gdp's Comments

Equip Them : Best Practices for Counting Worship Attendance

Fri, 24 Oct 2014 03:31:19 +0000

Ryan, I am so sorry for not seeing your comment earlier. If you still have an interest in talking, you can reach me at ddrinnon@second.org.

Equip Them : Choosing Church Membership Software: Products vs Platforms

Sat, 13 Jul 2013 19:23:20 +0000

Thanks Dan. This is good to know. As you and I both know...the word \\\'integration\\\' can mean lots of things. Some have even used that term to described manual exporting and importing....hardly an integration. Thanks for visiting the blog!

Equip Them : Choosing Church Membership Software: Products vs Platforms

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 02:36:08 +0000

Michelle, I chose to review the top 3 solutions that hold the most market share. I may be wrong on my info since some of these companies don\\\'t report any official numbers. If I understand correctly, the companies that have the most customers (in order) are ACS, Shelby & Active Faith. There are other solutions for churches, CCB being one of them. I just chose to write about the top 3.

Equip Them : A Personalized News App that Works!

Fri, 8 Mar 2013 13:23:50 +0000

Flipboard is nice. Love the UX. I ran both for awhile.

Equip Them : Church Membership Systems (ChMS) Shootout

Mon, 4 Mar 2013 16:01:04 +0000

Thanks Paul for feedback. We used the term \\\'shootout\\\' loosely. No winners or losers. I know all of these guys are in it for the Kingdom. It is a blessing for churches to have options. I am glad your church found the right solution. It makes a world of difference!

Equip Them : ChMS Comparison Charts

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 03:14:22 +0000

Thanks Ben for checking out the blog. I am glad it was helpful.

Equip Them : Texas Ministry Conference: 2/21/2013

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 05:56:47 +0000

Thanks Susan!

Equip Them : Best Practices for Counting Worship Attendance

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 00:21:29 +0000

Well, the Worship Center is the one place where staff have zero visibility in who is attending (from a systems standpoint). Unless a person drops a check in the offering plate or checks a child into the nursery, attendance by name really is impossible to track at any large scale. The value in knowing who is in worship is valuable at several points: 1. Allows pastoral leadership to recognize faithful members as a candidate pool for leadership positions in the church. 2. Allows pastoral leadership to know percentage of visitors and members...and even if a visitor\\\\\\\'s name is not known (just the number of times their face have been identified by the system...this helps staff understand visitor trends. Are they leaving after only one visit? How many times does someone visit before they join. 3. If specific members begin to miss worship, this could spark some type of pastoral care response and hence narrow the back door of the church. All of this aside, there is one issue I haven\\\\\\\'t really addressed and that is the \\\\\\\"big brother\\\\\\\" affect. As a pastor and a techie...the idea intrigues me, but I don\\\\\\\'t think the watchful eyes of video cameras would go over well in most congregations. It certainly would give me great pause. But in reference to security, we do have security cameras but not facial recognition tied to our membership system.

Equip Them : Best Practices for Counting Worship Attendance

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 19:09:28 +0000

No, it sounds like a great idea, but it is way too expensive and would require quite a bit of effort to integrate the photos in the facial recognition systems with photos in our church membership system.

Equip Them : Helpful App in Lesson & Sermon Preparation

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:17:29 +0000

I would be interested to hear of any other useful apps you use. Always looking for something that meets a need!

Equip Them : Relationship between IT, Communications & Media

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:59:03 +0000

Thanks Jon! If I rightly understand your church....you are ahead of the game on this than most.

Equip Them : Management & Leadership in a Multi-Site Church

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 02:49:32 +0000

Thanks Bill for visiting my blog. At the moment, we already have resource in place to process background checks.

Equip Them : 7 Tips for Managing Facebook for a Multisite Church

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:11:01 +0000

Great question! Honestly, I am on the fence with this, but at the moment I think it is best to centralize and consolidate where possible....if all of your church locations are in the same metro area. If your sites are in different towns or cities, I think it is good to keep separate facebook pages. We encourage ministries to use pages and any smaller groups, classes, etc. to use Facebook groups. I think it is counterproductive to set up pages or groups to promote events. Regardless, there should be 1 page representing the whole church that should be included in all marketing and promotions of the church. From that 1 page, you can link to campus specific pages.

Equip Them : Text Messaging & Mobile Marketing Solutions

Wed, 1 Aug 2012 19:48:03 +0000

We now use http://www.textmarks.com. Great for multisite churches....giving you central billing and admin management but group level control for each ministries.

Equip Them : ChMS Comparison Charts

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 19:04:08 +0000

Thanks Nick! I updated the post.

Equip Them : Management & Leadership in a Multi-Site Church

Mon, 2 Jul 2012 15:38:36 +0000

Ron, great thought! Honestly, I would be surprised to learn if any church has considered the "economies of scale". In some areas, I believe it is a challenge. In most areas where we have decentralized ministry.....it has become more efficient. It is a fine balance for sure. I would be very interested to learn what resources, books, etc. provide some best practices and operational principles address this very topic. It may just spawn some new blogs posts (which are long overdue). (-: Please share if you have some recommendations.

Equip Them : If You Want to Do Business With Churches....

Mon, 2 Jul 2012 15:07:23 +0000

Thanks Ron! I must admit my post was born out of frustration more than anything else. (-: It wasn't until last week when my assistant went on vacation that I realized how much my assistant protects me from so many sales calls.

Equip Them : Twitter Hashtags for Church Technology & Media

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 04:06:05 +0000

wow, I hope the spam has since subsided. Thanks for creating #chsocm. It meets a real need to facilitate conversation about social media. Many churches are still leery of it.

Equip Them : Choosing Church Membership Software: Products vs Platforms

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:06:14 +0000

True, there are several solutions out there, so I just chose the top 3. I am very excited about Ministry Platform and look forward to seeing it gain market share.

Equip Them : Social Media Policy for Church Staff

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:13:46 +0000

Steve, our church does that very thing. I am not sure I understand the relevance of your post though. The policy is for our church employees and serves as a tool to help them make wise decisions on what they post AS employees of our church....specifically sections 6 & 7. Social media sites are tools and they can be used ineffective or effectively. Not everyone understands these new mediums and our policy is to help them. The policy isn't just for helping with the ethical and spiritual use of social media, but it is also a legal document governing our employees....an unfortunate necessity even in the church. It's presence is there to help protect the church.