ICYMI : Texting has really changed the ChMS game
By RaeAnn Slaybaugh
When it comes to texting , The Church of Grace and Peace has it down . Here , Business Administrator Josette Kluender talks about all the different ways this easy , effective communications tool makes her whole team ’ s lives easier .
Church Executive : I understand that you discovered your church ’ s ideal ChMS provider at a pastor ’ s conference . Tell me more . Josette Kluender : My husband , Tom — our Connections Pastor — and Senior Pastor Pastor Jim Wehrer attended the Renegade Pastors Conference in 2019 . At the time , we had been using a different ChMS for more than 11 years and only used maybe one-quarter of its functionalities . Everyone was always looking to make changes to a database , which wasn ’ t a simple thing to do . Both pastors told me they found this great company , there —
Churchteams — and how affordable it was . Honestly , I thought , Well , how
Kluender Business Administrator The Church of Grace and Peace ( Toms River , NJ )
good could it be , then ? How can it offer me everything that I need for such a small fee ? Because I knew what we were paying , and it wasn ’ t inexpensive . Luckily , Boyd [ Pelley , co-founder of Churchteams ] and his team were just amazing . They answered every question and even put us in touch with other , similar churches to ours . We got to communicate with all of them before we moved forward . This was critical because we really needed to get our database administrator , Shari Gilbert , onboard with potentially switching our ChMS . When we did move databases , all of our pastors went into panic mode . I told them how easy it was : ‘ If you use Facebook , you can use Churchteams . That ' s how easy it is .’ Now they all use it , which just blows my mind . It ' s just very , very easy .
CE : What did the training and implementation look like ? Kluender : Shari and I really dove into it . We met weekly with James [ Seawell , Churchteams Director of Strategic Support ] for two months , just to make sure that we were using it the right way . By the time it went live at our church , she and I were more than ready . After that , we just needed to get the team ramped up on it . We were the first church where [ Pelley ] did on-site training , so that was awesome — to have the actual co-creator come out and teach us . He was here for two days training the pastors , ministry leaders and administration team .
CE : As you think about your church ’ s overall communication strategy , how important is texting ? Kluender : Well , texting is working great for us . It seems to be our main source of communication ; not everybody wants to get a long email , but they ' re very quick to open and read a text . Texting has become one of the easiest , fastest ways for us to communicate with everybody .
CE : What unique advantages does texting offer , compared to other forms of reach-out — emailing , for instance ? Kluender : We ' re able to text-to-give ; people can either set up a recurring gift or automatically give as the pastor is praying over the offering . They can use that feature at any time . We also use ‘ text-to-check-in .’ Parents can just text the word ‘ Checkin ’ and skip the line for children ’ s church . Identification tags are waiting for their kids when they arrive . That ’ s a very , very awesome feature . We like that .
CE : What other functionalities were you looking for , specifically ? Kluender : The ChMS company we were prior to Churchteams offered texting , but only through a third-party ; it wasn ' t integrated with the database we were using . That meant we had to work with another company for all of our texting efforts . So , one of the main things we were looking for was a singlesource solution . Only a few ChMS providers offered this , including Churchteams . But a handful of other things put it at the top of the list . First , it ’ s inexpensive . Second , we liked Churchteams ’ data and the metrics reporting . Our senior pastor likes to keep all of those statistics , so that ' s very important to us . Third , we really liked the ability to communicate with everyone within a specific group without having to pull a report first . For an example , we can create a group and assign a ministry leader to it . That ministry leader can communicate with each person in the group just by going to his or her group in Churchteams .
CE : What were some other important criteria ? Kluender : We use a lot of texting in our workflows . You set those up once and that ’ s it . If you do it properly the first time , they do everything for you from that point on , which is such a timesaver .
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