Self check-in, always a popular enhancement request, had a lot of interest but remained somewhat elusive as we didn’t have a good consensus as to how it should behave.  If it only takes a phone search to find the right record are we begging for abuse?  If we ask for more information, the process is slowed down quite a bit; especially if we maintain the touch screen aspect.

We began working with Prestonwood Baptist Church to define what self check-in should look like.  It was important that the process be fast, that the system couldn’t be “gamed”, different behaviors could be established for a family vs. a youth event, check-in options were limited to reduce complexity, and that the look/presentation was custom to the church.  I’m excited to announce that the beta tests we are running right now with many of our customers has seen strong success and we expect to release this to all of our customers in January. 

Self check-in complements a volunteer driven check-in, it does not replace it.  Currently the product requires that the member have a “quick pass” type bar code that can be scanned; once scanned we present the individual with each household member and what is available to them for check-in (it can be set up to return only the individual in lieu of the entire household).  There are many automated nuances that help the process move quickly, so that even large households can check-in within 10-20 seconds while a single person can be checked in within 1-3 seconds.  The system looks great too!  Shep Boy graphics built a handful of themes that will come standard as an option to building your own; of course you can still use your own graphics if so inclined.

With many years worth of fantastic improvements, tools, and options on our roadmap, I know this feature set will continue to stay in the limelight for quite a while.  I look forward to helping the church understand their congregant’s spiritual health through attendance tools like this and other continuing advancements.

Version 2.0 of our check-in application made many cosmetic changes along with some popular improvements including: 

• Pager entry – associate a restaurant style pager to one or more children being checked in
• Bar code scanning – scan a church member card to quickly pull up the household or individual
• Rapid Bar code check-in – allowed the check-in greeter to scan a bar code and instantly check the person in; some began using this as a quasi self check-in solution
• Asset tags – additional stickers that can be printed with the child’s name to be used for diaper bags, strollers, jackets, etc.
• Speed improvements – search results and workflow were improved for a quicker response time
• Volunteer Time - collect the amount of time a volunteer serves
• UI - continued to improve the user experience through color and slight style changes

All of these enhancements were great and well received but one of the most popular enhancement requests was yet to be completed, self check-in...

As other check-in solutions surfaced, ours seemed to maintain a preferential position in the marketplace.  I believe that the preference was built not strictly on the capability I described yesterday, many solutions began providing much of the same, but also the intangibles such as:

• Ease of use - Rick did an excellent job defining the work flow, tweaking the button sizes, using color, and overall presentation
• Speed of check in - using the last 4 digits for search was brilliant, I don't have to spell your name, I don't have to type the full phone number, etc.; time saver.  After the phone search we bring the most active households to the top of the result list; time saver.  We automatically select the most appropriate room based on pre-assignment, best fit by age, and balance the rooms automatically; time saver.  Bypassing the driver on the printer; huge time saver.  I can go on and on, but it was this type of detail that made our solution so fast

Rick put in a lot of time studying kiosk solutions, workflow, and process before he designed the app; it really paid off for us.

While I can't discount the importance of child safety for this type of solution, that is only one aspect of it.  To get a real grip on the church population and their Christian maturity we equally emphasized ease of attendance collection across all situations not just children; this includes youth, adults, and especially volunteers.  In my mind, the single most important aspect of what we provided was the idea that this was one piece of a much bigger puzzle; attendance is a critical part to a growing church (see Should you track attendance?) and this feeds that engine. 

Because check-in was so tightly integrated with our overall solution, the market may have preferred what we had to offer, but wasn't always willing to take the step required to replace the back office system they already had to get it; while we frequently question why a church would want to stay rooted with the old solution, I can't blame 'em, it can be a very disruptive process and requires commitment from the top, we do things differently.  Jeff Hook (our CEO) started talking about separating Check-in as a stand alone product; many of us struggled with the idea since we were so passionate about the total solution, but in the end we decided it was the best thing for our company and our vision (it could add an additional revenue stream and get our foot in the door).  This is when we began offering multiple editions including a "check-in only" option.  So now you know.

Fellowship Church (FC) had to make some changes to the Children’s church check in process (see my previous post Hyper Growth is hard) to improve the visitors experience, ease the burden on the data entry team, improve upon security, and decrease the time it took to “flip” a service.

• One Line – I can go to any check in station and check in my entire family; multiple activities can be associated with a single check in allowing for adult Bible studies and volunteer opportunities to exist in the same environment
• Unique Code – a uniquely generated “receipt code” provided a security element that while simple dramatically improves upon the inherent weaknesses of a standard member number that can be easily duplicated or abused in custody situations
• One Code – a single code is used for all my children so I don’t have to juggle multiple check-out codes
• Shared Claim Tickets – the claim ticket has two identical halves allowing the parent to tear the receipt in half and share it with an additional guardian
• Security - a “claim ticket” is never printed a second time (you can’t fool the system) and doesn’t contain the child’s information or room (in case the receipt is accidentally dropped)
• Easy Search – asking for the last four digits of Jeff Pelletier’s home phone number is much easier than trying to spell/find his last name
• Friendly Greeter – once the results from the phone search are returned, the check in greeter can become very personal as every name and age for the whole family is displayed

The single line was such a massive improvement for people who need to check in many kids (and themselves) that FC was able to delay classroom openings to only 15 minutes prior to service.  To check out, Fellowship simply positioned one or two people at all classroom exits to quickly validate the receipt code with the code on the child’s name tag (parents and children would stick them on their shirts); checking out 100’s (even thousands) of children was only slowed by the physical width of the hall or doorway. 

Bottom line… FC was able to collect attendance and offer security while only providing a mere 30 minute gap between services making it easier to offer attractive service time options.  Next post... version 2.0.

When I joined the Fellowship Church (FC) staff in 1999, they were right in the thick of some serious hyper-growth.  In just a few years FC had ballooned from 8,000 in typical weekend attendance to 16,000; which mirrored the growth rate of the previous 10 year history.  The building campaign, once completed, was a huge relief but simply put us right back where we were due to the increased numbers.

One attendance process that had the most room for improvement was Children’s church.  Attendance consisted of a greeter that would scan through a freshly printed 3 inch book of member names and highlight the person in attendance (actually entering this data into the system afterwards must have been a huge effort).  After highlighting the name, the infamous “token trade” would take place; I trade you my kid for a token, to get my kid back I present the token you gave me when I checked in.  The idea is sound; there is only one matching token per kid so someone with ill-intent couldn’t run off with my children.  Overall, I believe that this could be a simple and effective strategy for a small church, but the weaknesses for Fellowship included:

• Attendance – plowing through a pre-printed book of names was a time killer that backed up lines quickly
• Multiple Lines – each kid needed their own check-in process.  I have 4 kids, that would mean that I would have to wait in 4 lines which meant we would need to show up for service 30-45 minutes early just to tuck our kids away in “age appropriate Bible study”
• Token Confusion – one token per kid; now I have 4 tokens to keep up with.  Which token was BrieAnn?  3279 or 12253?  Ugghh… it is very hard for my wife and I to “divide and conquer”.  If we can’t divvy up this chore, the overall time to get out of church has increased substantially
• Processing Errors – I guess the process wasn’t flawless because I ended up with a spare token in my pocket at least once a month

FC was forced to provide childcare staff much earlier than they should have just to cover the time it would take parents to check in all of their children.  With the amount of time it took to check-out, the church had to delay the next service until they were able to re-capture the parking spot, childcare, and clear up general hallway congestion.  The experience for the church guest had to come into question.  A family like mine couldn’t socialize with others after service, they must pick up their children; once the kids were gathered, the social opportunity is limited or gone.  At what point does someone say that the process is too burdensome?  I’m sure it is different for each “third” (see my previous post Should you track attendance?), the hell bound is doubtful to enjoy the experience when they must pack up 4 kids, get to church 45 minutes prior to service just to wait in 8 lines (4 at drop off, 4 at pick up), feel rushed, and walk out with half of their Sunday gone before they can take a breath.

My next post will provide the solution we came up with…

How important is collecting attendance?  Do we really need to understand the individuals who were here or can we just count heads?  Is it possible to collect anything besides a head count during the main worship service?  What do we do with the data afterwards?  After all, if there is no plan for the results then why spend the time collecting the information?

My Sr. Pastor, Ed Young, teaches that a church should be 1/3 mature Christians, 1/3 baby Christians, and 1/3 hell bound heathens; I think he may have thrown in “coke snortin’, skirt chasin’” to the last one as well.  A church that doesn’t have this mix is dying or dead.  He isn’t saying that it must be thirds exactly, just that you need a healthy mix and points out how detrimental it can be for a church that doesn’t foster an environment that would attract the bottom two thirds.

If you agree that you need a church of “thirds” you can understand why it is important to try and measure that; understanding these demographics will help guide your decisions for outreach, programming, and assimilation.  The $64K question then is how do you measure it?  Considering that something like 70% of Americans claim to be Christian, how do you really understand someone’s heart; I am quite certain the truth isn’t anywhere near that number.

“by their fruits you will know them” (speaking about prophets)
~Christ (Matt 7)

“faith without works is dead”
~James (James 2)

“to know where a persons heart is, open up their checkbook and see where they spend their money”
~Ed Young, Sr. Pastor of Fellowship Church

You must track attendance, volunteerism, and giving in a way that the data can be made useful to understand a person’s heart; not to say that there isn’t some room for error, but this falls within a reasonable margin for error.

By understanding attendance, giving, and volunteerism the church could understand an individual’s growth (or lack of) and potentially cater to that segment or individual.  Stagnation suggests growth opportunities, growth proves methodology, decline could be the “canary in the mine” that warns of a problem prior to an irreversible outcome.  However, if the data is spotty and incomplete it is difficult to trust it which also makes it hard to effectively make these judgments.

Tracking attendance is only part of the equation, you must find a way to differentiate between volunteerism and general participation; this is important, one is a taker, and one is a giver.  Within participation, can you understand the event type?  Is it a Bible study that seeks to understand the eschatology of your denomination or is it an ice cream social; again two different things that have different meaning.

What do you think?

Several times I have begun writing a new blog entry only to realize that I am painting the product I represent as the one and only, best thing since sliced bread, solution that you simply can't live without.  I have worked hard at leaving that type of commentary out of my postings.  Why?

• I don't want 3Cords to be viewed as a "company" site
• We aren't the only solution that can help a church
• Outreach can easily be agnostic of the tool set
• I don't want my motivation to be questioned, outreach is much too important for that

The problem is my employment is what I do all day; it is a big part of me.  It is often in my thoughts when I have down time.  It has been an influence in the way I spend time with God and my family; in the conversations I have with both.  Influencing the design of our product line is the biggest outreach I personally provide.  How can I leave this aspect out of my conversation?  Not once have I mentioned my employer or even shared our product in my postings, but no more...

I work for Fellowship Technologies, our flagship product is Fellowship One, and I am proud of that.  There, I said it.

I will continue to focus on outreach and most of my blogs will not contain reference to FT or F1, but some will.  I hope you don't look at my motivation with suspicion.

PS - I look forward to the day when this site has enough momentum that our competitors will also blog here; they are more than welcome.

Jim Rayburn, the father of Young Life, after unsuccessfully trying to attract youth to church is quoted as saying [regarding Sunday school] "if you want anybody to show up, don't have it on Sunday and don't call it school".  Further, he went on to say "it is a sin to bore a kid with the gospel".

I have only recently begun to understand the impact Young Life is having on youth and am blown away... this is a ministry that should be emulated and supported.  They are truly attracting kids who wouldn't normally set foot in a church; they are hitting the streets and getting dirty.

The idea of a pipeline/funnel is a fairly well understood concept.  It is simply a metaphor to describe stages that something (people, product, or a process definition) is in; for example a sales pipeline might look something like this

When you are talking about people in a pipeline, you expect to have fallout (not everyone makes it from stage 1 to 2) so the pipeline may actually look more like a funnel; such as this assimilation funnel

If you need x people, you must feed a proportionally higher number into the front/top of the funnel.  To improve the output you have two options:

1. Increase the number of people coming in the top of the funnel
2. Improve upon the number of people that process from one stage to the other

The Lighthouse ministry at [Mariners Church] very purposefully examines their volunteer service opportunities (VSO’s) and categorizes every volunteer job as a wide, middle, or deep level of involvement.

• Wide – a wide level job would likely require very little to become a participant in; no real commitment, no background check
• Middle – requires a little bit more; you may need a bg check, commit to every week, and require some sort of accountability
• Deep – you know, you really should be getting paid for this; this is like free part/full time help

At the end of the day, Lighthouse wants to see a wide mouth of “wide” level opportunities funneling down to narrower deep opps.  They theorize that you must have a broad base of opportunities to “get your feet wet” to adequately staff the middle and deep tiers.

To come up with the right numbers, you can’t simply say “I have 10 wide jobs, 6 middle, and 2 deep”, you have to consider the number of opportunities for each.  Let’s say that being an usher is a mid level job, if you have 10 ushers for each of 3 services, you have 30 middle opportunities with that job every week.  When you multiply that out over the year, the numbers get quite large.

In addition to understanding the number of opportunities, you also want to understand how many of those are actually accounted for with your volunteer base.  The graphic below is NOT an actual representation of what Lighthouse has, but it does represent what they were going for.  In reality, once they ran this report for the first time, they discovered that they didn’t have enough opportunities on the top of the funnel and purposefully went out to find more ways that people can plug in without a big process and commitment.

Something to note, is that this is actually a 2nd funnel of a greater funnel.  The funnel that would live outside of this is simply volunteer interest; how many people expressing an interest in volunteering does it take to get one volunteer (last I heard it is something like 1 to 8 maybe?).  This “inner” funnel then is part of the “care” that must be used to help expand on the number of people moving from one stage to the next helping to move the 1 in 8 to 1 in 6.

In my last post I described one nook from the Lighthouse ministry at Mariners Church, while I can go on an on for days about the great things this ministry is doing, I would simply like to summarize how you can follow their lead and make a similar impact...

... let it grow organically, give your congregation the capability to run just as you have...

Mariners Church takes the approach that their congregation includes many many people with the same passion to spread God's word, message, and heart; giving their church even more legs for Christ.  If someone is particularly passionate about children with AIDS, pregnant teens, African adoptions, etc. they will help foster that by supporting them at "arms length".  What does that mean?  Well, it is hard to go too deep in a blog, but to summarize:

• when the new concept is "birthed" they provide a limited support structure with the majority of the burden on the individual who had the passion for the concept in the first place
• If the concept is viable, it will prove itself by "surviving"
• Once it reaches a certain level of maturity, the Lighthouse ministry will absorb it under their umbrella which allows it to benefit from a broader awareness, support, and management

In my next post I will finish my profile on the Lighthouse ministry by discussing how they measure the opportunities available to ensure that they are providing ample capability to involve everyone from those who aren't quite sure they want to volunteer to those who should be getting paid.

2 quick quotes:
"The Lighthouse ministry is the heart and soul of Mariners Church"
- Anonymous

"Let great PEOPLE, with great VISION, do great THINGS, for a great GOD"
- Dr. Mark Beeson (Sr. Pastor, Granger Community Church)

Well, since I mentioned it in my previous blog I thought I would go ahead and met out some of the details around the Lighthouse ministry of Mariners Church.

I hope I'm not mis-representing them (Susan please let me know if I need to make some corrections here) but in a nutshell, this ministry exists to help the poor and needy of Orange County.  To be honest I didn't realize there were poor and needy in the glamorous OC; the reality is surprisingly different than I expected.  I can relay story after story of the tremendous impact they are having on this community but the one that really touches me is that of their Summer Camp program.

A co-worker and I were spending three days with Lighthouse just trying to get our arms around what they do to help them both integrate our software and build out some functionality to help their ministry.  As I reviewed an enrollment form for camp, I stumbled on a question I hadn't seen in any other setting... it simply said "placements _____".  I asked Susan (Akins, the Senior Mgr of Operations for Lighthouse) what it meant and she explained that it referred to the number of different households a foster child had been placed in over the last 12 months... ... ... -really?- ... ... ... I guess I am living in a pretty comfy world to be shocked by what seemed to her such a common reality.  She went on to explain that it isn't uncommon to see the number over ten in one year and that one reason they capture the value is to help them profile the child and pair him with an appropriate camp counselor.

At this camp, the counselor to camper ratio is 1:1 (occasionally 1:2 in the younger years) and if you have a high number of "placements" you will be saddled up with an athletic counselor that can take the abuse; it is very common for a child at this camp to come unwillingly, cuss and spit on their counselor, and try to run away, you need to be fast. 

...OK, I gotta admit, what kind of punk freeloader am I in God's economy?  I come home whipped when I try to work with a handful of willing 5 year olds at VBS.  Back to the story...

On day three, they hold a corporate birthday party for all campers.  Each counselor, one by one, gets up in front of the group and celebrates their child's birthday by recognizing him and highlighting the positive aspects they have witnessed.  Each child gets a duffle bag as a birthday gift (considering that all of their belongings can fit in one and it frequently replaces a trash bag, it seems to be the perfect gift).  For the majority, this is the first time anyone has ever celebrated their birthdays... this is the first gift they have ever received... this is the first time any one has spoken positively about their lives...

Think about that last statement for a minute.  Where would you be today, what would you have become if, at 13 years old, every time someone referred to you it was a criticism?  Once again, I am a witness to something that is just beyond what can be done without God.

Why do I feel like I'm the last guy out there to start blogging?  I've known about this medium for a long time, I've watched several bloggers over the years and I'll even occasionally comment on something.  I mean, I like to be on the cutting edge of technology... I started programming on an Apple IIe, growing up my family bought a 5M hard drive ($500) and a 300 baud modem (never really used it), I bought my first TiVo the week after they were released, my first digital camera didn't even try to claim a picture size (turns out it was a 1/4 Megapixel, I guess they would have called that a 250 Kilopixel camera), and I was burned by the failure of digital picture frames (bought one for each parent and grandparent one Christmas; man what junk, great idea but again, junk).

So why am I starting this now, probably just a few months before my dad starts blogging?  To understand the answer, you need to understand why I was holding out for so long.  I was holding out because I never felt like I had that much to say; I also didn't feel like I have enough time to come up with something so important that it deserves to captures 5-10 minutes of your day.  For me to start blogging, I needed to find a legitimate reason to do it.  I think I have found it...

This blog will focus on the one thing that always hits me with such force that I physically cry, Connections; don't tell anyone that I cry, actually I think it might just be allergies.  People connecting with other people through this unadulterated Christian way that you just can't help but feel God all around.  For example, when Buddy Cremeans of Northway Fellowship came and spoke at my Church (Fellowship Church) I was teary eyed before the intro was done; this guy went to a city that was dying and on faith brought God's word in and it has exploded!  Mariners Church in Orange County, CA has a ministry the size of most mega churches called Lighthouse and everywhere you look you see people selflessly letting God work through them to connect with people so outside my comfort zone it is impossible to imagine that this isn't God.

I will tell you more about each of these two examples in future blogs, but I hope you see the gist of where I am going with this and why I believe I finally have something to say.  I'm not much of a one on one evangelist type but technology has always given me a platform and I believe that this is where God wants me to be right now.  Stay tuned.