Communication and Connection Build A Case for Community, April 2009, Church Executive Magazine
Heartland Community offers Mobile PDA and iPhone access to MyHeartland so people can connect and communicate even while mobile.
Communicating and connecting with churchgoers is no small task; the more you talk with church leaders, the more apparent it is that this is a growing challenge that every church faces.
In the past the church administrator was often responsible for keeping track of membership data, recording it in a journal or spreadsheet, and updating the pastors when people were in need. Today, communication is more complex and people lead busier lifestyles. It takes greater effort and new methods to keep track of people and ensure that they are connecting with people in tangible ways as well as growing in their relationship with Christ.
As new technologies have emerged and radically changed the church administrative process, it is now possible to communicate and connect with churchgoers in ways that actually help people become more involved and more meaningfully connected to their church and the ministries they choose to participate in. These technologies can transform the connectedness of the church community and expand outreach in exciting ways.
Building up members
With 2,000 regular attenders each week, Heartland Community Church, Overland Park, KS, [heartlandchurch.org] has faced the same challenge shared by many large and growing churches: the need to be efficient and streamlined without losing touch with individuals, while also reaching out beyond the church community to attract new people for Christ.
In 2008 Jim Gum, executive pastor for Heartland, was searching for a church management solution that would help him eliminate multiple “silos” of information that the church was creating, while also improving the sense of community and connectedness for members and attenders.
I wanted a Web-based solution. Our previous database was a desktop software solution. We had to buy licenses for each computer. It also was not intuitive and you would have to be trained on it. What happened is that only the church administrator had access. Since staff members could not get the information they needed, they each created their own spreadsheet to do their work.
“The church was running on about 15 unconnected spreadsheets. We needed a solution that offered the opportunity for anyone with an Internet connection to access consistent and timely information that would help them do ministry and serve the body more effectively,” Gum says.
Heartland selected Church Community Builder (CCB) as their new church management solution. CCB is a Web-based church management solution that incorporates all the tools a church needs to manage its membership and activities along with socially-driven communication tools that help church members plug in, get involved, meet new people and reach out to their peers.
An online community
In addition to managing internal work processes more efficiently, Heartland has utilized many of the community tools available through their Web-based management system. The church recently revamped its website to include a section called MyHeartland — a place for people to access the Heartland online community.
Users can easily request a username and password, which then allows them to connect to their small groups, locate and learn about new small groups, view and apply for volunteer opportunities, update their personal profile, and even upload their picture into the system. The church also offers Mobile PDA and iPhone access to MyHeartland so that people can connect and communicate even while mobile.
“Overall, we’re communicating much more effectively,” Gum says. “We have several hundred people in our 1:1 Spiritual Mentoring Program, and with MyHeartland we’re able to track these relationships in a much more purposeful way. Everyone has a simple way to contact their ministry teams and no one is scrambling for someone’s email address anymore,” Gum notes. “I encouraged our staff to create as many volunteer positions as possible in CCB so that people can match their gifts with the church’s greatest needs. We utilized the group functions to sign up as many people for small groups as possible during our launch last August.”
More recently, Heartland decided to cut production of its weekly print bulletin in order to shave $20,000 off its annual operating budget. “We put four computer kiosks in our lobby to offer our “Get Connected’ online form for new people to fill out. This takes the place of our print bulletin tear off form. We want to encourage people to go online from home or work to do this as well. The information is entered into MyHeartland and goes to the correct people for following up.”
Weekly online news
Heartland sends out a weekly newsletter with the Journey Devotional each week as a small groups tool or for individual use. So far about 400 people have gone online and subscribed. The church also uses CCB to publish a public church calendar on their Web site. Users can click on the online forms to register and pay for events right on the Web site.
“One of the best ways for people to get connected is to search our list of Heartland Groups online and email group leaders if they want to join. Then they can participate in private community groups online in order to complement the offline group meetings,” adds Gum. “Like Facebook, I can have one profile, but be in a 100 different groups. It’s database 101. CCB allows us to provide powerful communication tools to our congregants.”
Recently Heartland’s singles ministry coordinator ran a search to locate singles over 21 years old and e-mailed each of them with an invite to an event. The coordinator reported having several people attend that hadn’t in a long time and said they wouldn’t have come if they hadn’t received the e-mail. This is just one example of how the solution is able to facilitate outreach.
The church plans to incorporate RSS feeds (launched in February) so that people can keep up with their small groups more easily on their terms. Heartland is also planning additional updates and integration of CCB into their website to provide even more outreach opportunities.
Lauren Hunter is a freelance writer, blogger, and church technology public relations consultant in Roseville, CA
