My blog, Accelerating the Dynamic Church, has moved to a new location, please update your bookmarks and feed readers.

The new location is http://experience.fellowshipone.com/blogs/dynamic_church/default.aspx

My latest blog entry, What stops a church from fully Experiencing Fellowship One?, is available at the new location.

- jhook

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

Having everyone who enters the church doors, who is going to stay, conform to the culture of the congregation is no longer valid.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

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

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

Grace to you as you embrace change,

Jhook

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grace to you,

Jhook

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

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

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

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

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

Grace to you,

jhook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grace to you,

Jhook

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

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

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

Grace to you,

Jhook

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

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

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

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

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

Grace to you,

Jhook

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

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

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

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

Grace to you as you go out to lead,

Jhook

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

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

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

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

Grace to you as you go create vision,

Jhook

In the relatively short period of time we have been a company we have seen some churches manage the change to our software very successfully and then others who have failed miserably. It is amazing how the ones that manage the change well seem to embrace the software and are excited about the possibilities of having a new tool at their disposal. Then again, not unlike corporate America, many times the churches that fail at the change management aspect of a system implementation blame the software for the failure.

But as the solution provider, I see a different aspect of their failure because I see many other churches that are being successful with the same exact software. That is one thing about a true SaaS (Software as a Service), the system that one customer uses is the same as what all customers are using from the code base (capabilities of the system) to the servers (performance and response times) to the support departments (Delivery, Training and Technical Support). Since it is the same software and the same organization supporting that software, there are only a handful of variables that can cause the differences: business processes, data quality, network configuration and performance, success of the training of the people and change management.

To eliminate as much of the change management problem as possible, consider the following guidelines during project planning:

• Provide leadership from the top - do not allow failure to adopt the system by the staff as an option;
• Establish a sense of urgency to get the project done - no one wants an implementation to take longer than it has to;
• Get all of the influencers and users of the system on board; do not let anyone shoot from the bushes; if they do not want to be part of the new solution then they are part of the old problem;
• Create a vision for the church and how the new systems and processes are going to enable that vision to be achieved. The only way to rally behind change is a new vision or a burning platform that requires change no matter what!  Even with a burning platform situation is present, casting a vision creates a rallying point which the organization can strive for during the tough times.
• Communicate the vision - over and over! Staff needs to be reassured that leadership believes in what was once said. By repeating the vision, people have no excuse to getting the message and thus getting behind the vision.
• Encourage "out-of-the-box thinking" that can get people envisioning how things can be improved.
• Plan for and create early wins to build momentum. This process should be active not passive - look for who has the most to gain from the changes and implement their system capabilities first.  Look for those on staff who have the most to lose because of the new system and isolate their ability to sabotage the project. Celebrate the early wins, but do not let up thinking that the job is done.
• Hire and/or develop the employees who can implement the vision. Do not let "avoiders of change" short circuit progress. Do not allow the staff the option of going back to Egypt to make bricks!  Reinforce the vision and the reasons for the change.

Change is never easy; I guess it is engrained in how God made us, at least some of us. But by doing the right things the right way, "change" can be successful. Conversely, doing the right things the wrong way or the wrong things the right way will not be successful. Shortcutting the change management process can lead to frustration, disappointment and ultimately failure. But also remember, improvement requires change!

Grace to you as you go out and improve,

jhook

I recently returned from a lunch with the head of IT for a mega-church here in Dallas, who also happens to be one of our customers.  One of his parting comments was one I have heard him say several times before about the size of his IT staff versus that of the typical mega-church in America.  

The comment refers to the fact that many of his counterparts are amazed that this church does not have programmers that develop applications for the church.  He consistently tells them that with Fellowship One, the church’s application needs are more than adequately addressed, especially compared to something they could build on their own using the same dollars.  At other large mega-churches, he has seen five, six or in one case, 12 IT staffers to support the IT needs of the church.  For what purpose?  So they can develop a series of capabilities that the church needs now, only to have it change when the church grows and the needs change.  In this mega-church’s case, to support a church staff of around 200, he has a staff of three, none of which are “programmers.”

When a church considers meeting its IT needs, it must consider not just the cost, but the effort and risks associated with recruiting and retaining solid IT talent.  Here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, finding top IT talent is a challenge even for a company like Fellowship Technologies - and being the home of a good number of universities and the “Telecom Corridor,” we probably have an easier time than most.  Unless a church wants to go “off shore”, IT resources in this country are not going to get any more abundant or any less expensive – there are just too many opportunities for the number of graduates coming out of colleges and tech schools.

As a result, many churches are attracted to the long term value proposition of a Software as a Service (SaaS) because they realize the pressure this relieves in having to constantly keep up with the ever increasing need to invest in the scarce resource called IT personnel.  That said, we also see a resistance on the part of those very resources not wanting their church to embrace SaaS because of the infringement on their careers and thus livelihood.  However, more IT staffs are beginning to realize that the only way they can meet the ever increasing information needs of the church staff and congregation is such an offering.  And instead of threatening their position, these IT personnel begin to realize that it frees them up to do other more unique things that the church requires including managing an ever increasing set of IT providers from telecom to audio/video, improving the church’s website to always meet the needs of the various ministries and teaching the congregation how to protect their children from the worldly exposures of the world wide web!

In most churches I have seen, the demands on the IT personnel are greater than their capacity to deliver – not because of the quality of the people, but due to the extent of all the things asked of them relative to the budget they are given.  I honestly believe that churches can extend the value of their IT dollars by off-loading the applications to a Software as a Service vendor.  As my earlier posts on F1 pricing conveyed, consider the costs of the components, consider the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and consider the overall value of what is provided and how it can be utilized; SaaS is the cost-effective means to providing the information needs of a church.  Sure, you can “buy” a church database that functions as a glorified Rolodex for less than the monthly or annual fee of a SaaS, but its limited functionality provides such limited value.

Grace to you as you go out to best utilize your IT personnel,

jhook

Last weekend I returned from Phoenix where I attended the MinistryCOM Conference.  It was only its second year and was very well attended.  Although we were one of the sponsors, along with ServiceU, Main Street Enterprises, Willow Creek Association, Outreach and Aspire!One, I really did not know what to expect since I had not attended the year before.  I can honestly say I was impressed with the quality of content of the presentations and the quality of the people attending.

From the opening keynote speech from Mark Batterson, the pastor of National Community Church, I could tell this conference, although maybe not “mainstream church”, fit in very well with our tagline of “Accelerating the Dynamic Church.”  Mark’s message was compelling and passionate concerning the work that God was doing in what many would consider a non-traditional venue, the local theater.  The conference continued with presenters like Dawn Nicole Baldwin, co-founder of AspireOne, who talked about church branding (see my earlier blog about how church management systems can be a positive effect on branding), to Kem Meyer, Communications Director of Granger Community Church, who covered the issues in reaching your internal audience, to Scott Evans, CEO of Outreach, who covered the Four Laws of Outreach.  There were many others who presented some very good ideas which included topics such as how a church can better communicate its messaging to developing a better mission and strategy to how to develop more concise branding.

The audience included folks from some of the well-known mega-churches we all know by name to many smaller and medium sized churches who seem to get the correlation between congregation communications and dynamic growth.  My advice - if you are a dynamic church looking for new ways to reach out to the community and to your congregation, I recommend that you attend next year’s conference!  You will be rewarded with great ideas and new relationships from all over the country.

Grace to you,

jhook