Everyone who works in your church office likely uses some sort of technology for their job, whether it’s your Church Management System, an online scheduler, your website platform, or even your email provider. But are these technologies working for your church?
You might have heard the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But how do you know whether something is broken or not? You need to evaluate it.
If you’re wondering if some of your church’s tech stack could be improved, keep reading to learn how to evaluate if your church’s technology is actually effective.
Why should I evaluate my church’s technology?
As an organization, it’s important to evaluate what’s working for you and what’s not—and that includes the technology you use! If a technology is creating a bottleneck in your workflow, complicating a simple task, or just plain not working for you, it might not be the right fit for you.
It’s also good stewardship. If you’re paying for software with lots of features you don’t use, it might be a good idea to switch to a more affordable option that still fits your church’s needs.
How can I evaluate my church’s technology?
Hopefully, by now, you’ve come to see the value in evaluating the effectiveness of your church’s technology. But how can you actually do it? Here are some practical tips.
Make Time to Review
If you have an end-of-the-year review of your overall ministry, consider reviewing your tech stack at that point as well. Whether you do this internally with your staff, with your elders or church council, or just by yourself as the sole pastor, it’s important to set aside intentional time to review it. Lumping it into an existing review cycle makes it seem less intimidating and time-consuming!
Ask the Right Questions
When you’re actually reviewing your tech stack, you need to ask the right questions. Vague questions like “Is this working for us?” won’t necessarily elicit any helpful information. Instead, you should be as specific as possible!
We’ve outlined some questions for some common technologies that churches use below. Use these as a jumping-off point, and be sure to add in more questions that will help you fully evaluate the effectiveness of the tool.
Church Management Software (Congregation Records)
- How much time are you currently spending on locating the right records?
- Can you use your current solution/software to store contact information, family relationships, interests, or other custom fields relating to your congregant?
- Can you leave pastoral notes that are kept private from other users in the software depending on chosen access?
- Can you pull up a list of recent visitors for follow-up?
- Do you have access to a domestic support team able to help you and talk with you, with any questions you may have, included in your software’s subscription?
Financial/Giving/Offering Technology
- Does your software significantly speed up the process of entering offerings?
- Can you keep track of offerings by associated church event?
- Does your software allow you to designate where offerings are given by fund?
- Are you able to input how someone gave, as in loose offerings, cash, check, credit card, or gift-in-kind?
- Does your current software have integrated eGiving that adds digital giving data into your offering data?
- Does your church management software connect and integrate with your accounting software?
- Can your church automatically sync offering data in your church management software with your accounting software?
Website Platform
- Is your website mobile-friendly?
- Can you update your website without knowing how to code?
- Are small group leaders able to use your website to coordinate small groups?
- Does your website have a built-in calendar that your visitors and congregants can view to be more engaged with the church? Is that calendar automatically updated by your church management software if it is integrated with your website?
What to Do Next
If, after assessing your tech stack, you don’t feel the need to change anything, great! But if you’re like most churches and organizations, you’ll likely find that at least one of the technologies you use could use some improvement.
The first option is to choose a new technology that serves the same purpose. Switching software is a big choice and can be very time-consuming for your church office staff, but the savings in time, money, or daily stress could make switching well worth it.
The second option is to optimize that existing technology. Maybe your website platform allows you to create a mobile-friendly site, but your team hasn’t had the bandwidth to work on it yet. Or maybe you need to finally add in those custom fields you’ve been meaning to create in your Church Management Software. Investing the time to really learn that technology and use it to its full potential can be a game changer.
If you’d like some help in evaluating your church’s technology, sign up for a FREE church office tech assessment with our team of Software Consultants.
