KevMcCord

Put Me On a Committee That Doesn't Meet

My brother and I have both worked full time for churches in the past.  Now we both have our own businesses.  We were talking today about how poorly most churches engage business owners and industry executives.

Upon learning that you own a business or lead in a company, most pastors start to imagine ways that your business can help the church.  They realize you are a self-motivated, high-capacity person and they want you to take on a leadership position in a ministry in the church.

That generally comes across as a load of hot, steamy crap.

If you are building a business or leading in an industry you don't need to expend your limited credibility and time doing the church favors. If you are trying to keep people employed in a down economy you probably don't have time to lead a program at the church (serving in one is probably your max!).

So, dear pastor, please put the business owners and industry executives in your church on an official "committee that doesn't meet".  Write them notes of encouragement.  Let them take you to coffee or diner at their invitation.  Encourage them not to spend their time making your ministry happen or saving you a few dollars.  Instead, ask them to turn their business, which they already do full time, into a ministry.  Ask them to search their heart, read scripture, and talk to other business leaders in the natural course of their busy lives until they find a way to make of their business a God-honoring ministry.  Offer them your ear and your encouragement whether they try and fail, or try and succeed.

Picking The Next Tech Project

If you find yourself in the rare position of having to decide which technology project to do next at your church, pick the one that's most likely to work (technically) and succeed (missionally).  Look for the project that has:

1. High Excitement From the Pastor/Executive Team
2. High Excitement from the Ministry Team
3. Positively impacts the largest number of people at your church
4. Negatively impacts the smallest number of people on your staff
5. Has the clearest set of requirements
6. Has the lowest degree of complexity 

The trick is the last two criteria.  You (Tech Guru) may not be able to control the first four things, but you can impact the last two!

1. You are in a position to clarify requirements.  This means getting to the bottom line things the new technology must do.
2. You are in a position to decrease complexity.  This means finding working models your church can afford and copying one of them.

Chances are...

1. You're smart enough to improve on something someone else is doing or to make it fit your church.
2. You lack the time, experience, and resources to re-invent the wheel

Then again, do you really get to pick the next project?

Church Technology Projects

How we do it:

• Pastor is going to announce "such and such" to the whole church in three months so we need to go research (no time), buy (no money) implement (no long term plan) something because a gazillion people are going to go online and do this the day we launch it (also the day it will be announced).

How we should do it:

• We've had some pretty good results with this new technology we put out there quietly last month.  It was pretty obvious we needed it last year when we decided we weren't ready to automate that thing pastor wanted us to do.  Good thing pastor asked the elders for a budget and gave us enough permission to get a simplified version of our ultimate goal online.   Turns out we didn't need for it to [insert flashy feature here]. Pastor is ready to promote it to the church as part of next month's teaching series and we're sure it will work.

There are churches that do it right most of the time.  There are churches that talk about doing it right next time.

It's been my experience that pastors are reasonable people (as a rule).  I find it is often the people in the middle, those between the doers and the deciders, who over-promise.

Diplomatic answers to awkward new parent questions

Q: Will you vaccinate your child? 

A: I'm not licensed to practice medicine.

Q: Was it a natural birth? 

A: I was indoors at the time so, no.

Q: Do you spank your kids? 

A: I certainly wouldn't spank yours.

Q: Does he sleep with you at night. 

A: Yes, he sleeps at night.

Q: Is he on a schedule? 

A: We're all creatures of habit.

Q: Does he sleep through the night? 

A: I don't know, but I do.

Q: Are you breast feeding? 

A: Not at the moment.

Q: Do your kids have the same daddy? 

A: Paternity tests are so last season.

This post is in honor of Max Decker McCord born on the twenty-third day of the month of June in the year of our Lord two-thousand and ten.

What Do People Do At A Multi-Site Church?

Note: This is the 5th post in a series about a data model for multi-congregational churches.  I will use the terms multi-site and multi-congregational churches interchangeably.

What Can People Do In a Multi-Congregational Church?  More specifically, what does an individual do that we want to track and measure

The database is a reflection of the real world. In the real world...

• People can join groups with specific ministry roles (ministry positions).
• People can attend events
• People can accomplish milestones along journeys like spiritual formations and connecting to the church
• People can respond to opportunities to serve
• People can submit feedback (prayer, praise, comments)
• People & businesses can make contributions
• People & businesses can make pledges for future contributions

It would be possible to store all the above data in just one or two database structures, but we decided against this approach.  We separated the different types of activity into separate structures.  Our approach can be summed up with the old adage “a place for everything and everything in its place”.  

This approach results in a few key benefits.

• Users with responsibilities in one area aren’t distracted by data from the others.
• Security can be used to keep users out of categories they should not see
• Reporting is easier since the data is already separated.
• Each type of activity can be related to the Ministry Departments and Campuses in the most appropriate manner.

This brings me to rule #6, #7 & #8 for a multi-congregational data model:

#6: Don't confuse activity by the church in relation to an individual with activity by the individual.

#7: Structure the database so that users will know where to put things in anticipation of the reporting needs of the church.

#8: Connect the various structures (groups, events, milestones, responses) to the ministry and congregation structure so we know which department is responsible as well as the campus where it took place.

Practical application:

A church is interested in knowing whether the people respond to an opportunity to serve are getting connected to that ministry.  People can respond online and through connection cards in the worship services.  The church can also send an email solicitation to people about the opportunity.

All responses are logged in the Responses table.  The response record is followed up by the contact person to that opportunity.  Periodically the church can see what percentage of responses are placed in the specific ministry group to which they relate.

The email sent to people about the opportunity is also tracked, but not in the responses table since that solicitation was initiated by the church.

The Outdated Church Database

No matter what Church Management System (database) you use at your church, one thing is for sure.  Your data is out-of-date!  I've rarely been to a church that didn't apologize on some level for the job it was doing managing data.  This is a bit like proper exercise and diet.  A few people are really good at it.  The rest of us not-so-much.  So, let me break the topic down a bit:

How to have current data:

1. Enter data completely and carefully into a central location.
2. Scrub your data routinely for problems like duplicate records
3. Keep your data as current as possible by having as many eyeballs on it as possible (especially the eyeballs of the people to whom it relates)

For each of the above points we could list challenges and break them down into a few categories:

1. Challenges related to systems
2. Challenges related to processes
3. Challenges related to personnel

To stay with our exercise and diet example you can picture the system as your gym, the processes as your coach, and the personnel as you!

This explains for me why so many churches dislike their ChMS (Systems) while not being willing to upgrade them.  They believe that a better gym isn't going to improve their processes or change their personnel.  

This also explains why some churches succeed with fairly inadequate systems.  The have effective processes and stable personnel.

I personally wouldn't pay for a gym membership if I weren't willing to first jog around my neighborhood on a regular basis.  Someone else might not pay for a gym membership because they put their energy into cycling or rock climbing.

Have you invested time into your processes?  Define, simplify, and clarify are a few words that matter when working on new processes. 

Do you have the right personnel?  Some churches have incredible detail people who work very hard, but they lack process-oriented people.

One final word about systems.  Before you buy one, ask yourself if that system will motivate your personnel and if there are clear processes in use by other churches like yours who use that system. Finally, look at the people behind the system and ask if you would hire them to be your database coach.

Tree Trimming - Value Added 101

We were getting a knock-a-week from guys wanting to trim our palm trees. We have about 15 in the yard in 4 or 5 varieties. Only about 5 of those really need professional trimming. This Saturday I finally said yes to a guy who came by.

What impressed me most though was 4 people (maybe a family?) working together to earn a living on a Saturday. They had to find someone who needed their service, sell the service, deliver on their commitment, and collect all in 2 hours. I love seeing people who are entrepreneurial. People who don't wait on opportunities, but go and find them. They also did a nice job on my trees!

If I couldn't have afforded their help, I'd get on the ladder and do the work myself (eventually ;), but it felt right to spend $150 for the trees and some side work. The $150 they earned is a store of the value they transferred to me. They can go exchange that for value produced by someone else. There are things that stop that cycle of value added service. Laziness, graft, over-charging and waste are some of the things that most impact the cycle. The faster the cycle moves the better off more people become.

This is why the growth in government taxes, fees, and entitlements are so harmful. The transfer of value from one person to another cannot be sustained in the face of government waste, graft, laziness, and overspending. There are those who add value and those who subtract it. A society that encourages the latter and punishes the former will decline.

What Is a Ministry?

Note: This is the 4th post in a series about a data model for multi-congregational churches.  I will use the terms multi-site and multi-congregational churches interchangeably.

Go to a church and ask them what ministries they have.  The list might be really long!  Sometimes the word is meant to indicated a department of the church like Children or Women.  Sometimes the word is used to indicate a specific activity that happens weekly like Sunday School.  Sometimes the word is stretched to cover something as simple as a quilting group that meets weekly to make quilts for people in need.

The reason the word is used in so many ways is because in a church ministry is also a verb.  Anyone can do ministry and any ministry that is done by the same people on an ongoing basis gets called a ministry.

Using the word Ministry in our data model turned out to be somewhat confusing.  Frankly, if I could go back I might opt for the generic word "Department" instead!

Still, when we used the word "Ministry" in our data model it was synonymous with the word "Department".   Ministries in our database for multi-congregational churches were fairly permanent and had clear, stable leadership and regular activities.

So, one way to describe a multi-site church is to talk about it's ministries (aka departments) and its congregations (aka campuses).  These two structures are the main pillars of the entire database.

This brings me to my 4th and 5th rules.

Rule #4: Ministries should only be listed once in the multi-congregational model.  Groups, Programs, and Events should be related to a central list of ministries.

Rule #5: Ministries and Congregations are not the same and should not be confused.  The Ministries of the church work in and from the congregations of the church. 

Practical application:

A church that has experienced significant growth is now maxed out in it's main campus.  There are over a dozen departments serving the community and the people who attend that church.  A decision was made to start a video campus in a remote location where many church members live.  The Children's, Worship, and First Impressions Ministries will build teams to serve the new location.  A new ministry called "Remote Campus Leadership" will be created with at least one team.  Over time some of the other departments like Students and Women may also build teams at the new location.

Families Should Worship Together

Note: This is the 3rd post in a series about a data model for multi-congregational churches.  I will use the terms multi-site and multi-congregational churches interchangeably.

Attending church is a family activity.  This doesn't change in a multi-congregational church.  A traditional church database being used to track multi-site church ministry may force the church to track each individual's primary campus separately, but this is both inefficient and misleading.  It is very easy to get a family out-of-sync in the database. 

While there are exceptions, the church assumes and expects that individuals from the same household will worship at the same time and on the same location.  Furthermore, the multi-congregational church will generally assign care and assimilation to teams at each congregation (aka campus).  Those efforts can be divided and confused if different members of the family are assigned to different congregations for care.

This brings us to another rule for our data model:

Rule #3: An individual's primary congregation is indirectly determined by their household.

As we developed our multi-congregational data model we made a choice to have an explicit record called a "Household" that would link people from one family together and allow the church to easily track the following things (among others):

1. The family's primary congregation
2. The family's primary address
3. The family's home phone number

If this were the extent of our deliberations we would have hit some real problems!  It wouldn't take long to come up with exceptions whereby an individual in a family is attending events at other locations or participating in groups from different congregations!  

This brings me to an important principle: accountability should exist, but it shouldn't limit participation.

Our multi-congregational data model allows for an individual to belong to a household that is accountable to a primary congregation while attending groups and events that are based in other congregations and take place at other church locations.

Practical Application:

First Church is about to launch an "East Campus".  An appeal went out to families living near the newest location.  45 people from 30 families have committed to participate in this effort.  A new "Congregation" was created in the database and those 30 household records were updated to indicate their intention to begin to worship at this new place and time.  Many of those 45 people will continue to belong to groups from their old congregation and attend events at the existing locations.  Over time, their group roles and event attendance will probably shift to ones based out of the new "East Campus Congregation".

You Might Have More Congregations Than Locations!

Note: This is the 2nd post in a series about a data model for multi-congregational churches.  I will use the terms multi-site and multi-congregational churches interchangeably.

A good database model will prevent redundancy and promote clarity!  When you attempt to use a traditional church database to manage multi-site ministry you often end up listing your congregations several times in different areas of the system!  This complicates many tasks including basic navigation and reporting.

Rule #1:  We want to list our Congregations once and only once.

When I began modeling multi-congregational churches a few years back it became clear that some multi-site ministries were more complicated than others!  In some cases, a church has multiple congregations in one location!  This is most common when two different language groups worship at different times in the same location.

Rule #2:  Many Congregations can share the same location.  We need a separate list of locations.

While multi-congregational churches come in several styles.  It is best not to assume that there will only be one congregation at a single location.  Churches widely refer to their sites as "Campuses" and even use this term to refer casually to the people who gather for worship at those locations.  The word Congregation is not used by most cutting edge multi-site churches.  Public facing software may need to accommodate this common practice.  For instance, when someone goes online to make an offering they may need to be asked to "pick their campus" if that is the language they expect.   However, depending on the culture they might be asked to "pick their church" or "pick their venue".  Regardless of the public semantic in use by a church the multi-congregational data model needs to prevent redundancy and promote clarity!  For this reason, the list of congregations and the list of locations should be separate and exist only once.

Practical application:

Maria is the administrative assistant to the First Church Español.  When she books an event, she clearly indicates it is for the First Church Español (a congregation), but the event will be held at the Central Campus (a location) so room availability should be checked against all the events in that location by all congregations that use that location.