and have to spend extra time learning a new system each time. With an all-in-one solution, you’ll only need to learn one system and it will likely have all the features you’ll need as well as some others you didn’t know you needed.

Some additional functionality to look for is automation, room management, group management, and communication management. You want the software you invest in to work for you!

Consider Cost and Efficiency

For a ministry, cost is often at the top of the list (and sometimes it is the entire list!) when considering which ChMS to get. That is completely fair!

While cost should certainly be a factor, be sure to balance that out with the value and efficiency a church management software will bring you. Have you ever tallied up the number of hours you spend individually contacting your volunteers? Or making a schedule and then re-making it? How long does it take each week to plan out a service, link music, and share it with your team? What gets forgotten in the midst of sermon planning each week? A good ChMS will save you hours on behind-the-scenes tasks so that you can focus on what you do best—connecting and encouraging people.

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Start your search with One Church Software and benefit from our all-in-one solution which includes volunteer management, kid’s check-in, background checks, online and text-to-give giving options, service planning, small group management, sermon archives, push and text notifications, automation, and more! You can try One Church Software for free for 14 days, no credit card required.

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How to Create a Guest Follow-Up Workflow for Your Church (w/ Email & Text Template)

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As a church leader, you know how important it is to follow-up with new guests. Without these touchpoints, someone could easily slip through the cracks before truly getting to know if your church is the right place for them.

To borrow insight from the business world, it is widely accepted that closing a sale takes a minimum of about 6-8 interactions. And a study by The University of Kansas quantified how many hours it takes to move from a mere acquaintance to a casual friend. The result was an astounding 50 hours spent together. 

It should come as no surprise, then, that when it comes to creating effective guest follow-up systems, you need to have several interactions planned to connect with people in a thoughtful way. We can’t expect deep connection to form if we aren’t prioritizing multiple interactions with guests.

But what should that look like?

To help you get started, we are providing examples of what a good guest follow-up workflow looks like using One Church Software. After guest information is collected by your physical or digital visitor card, we encourage you to use these examples and templates to set up your own guest follow-up in your church management system or by trying our free trial!

Welcome Email

The first thing you will want to do is input the data (if you have collected the information on a physical form) and check to be sure everything has been formatted correctly. This means double-checking to be sure their name is capitalized and you have a complete email or physical address. You don’t want to miss out on a potential relationship because there was a typo in their email of “gmail.co” instead of “gmail.com”.

Your first interaction should often be in the form of a welcome or thank you email. A good welcome email thanks visitors for attending and provides helpful links as well as ways to get connected further.

(Pro tip: You can also let guests determine how they’d like to be contacted through options in your first-time guest form. For example, if someone were to select “texting” as their preference, you could have an automated workflow that sends a welcome text instead.)

Here’s an example of what your welcome email might look like:

Hello [FIRST NAME],

Thank you for visiting one of our services! We hope you enjoyed your time worshiping with us and that it nourished your soul.

We know finding a church to call home can be a difficult task, so we’ve provided some helpful links to help you get connected easier and to help you know more about us:

  • LINK TO EVENTS PAGE
  • CONNECT WITH A PASTOR
  • HOW TO JOIN A SMALL GROUP

As you go through your week, we hope it is encouraging to know that I and the rest of our staff are praying for you! If there are any questions we can help answer or ways we can serve you, please let us know.

YOUR NAME
000-000-0000

Feel free to use this template as you create your own guest follow-up workflow, but don’t forget to add any relevant links and make it sound like your own.

Schedule Pauses Between Communication

No one likes to get blasted with one communication after another. That’s why we’ve made it possible in One Church Software to plan pauses in communication so your workflow will have a more natural cadence to it.

We recommend you add at least 2-3 days between most communication. This allows for appropriately paced follow-up that doesn’t feel overbearing.

Send a Text

For some people, email is harder to respond to or might seem more formal. That is why it can be valuable to use several different methods of communication in your workflow. Texts are typically a bit more on the personal and informal side so it might sound something like this: 

Hey NAME! This is YOURNAME from CHURCH. I wanted to personally reach out to see what you thought about your visit last Sunday. Here if you have any questions or feedback!

You might even add a call-to-action or a link to a form they can fill out to sign-up for a group or a class, somewhere they can find more information, etc. Just like this:

You may recall hearing about some of the new groups starting-up soon. You can learn more about those here: [LINK]

Assign Additional Follow-Up to a Key Leader

If you have a Guest Experience Coordinator, Discipleship Pastor, or if you know some of the guest’s interests or stage of life, it can be a good idea to have an associated leader reach out personally after some time has passed.

Let’s say that you know this guest has young children because they were in your children’s ministry. You could take this opportunity to assign a task to your Children’s Coordinator to reach out to them and tell them about the different children’s events going on.

(Pro tip: Task assignments like this can be automated in One Church Software as well!)

By having a key leader reach out to a guest, you are helping them make genuine connections with additional people within your church.

A Few More Guest Follow-Up Tips to Keep in Mind

  1. Be ready to respond! The goal of automating an effective guest follow-up system is to sustainably engage new visitors in a meaningful and consistent way. There will be people who don’t engage with the follow-up, but be prepared for people to respond! We want to be quick to return emails or texts as people engage back with us.
  2. Don’t go overboard. A great guest follow-up system is clear and is intentionally crafted to not be overwhelming. Too many messages will start to get annoying, which is why it’s crucial to have clarity about what you’re trying to accomplish and respect when people are choosing not to engage further.
  3. Know what next steps you want people to take. What next step are you trying to lead new people towards? Signing-up for a group? Taking a class? Grabbing coffee with a staff member? Keep that purpose and goal top-of-mind as you’re crafting follow-up material so it’s clear to the people being contacted as well.

And there you go! Just incorporating some of the suggestions here will give you 3-4 interactions with a guest that you can already have planned out in addition to their experience in-person. While we can’t automate a full 50 hours of interactions to help form deep relationships, automating the first few steps will allow follow-up with guests to happen in a timely manner, save you the time of having to repeat regular tasks, and help lead towards that genuine connection between new people and your church.

If you don’t have a church management system or are considering switching, you can try One Church Software FREE for 14 days to see all the ways it can help you care for your members, empower your volunteers, and serve your community.

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Get the Most Out of Our Software with the Learning Center

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As a church leader, you have one of the most important jobs in the world: Leading a team to help your community take their next steps with God. With such an important job, how you structure your ministry and organize your efforts matters deeply in your ability to be effective.

One of the biggest reasons churches don’t feel like they could update to a Church Management Software (ChMS) is because it can feel like it’s too difficult to learn and set-up. Understanding it can feel like a hurdle to implement a ChMS or transition to a new software, we strive to provide every resource to make the transition as smooth as possible.

One Church Software is an all-in-one technology solution but our goal isn’t just to bring your church up-to-speed. The goal is to help you care for your members, empower your volunteers, and serve your community, just as Christ calls you to. In order to do this, we offer best-in-class customer service that can help you overcome any obstacle you might encounter.

As part of that customer service, we want to make sure you know about our Learning Center. This holds frequently asked questions, tutorials, and deep dives on a variety of functions available in One Church Software.

The topics covered include:

  • Contacts
  • Contributions
  • Accounting
  • Groups
  • Events
  • Check-In
  • Rooms & Resources
  • Forms
  • Connections
  • Mobile App (App Builder)
  • Reporting
  • Automation
  • Sermons
  • Service Planning
  • Volunteer Scheduling
  • Communication

Under each section, you’ll find videos just like this one:

Additionally, under each section, you’ll find links to help articles that answer specific questions about the software, such as:

Explore the Learning Center

If you are still considering a ChMS, the Learning Center is the perfect place to get familiar with all the features as you test out our free demo. And if you already have One Church Software, be sure to check out these topics and more!

We know that setting up a ChMS can seem like a daunting task, but with the right support team and resources, it doesn’t have to feel that way. Regardless of where you are at implementing a ChMS, we are here to help! Give us a call or check out the Learning Center for yourself. 

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7 Common Issues with Church Websites

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It’s 2023, so your church has likely had a website for quite some time! But did you know there are common issues that may be deterring visitors from your church’s website, or communicating messages you don’t want to be sending? Thankfully, there are simple checks you can do to see if these obstacles are impacting your website.

1. Missing Service Times or Physical Address

Helping people get connected to your weekend services is typically a primary push for church websites. However, it’s very common for us to take a look at a church website and not be able to find a physical address for the church or the times services take place. Let’s remove barriers by making sure that information is as accessible as possible!

For any website, it’s pretty common to list a physical address in the footer (the bottom of each page) of the website and on a contact page if you have one. Those are likely the first places people will look. You may consider putting service times near where your address is listed as well as on the header (the top) of your home page so they can’t be missed.

2. SSL Certificate Errors

It may sound complicated, but it’s actually super simple to check if you have an SSL Certificate Error. Check your browser’s address bar right now (if you don’t know, the address bar is where you type in the web address). There is a locked padlock to the left of our web address of onechurchsoftware.com. That locked padlock is a sign that the information shared through the website has been encrypted. This is especially important if you offer online donations, but it is also the industry standard for almost any website nowadays. If you don’t see that locked padlock, you’ll want to get in touch with your website hosting provider or try checking your site through https://www.whynopadlock.com.

3. Outdated or Inaccurate Privacy Policy

Another important consideration for your website is, if you collect any sort of information from visitors to the site, then you are required to have a privacy policy. And even if you aren’t required to have one, it’s still a good idea. By having a customized privacy policy, you show visitors that you are good stewards of their information. If you need some help coming up with a customized privacy policy or just want some more information, we recommend checking out this article.

4. Sermon Archives are Difficult to Find

Do visitors have to click more than three times to find where your sermon content is located on your website? If so, then it’s too hard to find. When visitors want to get a taste of your church or if members want to catch up on sermons they missed, it’s important to make them easy to find and well organized. If you utilize our sermon archive through One Church Software, then we’ve already done the hard work for you to keep your Bible teaching organized and easily accessible for others to enjoy. One Church Software also integrates with YouTube and Vimeo to make video hosting a breeze.

5. Target Audience and Next Steps are Unclear

Many church websites tend to talk to insiders first, instead of targeting people who are not yet a part of your community. And even when church websites target the right audience, the next steps to get connected are often unclear. Should they be reaching out for more information, “Planning a Visit,” signing up for a resource, watching a sermon, or something else?

Be sure to define the next steps you are wanting to lead people towards, and make those next steps as clear as possible on your church’s website.

6. There’s No Contact Form or Clear Contact Information

If people have questions, we want it to be as easy as possible for them to reach out and get those questions answered. The most common way for that to take place on websites is through a contact form (or something similar, like a chat function—that’s what we use here at One Church Software).

In addition to a form, making sure your contact information (phone, email, address) is clear limits frustration and ensures that people can get in touch with your church easily when they need to.

7. Your Website is Disconnected From Other Tools

While this may not only relate to your website, integration across all the tools your church uses saves you a lot of time and makes you more effective in ministry. Too many churches are using different tools for everything from registering for a special event, email sign-ups, event management, volunteer organization, texting software, and online giving. Having to maintain that many systems can get exhausting. Not to mention that it can create confusion and makes it difficult to manage all those systems.

One Church Software is an all-in-one system that connects everything together. If you don’t already have a church management software or if the one you have doesn’t take the place of additional tools, try out our free demo video to see how One Church Software can help.

You don’t have to be a tech wiz to have a website that welcomes visitors and serves your current members. By making sure your church website doesn’t have any of these common issues, you can rest easy knowing that it shows care to your members and guests and points them to resources that can connect them to the life of the ministry.

If you found any of these issues with your website or want some help getting an all-in-one technology solution to help you care for your members, empower your volunteers, and serve your community, we’d love to connect. Give us a call at 855.932.2060 or take advantage of our free trial.

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5 Examples of How to Use QR Codes in Your Church (& What Are They!?)

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As you are looking at a black-and-white square that kind of looks like a mix between a crossword puzzle and a barcode, you might be thinking: A Q-what? What is it and how am I supposed to use it in my church?

QR codes are a great way to direct people to information, send them to a website quickly, and gather feedback. The key is to know what they are and how to use them in a way that benefits your church.

What is a QR code?

A QR code (quick response code) is a type of barcode. Fun fact: QR codes were invented in 1994 by a Japanese company to keep track of manufactured automotive parts. Unlike barcodes that were linked to a single item, QR codes could contain a variety of complex data.

Today, every smartphone is enabled to read QR codes from the camera automatically. These codes can be read off of a computer screen, printed on paper, or even painted on a building!

Now you may be thinking, that’s all well and good, but what does a QR code do? 

Let’s say you wanted to tell someone how to find the event page on your website. Instead of telling them, “Go to www.churchwebsite.com, then click on events, then click on the calendar…,” you could have them pull out their phone and scan a QR code that automatically opens their browser to the event calendar page on your website.

If you’ve never tried it before, pull out your smartphone and give it a shot with the QR code below:

This is just one example of how you can link a website, video, form, survey, or really anything to a QR code.

How do you make a QR code?

You might be looking at the maze of boxes and shapes that make up a QR code and wonder how you could make one. The good news is you don’t have to be an expert to make a QR code!

While there are some QR code generators online, the easiest way to make one is to use the built-in QR code generator in One Church Software that will create one at the click of a button. There’s no complicated coding. All you have to do is know where you want the QR code to direct people and what background color you’d like. It’s as simple as that!

Check out this guide for where to find and generate a QR code in One Church Software.

How can I use QR codes in my church?

QR codes can feel like a pretty “technical” concept, especially if you have never heard of them before. However, now that you understand what they do and how easy it is to make one, let’s talk about some examples of how they can benefit your church:

1) Digital Bulletins

One of the most difficult parts of switching to a digital bulletin is getting people to the right spot on the website to read it. With a QR code, people can scan a code and be taken directly to your digital bulletin. We have seen churches get really creative here by putting the QR code for the digital bulletin on the seatbacks throughout the sanctuary for easy access or by putting a large QR code on the main screen.

2) Link to Sermon Notes or Outline

Even if your church has an app, a new visitor isn’t likely to download it just to get access to your sermon outline. By providing a QR code, they can easily access the notes without having to download anything right away.

3) Event Registration

If you are talking about events from the stage, you should be providing an easy way to get more information and register! Instead of people having to remember to go to your website later to RSVP, you can give them a way to do it at the moment by putting a QR code in your slides.

4) Gathering Data or Surveying a Group

Have you thought about integrating data from your congregation into your sermon? What if you could poll your congregation in advance or in real-time? You can use a QR code to direct people to a survey link.

5) Simplify Online Giving

Instead of having to click multiple times on your website to locate online giving, you can provide a QR code on digital or printed media that takes people to the page immediately. This can also be helpful if you have a special offering that your congregation can donate to that day.

QR codes can provide a way to quickly and easily direct people to information, forms, and resources that would otherwise take multiple clicks to find. By utilizing them throughout your ministry, you can optimize how people engage with your church.

If you already use One Church Software, then you have access to make your own QR codes right in your church management system!

If you don’t have a church management system or are considering switching, you can try One Church Software FREE for 14 days to see all the ways it can help you care for your members, empower your volunteers, and serve your community.

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Pro Tips for Using Forms in One Church Software

One of our favorite parts of working with church leaders is helping them discover new ways to use every part of One Church Software. Whether you have made the decision to update your church management system (ChMS) or are still considering it, today we are sharing some advanced ways you can use the form feature within One Church Software to support your ministry most effectively.

Read More: 7 Signs You’re Ready for a Church Management System

How are forms used?

Forms can be used for a number of purposes, including registration for an event, sign-ups, purchasing tickets for a special event, joining your church newsletter, requesting a resource, and the list could go on.

You can share a form in a variety of ways as well through One Church Software. For example, you can send your congregation a direct link to a registration form, you can provide easy registration for groups (or anything else) in the mobile app, or you could even create a custom QR code that sends people to a survey.

With all this is mind, you can take your forms to the next level by utilizing the following features you may not know about:

1) Uploading files through forms.

Did you know that you can collect practically any type of file using One Church Software forms?

This could mean that you can collect a signed waiver at the time of registration for an event.

Or you might be trying to get pictures and stories from a community outreach initiative that your church sponsored. Create a form with a field to upload files and you’ll be able to not only get details and stories from the ministry event, but also photos all in one form.

The options here are vast!

2) Collecting payments.

Gone are the days of paper lists to keep track of who has and hasn’t paid for an event. You can add payments to a form to collect the fee for an event, Awana registration, etc. You could even use the payment option for a t-shirt or Bible study purchase.

If you have One Church Giving, you can utilize the payment option in forms. With this feature, you can also set-up a promotion or coupon code for an item and allow people to cover the processing fees as part of their total payment amount.

3) Creating conditional fields on a form.

The conditional fields feature allows you to create an experience that is relevant to everyone. Conditional fields are submission fields that will only appear if someone answers a question a certain way. For instance, when collecting registration for an event, you don’t have to ask every single person how many children they need childcare for. You can make that question depend on if they answer “Do you require childcare?” with an affirmative answer.

Perhaps if Awana registration requires a waiver for a special activity for a specific age group, you can create a follow-up question only for people with children who are in that age group.

Conditional fields can be a great tool to help streamline the experience for each person!

4) Automating emails and task assignments.

We do a deep dive into some processes you should automate here, but it’s important to consider that your forms can be a trigger to kick-off any automation you create.

For example, if you are looking for volunteers, you could create an automated task assignment for your worship leader when someone checks the box for “Worship” under the areas they are interested in serving in.

For special events, you can have form responses go to each team leader rather than one person trying to send each response manually.

You can even set-up an automated email to send after someone completes the form to thank them or give them some important follow-up information.

As you can see, there are many different ways you can utilize forms in One Church Software to benefit your church. By considering how you might use these form features to make your systems more seamless, know that the sky is the limit! This is just one of the many features we have worked hard on in order to provide an effective church management system for you to utilize.

Need additional help setting up a specific form for your church? Reach out to our team anytime!

If you don’t have a church management system or are considering switching, you can also try One Church Software FREE for 14 days to see all the ways it can help you care for your members, empower your volunteers, and serve your community.

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5 Ways to Use Texting in Your Church

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You’ve likely noticed that fewer and fewer people in your church bring a hard copy of the Bible, opting to use a Bible app on their smartphones instead. We have the power in our pocket to do any number of things from reading the Bible, taking notes, surfing the web, and responding in the moment to a message.

With the ability to do all this at your member’s fingertips (in church and outside of church!), it’s important that you consider all the ways that church text services can actually help your ministry.

Why?

Well, according to Nonprofits Source, it takes 90 seconds on average to respond to a text while it takes 90 minutes on average to respond to an email. That is a staggering statistic that points to how texting can help make your church more effective at communicating with your current members and new guests.

Here are the top five ways a church text messaging feature in your church management software can benefit you:

1) Ministry to Others

Ministry doesn’t happen just in our Sunday services. In today’s world, we have the opportunity to more easily minister to people as they navigate their day-to-day lives. Did you know that you can use texting to do that?

For example, you could send a link to an encouraging devotional or a Bible verse. You could share an encouraging word or reminder throughout the week. You could send a question to ponder. Texting allows you and other church leaders to easily step into people’s lives during the week and minister to them as they go through their routines.

2) Sign-ups

Have you ever tried getting people to sign-up for an event or to get more information? It can be a chore to verbally tell them all the information in a conversation or from the pulpit.

With church text services, however, you can have people text a word like “BAPTISM” to sign-up for the next baptism or get more information. The text response they automatically get back can have a link to all the details they need. So when you talk about an event or getting more information, you can keep it short and sweet and let your text send the extra details.

3) Reminders

Got an event coming up or perhaps you need to communicate a last-minute change? Texting can be a great option to notify people of changed locations, an important detail, or just a reminder not to forget that the event is happening. Nonprofits Source reported that 90% of text message reminders are read within three minutes, which means that you can make sure vital information is being read by most people!

4) Giving

Regardless of if your members are giving their regular tithe or if they want to give generously to a special area of ministry, online options for giving are more popular than ever and text-to-give options are one of the easiest ways to give today. When it comes to special giving or spur-of-the-moment gifts, the easiest way for people to be generous is by providing a simple way to meet the calling to give.

5) Guest Follow-Up

Visitors and first-time guests can feel awkward about being contacted with a phone call or even via email at times. Texting is a great way to casually and personally say hello and let them know how grateful you are they visited your church. You can even provide some links to next steps they can take if they’d like to learn more!

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Texting is a great tool that can help inform and encourage your church’s members and guests. If you are interested in using texting in your church to do any of the things we mentioned here or if you’ve been on the lookout for a texting service that connects to your church management software, check out a demo of One Church Software to see how texting alongside our other features can support your ministry.

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6 Tips for Church Leaders Navigating the Summer Slump

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As the warmer weather approaches, calendars fill up with vacations, sports, and other fun activities to take advantage of the summer sun! If you are a church leader, you have probably seen how this season impacts attendance at your church.

This dip in attendance is commonly referred to as the “summer slump.” Churches see attendance hit an all-time low as the snowbirds return to their summer homes, college students travel back to their home states, and parents are looking for ways to occupy their kids during the break from school.

Even after years of recognizing this as “normal,” this can be a discouraging reality for leaders. We can start to see it as a setback rather than an opportunity. We can focus in on the stark difference from where we may have been a month ago in comparison to where we are now.

While you can’t bypass the summer slowdown/slump altogether, we’ve got a few tips for church leaders to help deal with the summer slump and prioritize your church calendar:

1) Set Realistic Expectations

This is first for a reason. It’s important that you intentionally don’t become discouraged when you see the summer slump start to impact your attendance.

It truly is normal for the large majority of churches to see a dip in attendance, and it is in some ways unavoidable. By setting realistic expectations, you can guard yourself against feeling major disappointment or discouragement when those numbers start to dip.

Your expectations and goals may even need to change over the summer months in comparison to the rest of the year. You may find yourself targeting different types of goals during this season (such as vision clarity, team growth, or digital ministry milestones rather than attendance metrics).

“Even after years of recognizing this as ‘normal,’ this can be a discouraging reality for leaders. We can start to see it as a setback rather than an opportunity.”

2) Get Creative with Your Ministry

During the summer months, it might be difficult for some people to show up on a Sunday morning consistently. But that doesn’t have to mean they want to be disconnected from their church community during this time.

Look for ways to minister to your members and community outside of your prescribed service times. Look for local festivals, events, and service projects that you can participate in as a church and have a presence at to invest in the community.

This typically requires creativity, and that can be an exciting opportunity for you and your team to problem-solve together. Rather than focusing on the question, Why aren’t our people showing up right now?, we can focus on, What creative opportunities are there to show up for our community in a fresh way right now?

3) Prioritize Digital Ministry

If you haven’t already, this is a great time to consider digital ministry options that people can partake in whenever it fits their schedule. Some questions to ask: How can we add value to people’s spiritual life through a digital ministry? Can we provide resources for a family worship night? Or maybe bite-sized devotionals that can easily be done in 5-10 minutes? The possibilities are endless to provide alternative ways to keep people connected to your church online.

This is a great time to be reminded of the reality that digital ministry is not “second-rate” ministry. When we can show up in meaningful ways in the places that our congregation and community are spending time, we have the opportunity to make a real difference in their day-to-day life. That’s exciting!

4) Make Giving Accessible

Just because people are less likely to be physically at your church every week over the summer doesn’t mean that they don’t want to give regularly. Make sure your giving is accessible to those members with busy schedules.

Online giving is a great way to provide flexible options to your members, whether they want to give once or set up a recurring monthly gift. Make sure your members know online giving is an option before the summer slump is in full swing!

READ MORE: How to Know if a Church Giving Solution is Secure

“Just because people are less likely to be physically at your church every week over the summer doesn’t mean that they don’t want to give regularly.”

5) Plan Ahead for the Fall

Remember all those times that you’ve wanted to do some strategic planning, but have felt too “in the weeds” of the day-to-day requirements of church leadership?

This might just be your opportunity!

With a decrease in attendance, the summer slowdown is the perfect time to review and plan for the Fall and the vision your church should be pursuing moving forward.

Set aside some time to review any systems you currently have in place and see if there is a way to improve them. When involvement gets more consistent, how will your ministry need to change? What initiatives need to be planned out now to be most effective? What goals and milestones feel important for the church as a whole to pursue and champion together? What major areas of growth do you and your team have?

6) Provide Special Events for the Whole Family

With children out of school and one or both parents working, it can be difficult to find events the whole family can enjoy. Take note of the demographic of your church: Do you have more families, singles, or young couples? Then look around to the demographics of your community: What kinds of events will serve your community best?

Depending on what you find, you might consider offering VBS, movie nights, water park days, or picnics in the park. By offering events that help bring the family together, you can make sure connecting with your church feels beneficial to those you’re trying to reach and doesn’t feel like another obligation to fill-up their busy calendar even more.

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The summer slowdown/slump can be discouraging if you aren’t prepared for this season and don’t adjust what your church offers to support your community. If your church needs help setting up online giving or adding systems to be better prepared to get back into your stride in the Fall, now is the perfect time to try out a demo of One Church Software.

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6 Best Practices for Service Planning

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Planning a service can take a lot of hard work and organization, from writing the sermon to picking the right music to coordinating all the volunteers needed to make it possible. While you don’t need to be planning out every tiny detail, you also shouldn’t be winging every aspect of your service the day-of either.

(We consistently see churches swing a little too far in one or the other direction!)

To give you a hand at finding that happy middle ground, here’s a list of some best practices for planning your service:

1) Make a church service plan in advance; make adjustments in the moment.

Planning is one of the most spiritual things a leader can do. Have you ever thought about that? Developing a plan is one of the core ways that we, as leaders, shepherd our flock carefully.

Now it’s still wise to allow for necessary, Spirit-led adjustments in the moment, and to remain flexible. But developing a plan helps your team prepare effectively, keeps your team organized, allows you to lead from intentionality rather than urgency, and keeps your overall pace at a manageable level.

2) Prioritizing excellence requires you to give your team time to prepare.

Rarely can a team produce their best at a moment’s notice. For most people, excellence comes when they know what their tasks are in advance, can prepare for those tasks ahead of time, and can even prepare their own heart for their role in the service.

If you’re not sure how much time would be best, ask your team! Giving them time to prepare shows that you care, and allows them to serve with the best of the passion and skills God has given them.

3) Stop texting your volunteers for their availability.

Texting may seem convenient, but in reality, tracking all those details week after week eats away too much of your time. Instead of texting each volunteer for their availability and then having to text them back after you’ve made your schedule, make it easier on yourself and them by utilizing a Church Management Software (ChMS).

Through a ChMS, you can have volunteers input their availability in advance, and the system will automatically notify them when they are scheduled to serve.

4) Communicate your sermon content as early as you can.

The earlier you can communicate your sermon content, the better! This will allow your team to have plenty of time to pick out music, Scripture readings, and special elements that match your sermon content and creates a cohesive service from start to finish.

Overall sermon topics should generally be defined at the start of a series, and a great goal is for your sermon content to be planned and communicated 1-2 weeks in advance.

5) Say “thank you.”

Encouraging your team is just as important in service planning as the elements you include in the service. You don’t want your team to become a revolving door of people. Building a solid team that is engaged in the work that God has called you to do requires that you encourage your team members regularly and show appreciation for what they do.

When you see a team member serving, take time to genuinely thank them. And it never hurts to schedule regular time in your schedule to give them a personal gesture of appreciation (handwritten thank you card, a small gift card, a text, etc.).

6) Always have a follow-up plan.

One of the most important pieces of planning for your service is your church service follow-up plan. How will you connect with new people that just experienced your service? Will people clearly understand what the next step is and how to take it?

Churches with a clear follow-up plan are much more likely to build long-term relationships with guests. Believe it or not, it’s actually something that can be automated!

If you are not naturally a planner, all this might seem a bit overwhelming. It may feel that way initially, but as you make these things part of your routine, you will find yourself with more time and less stress.

Ultimately, this is all about helping your church thrive and fulfill its mission to encourage believers and bring the Gospel to those that are not yet saved! The Holy Spirit has the power to work in our planning just as much as He has the power to work in the moment.

Looking for a church management system to support you in effective service planning? Learn how this core feature works in One Church Software’s award-winning, all-in-one software for churches.

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5 Steps to Help You Prepare for Your 2022 Easter Service

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Easter Sunday—According to Pew Research Center, it’s one of the biggest two Sundays people will attend each year and more Americans search online for “church” around Easter than they do any other time of the year. Every day in the life of a church matters deeply, but to say that Easter is the church’s Super Bowl for engaging new people is no understatement!

Whether you’ve already been planning for weeks and know where your team is headed, or if your calendar doesn’t yet have Easter Sunday highlighted, circled, with multiple notifications and a countdown timer, we wanted to share five simple steps you should consider as you get ready for your 2022 Easter church service.

Let’s jump in to Easter service planning:

1) Make a clear plan in advance.

Perhaps this should go without saying, but with the number of people that will be coming through your church’s doors (physically or digitally), you need to have a clear plan in place. For many of those people, this is the one time a year they attend a church service. It may also be a chance to welcome back those that haven’t been attending regularly.

Take some time to detail a clear plan with any special elements that need to be created in advance. What are your goals for Easter? Will you have special graphics? Do you need extra help that day to make sure everyone gets a seat? Who are the key people on your team you need to empower to direct others?

By making sure you have a solid plan in advance, you are able to approach the day strategically, and you will avoid stressing out your team by scrambling to organize an Easter church service last-minute.

2) Communicate that plan to your team.

Now that you have a clear plan of what your church’s goals are for Easter Sunday, don’t keep it to yourself! That plan needs to be communicated to your team. This could be done over a detailed email, a planning meeting, or through your church management software.

Make sure your team has all the necessary resources to execute the plan and keep up-to-date on what has been accomplished and what’s left undone.

Most of all, this is your opportunity to get your team excited! Help them see the vision for your Easter service this year. Build excitement for them, praying together expectantly for what God will do in the hearts of those who engage with your church on Easter.

3) Make sure you have a guest follow-up plan.

It’s no secret that many churches view Easter Sunday as a prime opportunity to get once-a-year churchgoers or those who have been involved irregularly to engage with your church beyond this one Easter service.

But that doesn’t happen by accident. It requires an intentional follow-up plan.

How do you plan to engage meaningfully with the people who are attending your Easter service? This, of course, starts with how they experience the service itself. Is it easy for them to check their kids into the children’s ministry? Can they find a place to sit easily? Were people kind?

But beyond that, this leads into your follow-up plan. How do you plan to engage meaningfully after the service is over? Do you have a visitor card that is simple and can be quickly completed? Are you planning to send a follow-up text or a carefully-crafted series of emails? Would it make sense to send a thank you gift? What is the next step you’re inviting new people to take?

These are all questions worth asking.

4) Schedule an Easter debrief meeting ahead of time.

All too often, we have a habit of waiting until next year’s planning meeting to ask how the previous year went. But here’s the problem with that: Nobody remembers the detailed breakdown of what went right and wrong!

Instead, we should review what worked well and what didn’t within a week of Easter Sunday so everything is fresh in our team’s minds. Make sure you take good notes that you can find next year.

Is there anything you did this year that didn’t work? Was there anything that worked particularly well? Was there anything you missed that you need to remember to improve on next year?

5) Focus on the truth of Easter.

Ultimately, this one is most important. All of the planning and organizing in the world doesn’t make a difference if you are personally not being reminded of what Easter is all about. How is the truth of Christ’s death and resurrection affecting your heart right now? How should that truth inspire your church to live out their faith in your community? What hope does it give us in a world full of uncertainty and chaos?

As leaders, when our hearts are moved by the truth of Christ’s death and resurrection, and that is our focus while we observe Easter Sunday, we can rest assured these truths will bleed over into the hearts of those we lead as well.

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Easter service planning can take a lot of coordination and support from our teams, but there truly is so much opportunity for us to engage our communities. Take the time to make a plan, and remember your why—to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Mt. 28:19-20a).

Organizing your people and communicating with them is a whole lot easier when you have a church management system doing the hard work for you of helping you stay organized. Learn how One Church Software’s all-in-one solution can help you manage your volunteers, finances, service planning, giving, children’s ministry check-in, event registrations, and much more.

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