Find the Path to ChMS Happiness
Ask 10 church management software how they feel about their ChMS and there's a high likelihood that 8 of them will tell you that they hate their software package. But it doesn't have to be that way. How can you have ChMS happiness?
I've served over 65 churches who all started a conversation with me because their Church Management Software wasn't meeting their needs. In most cases, these churches reached out because they had come to the conclusion that it was time to choose new software. In some cases, they had made the decision and chosen something, and needed help implementing it. In other cases, they just knew it wasn't working and needed help finding some direction.
If you find this to be your situation, here are five steps to ChMS happiness:
- Start with your Vision and Mission - where is your church trying to go? Think in terms of where you are today, and where you want to be in 5 years? What do you want for your guests, members, parishioners, your city, or the world, as a result of your church discipling, shepherding, and caring for people? And how will you do that? What actions does your church do to take you from here to there?
- Then take an assessment of where you are today. Work through your ministry processes and note where your Church Management has a role. Think of it as a member of your team, that has a job to do. As you work through process, define the "job" of ChMS - what role should it play? How should it work with your staff, volunteers, and members to help make the administrative work of ministry easier?
- Where does the current ChMS succeed and fail in those roles?
- Where do people have to "work around" the ChMS to get their work done?
- Define the "job description" of the software. What are the requirements that it needs to be able to do to successfully serve your church?
- Evaluate those areas where your staff resorts to a work around... What's the root issue?
- You don't know your ministry strategy or process enough to give the software it's job description. (How can it succeed, if you aren't clear on the job it is to do?)
- The software doesn't have the capability to do the job.
- The software isn't configured to do the job (in the way you need it to).
- Your people haven't been trained to use the software.
- If the software isn't capable, begin a selection search. Identify the applications that are capable of meeting your requirements and develop a request for proposal for candidates to show you how they meet those requirements. Evaluate candidates based on your requirements.
- If you didn't have a well-defined ministry process, prioritize the ministry processes that are most important to help move you toward your vision. Define them and map a plan to configure or implement your software to support that process.
- If you just need to configure the software to support your ministry process, get the expertise you need to map your configuration to the process. Consider how your current workarounds can be converted to steps in your primary ChMS.
- Train your staff to use your software in the way that it is configured at your church. Don't rely on the software company's helpdesk and knowledgebase to train your staff. They don't know your church's strategy and structure.