Think of your church management software like leasing a car.  Imagine leasing your first luxury car. What an exciting day! You would be so excited about the plush seats, the amazing sound system, the astonishingly quiet engine, the brilliant use of technology and the sleek appearance of the vehicle.  You’d be so excited that you’d have to tell your friends about it!

Then imagine your luxury vehicle being surprisingly difficult to use.  The keyless entry only works if you are standing no closer than 6” to the car and no further than 9”.  The high tech screen including GPS, stereo controls, HVAC controls, and all sorts of other cool features is beautiful, but it’s just not intuitive.  There are too many steps to follow just to get the temperature set in the vehicle.  Switching from one screen to the next requires a double-tap and changing a setting requires a triple-tap.  The voice operated sound system works well, but it has a long list of very specific commands.  You can’t just say, “Play radio.”  Instead you have to say, “Operate Radio FM 98.4.”  If you mess up and say “98.4 FM” the car simply responds with ***COMMAND NOT ACCEPTED***.

In frustration you call customer service department of the company who built your vehicle.  They apologize for your difficulties and invite you to spend a chunk of money to come to a conference they are hosting that explains how to operate your new luxury car and how to get the most out of it’s systems.  Confused but hopeful, you sign up.  After spending three days at this conference and dropping a couple thousand dollars on conference fees, travel arrangements, hotel and food, you are happy to finally understand your vehicle!

Then they company sends out an upgrade to your vehicle’s software and everything changes.  The company promises these changes are good and that you will love your new luxury car experience.  You download the upgrade and half of what you learned at the conference no longer applies.  You have a new list of commands to learn.  You have to stand 7” to 10” away from the vehicle, and you have to tell the radio to “power on” instead of “operate”.  It’s so confusing you call customer service and they immediately invite you to come back for a conference about the software upgrades.

By this time you’ve had it!  You want to return the vehicle and get something different…something that just works.  But you’ve leased it.  You have signed a contract for 5 years and you can’t get out without paying a fee.  You’ve already spent so much money on this vehicle that you’re reluctant to walk away from all that money you’ve dropped.

Why am I relating cars to church software?

Because the fictional luxury car experience is the actual experience I, as a pastor, have had with church management software.  Sadly, it’s an experience many of my colleagues in ministry have shared.

The most frustrating part was that you can replace a car easily enough after 5 years.  Replacing your church software after 5 years is more complicated.  You have thousands of names, and millions of bits of information in the database.  Walking away from that is not as easy as walking away from a car.

I chose to walk away from one church management system when I changed ministry positions and moved to another church.  That’s where we chose to use Churchteams.  Now I’m writing this article as a raving fan and satisfied customer of Churchteams.

Churchteams requires no contract…EVER.  It’s always month-to-month.  Furthermore, it’s church management software with luxury-car attributes at a family-sedan price.  The affordability of their CMS will astonish you!  Churchteams has a brilliant, responsive, kind and generous customer service culture.  Everything in Churchteams ChMS is cloud-based so you can access any or all of your data from your computer, tablet or smartphone.  Their encryption and security is top notch.  But best of all, Churchteams simply works.  Yes you read that right, Churchteams church management software works!  The basic systems of the software are intuitive and simple.  The software is super-customizable to your context.  The cherry on top is the fact that Churchteams listens to customer feedback and makes changes that consistently help their clients.

Church management & small group software features (and this is by no means an exhaustive list):

• Full Church directory
• Simple merge feature for redundant database entries
• Kid’s check-in (tablet, barcode scanner or computer)
• Event registration (camps, mission trips, retreats, banquets, etc.)
• Small group communication, reports and attendance
• Online small group search
• Customizable discipleship tool called “growth finder”
• Contribution tracking
• Simple donor statements
• Online giving
• Automatically generated reports for anything you want (first time guests, second time guests, first time givers, event sign ups, group participation, etc.)
• Multi-site options
• Social media incorporation
• Customizable style sheets to match your own website
• Responsive design for tablet and phone compatibility

Once again, I’m not writing this review as a salesman.  I’m writing it as a satisfied user.   If you’d like more information about this affordable, powerful, cloud-based church management software go to churchteams.com.  Oh yeah…you can get a free trial of the Churchteams CMS with no strings attached!