Church Community Builder:
Who We Are, Where We’re Going
Brief History
Church Community Builder (CCB) has been built the old-fashioned way . . . slowly, steadily, and responsibly over the course of ten years. Its founders, Chris Fowler and Jeffrey “Free” Grafton, witnessed first hand the obstacles that churches face in getting and keeping people connected, and were motivated by this need to build a web-based application to assist churches with these challenges.
With a track record of success leading the Audio Books division of Ingram Entertainment, Chris Fowler, now CEO of CCB, also had a leading role in Outreach Marketing's formation and success. Through various experiences in business, ministry, and his local church, Chris saw first hand how relatively easy it was to get people in the “front door” of the local church, but how difficult it was to help them connect before they gave up and left through the “back door”. Chris was prompted to develop a web-based application that would help “build community” within a church by empowering this connection process and facilitating improved communication. Thus Church Community Builder was born.
Extending Capabilities
In 1998, Chris worked with his home church, New Song Church in Oceanside, CA, to extend the capabilities of the original system. Jeffrey “Free” Grafton joined Chris during this time and together they began to seek out other churches that shared the need to enhance connectedness and communication both internally and externally. At the time, the only church management software options were traditional, server-based systems that were costly, cumbersome, restricted by user licenses and lacked any web-based interface that would allow church staff to empower their volunteer base.
After relocating the company from Southern California to Colorado Springs in 2002 where there were an abundance of ministries and churches with which to network, the company partnered with Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Silicon Valley in order to consolidate dozens of different data silos and empower their volunteer base. This provided an opportunity for CCB to extend the capabilities of it’s offering to meet the needs of large, technically sophisticated churches. At the time, CCB had about 70 customers but began to grow steadily as churches realized the power and leverage of the web and began to seek more flexible and affordable church management solutions.
Stable Present, Promising Future
In stark contrast to many of today’s web-based companies, CCB has never accepted or needed outside investors to grow or serve its customer base. Instead, the company has employed a responsible and controllable “crawl, walk, run” growth strategy, adding new staff and capabilities as the growth of its customer base allowed and dictated.
Today, CCB is actively serving over 750 churches around the world including pre-launch church plants on up to mega-churches with over 10,000 attendees. CCB continually re-invests its profits to build its team and improve their product offering. The company strives to achieve three primary objectives: 1) Developing a “raving fan” customer base 2) creating happy and fulfilled employees and 3) achieving sensible financial growth. To CCB, this is evident in so much as its customers view the company as a vital partner in their ministry, its staff love coming to work every day, and its strong financials are coupled with appropriate risk.
These principles may not be as “sexy” or headline worthy as those employed by others in the marketplace today but CCB believes that they are time-tested, Biblical, and consistent with how God has lead its team from the very beginning.
CCB’s entire team is committed first to serving the Kingdom by empowering churches. CCB believes that success is realized when doing the Lord’s work in a way that serves the body and honors the Word. If those principles appeal to you and you desire to build a well connected, empowered church, you are invited to take a good hard look at what CCB has to offer.
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