Church Software Plus

Church Growth Software – How to use Church Management Software for a Purpose

The desire of any pastor or church leader is to have an efficient administration of the church and to accomplish a consistent church growth. All the daily tasks are very important to be done correctly irrespective of the dimension of the church, in a small church as well as in a congregation with over 10000 members. Pastors often find themselves having too little time for all daily management activities they have to perform, and in order to dedicate more time to the congregation members they have to be as efficient as possible.

The management activities that have to be performed in a congregation are various, complex and especially, time-consuming. Activities like membership and visitor management, accounting and financial analysis, ministries, follow-up, events, tracking and picking volunteers, growth planning or even working on the church’s web page require efficient time management and a good organization.

A purpose driven church is defined by several characteristics.

First, it is committed to follow the five main purposes of the New Testament: Worship, Evangelism, Fellowship, Discipleship, and Ministry. For this it creates a strategy to bring people closer to Christ by building them to adulthood, equipping them for the ministry in the congregation and sending them throughout the globe to spread God ’s words and teachings.

Secondly, it is organized in a team-based Purpose Driven Structure. This non-hierarchical organization ensures balance and allows each team to be responsible for a specific purpose, such as: Evangelize the Community, Gather the Crowd for worship, Disciple the Committed, Create fellowship in the Congregation or Equip the Core for ministry and mission. Each small team helps its members to apply the five purposes in their everyday life, thus living a Purpose-Driven life. Group members can be volunteers or full-time paid staff if needed.

A Purpose Driven Church also Calendars by purpose, meaning that every scheduled event must fulfill at least one of the above mentioned purposes, Budgets by purpose, meaning that  expenditures are categorized by the purpose they relate to and, also, Preaches by purpose – sermons and series and thought in such a way to have a balanced stress on each purpose.
Choosing the right software for your church is a very important decision to make, especially if you’re on a low budget. In order to make the right choice, you must have a very clear idea of what are the exact functionalities you want your software to provide. To help church leaders in their daily and long-term activities, software developers have designed special management software to assist them in the growth of their purpose driven church.

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  Church Growth Software

• A great software management program with a purpose-driven church philosophy that is affordable for any church size is Church Growth Software. With it you can build a powerful database in order to keep track of your visitors note what they like so that in the future you can organize events they are interested in. You can keep track of individuals’ event history, attendance and involvement, donation records, keep photos of individuals and photos on profile pages, make a weekly attendance and absentee report and export the reports to Word or Excel, create C.L.A.S.S. covenant signature dates, a S.H.A.P.E. personal profile or personal evangelism style.

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Another important feature is the automatic follow-up system which lets you create welcome card letters and personally addressed envelopes, send emails to individuals and ministry groups, create ministry leader reports or input international phone numbers and currency, thus ensuring to have your visitors come back to your church every time. You can also create more complex reports with the demographic analysis tool for example, or make a user-defined report capability, an advertising analysis, giving analysis, year-end giving contribution statements, weekly prayer request reports or care calling lists.
Church Growth Software provides a free 30-day trial which has the advantage that all the information you entered remains stored, so that if you decide to purchase the full version, none of the information will be lost.

RDS Church Growth Software

Another valuable church growth software considered by many a ministry “partner” in reaching, shepherding and discipling people comes from RDS. It offers ways to easily connect new families with others in the church and integrate them into various programs as well as identifying and contacting individuals who are "disappearing".

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• The program offers an easy way to keep data about every individual or family who visits the church or who is already involved, including: current and future date of contact, individual and/or team making contact, type of contact (phone call, letter, visit, email, etc.) and/or purpose  (hospital visit, outreach, etc.) or source of contact (outreach event, attended worship, visited youth group) and you can purge contact information for previous years. You can also print a report of all data entered for an individual or family to develop a detailed picture of their relationship and involvement with the church.

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• RDS Advantage software is a convenient tool for managing and reviewing data using the various management software & attendance tracking. The software offers the possibility to verify visitors’ contact information and transfer it into the RDS Advantage church records for automatic use in outreach programs.

• Another nice feature is the “one-click” access to a map and driving directions which is useful if you are on the road.