Case Study:
Antioch Baptist Church
Antioch Bible Church is located in Redmond, Washington. The church is 26 years old and has an average worship attendance of 1,500 with 25-30 home fellowship groups. There are 40-50 staff members, including a dozen pastors. Antioch Bible does not have a permanent facility and meets at a school.
Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, initiated the Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms) project in November 2007. It became such a success that it made sense to share this innovation with other churches as a free, open-source software project. Bellevue Church Management System interviewed Patty Mays, executive administrative assistant, and Linda Richards, secretary to the pastor of congregational care, about their experiences with the system.
What problem or challenge did you face that led you to use the Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms)?
Patty: The management system we were using was on our network and had a lot of problems. For instance, there were a lot of things we couldn't do unless everyone got off the database, and that was a challenge in and of itself. Also, we couldn't access information from home or from an iPhone. It was very confining.
Linda: The other problem we had with the old database was that there was no way of tracking congregational care, such as visits, phone calls, prayer requests, follow up, etc. The ability to monitor and follow up with people in our congregation was one of the things that really drew us to bvcms. Now, any pastor is able to see what contact or prayer request has been made.
How did you learn about bvcms?
Patty: The person who handled maintenance for our website called David (Carroll, founder and developer of bvcms) and interviewed him. Afterwards, we had a conference call with David and he walked us through the system.
Linda: What was so great in working with David and Karen (Worrell) was their willingness to download the information we had from our database and make adjustments as needed. Our church is not Baptist and has some unique aspects to it, but they were just wonderful and very helpful in teaching us how to use bvcms.
How did bvcms meet your needs?
Linda: Managing prayer requests has been a huge thing for us because our congregation turns them in each Sunday morning. It's been fabulous to use bvcms because the pastors can now follow up with those prayer requests so easily. They know what kinds of needs people have and how we can respond; it's just been tremendous, and not just on a week-to-week basis. We can go back a couple months and see what we prayed for at the time and what has since happened in their lives. It also helps us know how else we can assist them. It's been huge for us and also cut my time in being able to provide that information to our pastors.
Patty: Further on that, we are able to track the pastor's response, which is a real important factor for us because we like to know that our pastoral staff is on task as far as getting back with people, and meeting, praying and following up with them.
What do you like best about bvcms?
Linda: The congregational care aspect in terms of being able to follow up with people in our congregation. Another thing that's nice is the tremendous ease in using this system to create groups and communicate with them. It's made our lives easier. We're just beginning to use bvcms' capabilities, but what we've seen so far has been wonderful.
Patty: We're just at the tip of iceberg. I like the fact that it's online and that I'm not dealing with the network issues associated with our previous system. David and Karen have been magnificent to work with; they get back with me immediately on any issue or question I have. They've done a lot of trouble shooting for us. There also were a few things that were unique to us, such as the way we track contributions. David bent over backwards to make it the way I wanted it to be. He added elements that made bvcms easier for me to use and customized our system based on the needs of our congregation.
What difference has bvcms made from a financial, operational and ministry perspective?
Patty: The fact that it's online makes a big difference as far as our IT support and network issues. It's so much easier because everything is handled by bvcms off site.
Linda: It's so nice for pastors to have the ability to work from home. For them to be able to access information from there is fabulous.
Patty: I would highly recommend bvcms and have already done so.
Case Study:
Bellevue Baptist Church - Arlington
Bellevue Baptist Church is located in a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. The church began in 1903 and today has a membership of more than 20,000 with 200-plus staff. Worship attendance averages 6,000, and about 5,000 are involved in life groups. In September 2009, Bellevue launched a satellite campus in Arlington, 10 miles from the main campus. The Arlington campus has five staff members and averages 300 in Sunday worship with 345 in life groups.
Bellevue initiated the Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms) project in November 2007. It became such a success that it made sense to share this innovation with other churches as a free, open-source software project. Bellevue Church Management System interviewed Gregg Hauss, Arlington discipleship pastor, and Mandy Wallace, ministry assistant to adult education and young adults, about their experiences with the system.
What problem or challenge did you face that led you to use the Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms)?
Gregg: We were using the old MS DOS system, which was helpful but very basic and no longer met our needs. The old system was good for looking up phone numbers and that's about it. It also tracked our membership, enrollment and attendance but was very limited. The system was hard to use and only a few people were able to access it, which created a real challenge for us.
How did bvcms meet your needs?
Gregg: With the input and leadership of David Carroll and Karen Worrell, bvcms has taken us to the next level. As users, our ministers and I can do so much more by having access to information about individuals and families. When I have a funeral to do, or a hospital or prospect visit to make, I can pull up information from my phone. It's very user friendly. We're in a portable situation in Arlington and use a local high school for services. When we unload our trailers and set up for church, I can pull up a hot spot and connect to the Internet. We do a tremendous amount in the mornings tracking attendance as well as checking in our volunteers and children through touch screens. We also track prospects and members who are not yet volunteers.
Mandy: What's most helpful to me is that the system is web based, so we can access it off campus. Our laity in leadership positions can also get on it, and it's very helpful to them in communicating with their classes. Bvcms also helps us manage our large data base. It's very easy to use and the changes are instant. There are many different functions it can perform for us and if there's something we can't do, in most cases that function can be added on.
What do you like best about bvcms?
Gregg: We have 19 life groups that meet in homes during the week. I have a roster for each group, and I can communicate with all my leaders at the same time by sending an e-mail to them with the click of a button. I also can allow them to go in and track their group's attendance. The ability to keep up with our prospects through bvcms and assign tasks to make home visits/calls to our prospects has been a great benefit. Although we're about 10 miles from the main campus, I feel like I'm in the main building. It's an incredible tool.
Mandy: From a ministry perspective, it's really increased the availability to our laity. Leaders that make visits and teach classes can pull up information from their homes when they want to call someone or check attendance. It really helps them in their ministry. I think it's also helpful operationally because we can analyze our information and pull statistics that we weren't able to do very well before. Online registration has been a tremendous tool for us; it's very helpful to know how many people are coming to an event in advance so we can make sure we have enough volunteers. Families can register at home or at work.
What difference has bvcms made from a financial, operational and ministry perspective?
Gregg: When a new family comes in, we walk them over to a touch screen and add them to the system on the spot rather than filling out a bunch of paperwork. We can get accurate information immediately and instantly enter them into our prospect system. That's been a tremendous thing for us. There's also the added security of knowing which children are in the gym, which is where we set up our birth through fifth-grade classes. The ability to print out a security label lets us know that we have the right children in the right hands.
Mandy: I was amazed how quickly I could catch on to bvcms and how useful it is in communicating to classes and various people. It's so helpful to be able to pull up a query and pool specific people based on certain characteristics. With this information, we can put together a list and then send one mass e-mail. A lot of what I do involves communication, and the system is very easy to use in that regard. It's also great how it tracks the membership for us and keeps their information up to date. I can make a change and the people across the room have the same change instantly. The system also is helpful when it comes to choosing a class. On a large campus like ours, it helps us to narrow down possible classes and see which ones are available, making it quicker and easier to accommodate their needs and get them to the correct classroom.
Gregg: bvcms is far and above anything we've ever had to stay in touch with our people, and it just keeps getting better. They're making changes all the time, and if there's something we need we just let David or Karen know and they'll add, change or tweak it. I can't speak highly enough about the Bellevue Church Management System -- it's been such an asset to us. David and Karen regularly spend time with us and stay in constant communication by asking about our needs and how they can help us. They want to serve, and I know they've been helping a lot of churches in that way.
Case Study:
Point Harbor Community Church
Point Harbor Community Church, located in Chesapeake, Virginia, was established in 1976. Approximately 850 people attend Sunday morning worship, and the church has 16 staff members.
Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, initiated the Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms) project in November 2007. It became such a success that it made sense to share this innovation with other churches as a free, open-source software project. Bellevue Church Management System interviewed Rob Lamarre, administrative pastor/business operations manager of Point Harbor, about his experience with the system.
What problem or challenge did you face that led you to use bvcms?
Nobody at the church could look up information remotely. This was overburdening a few of the staff because they were constantly getting calls from people asking them to look up information. In addition, the check-in system was terrible.
Did you already have a church management system in place? If so, what compelled you to seek a different solution? If not, what compelled you to see a church management system?
The church was using a system but it wasn't adequate - it was really just a big phone book. Being a data guy, I always want to analyze things and know about our trending, such as how many 35-year-old dads came to our church last summer. But the data in our old system was not very good. There weren't many people that understood how to use it, so there weren't a lot of checks and balances as to how data got entered or how valid it was. There were occasions when we had three different records for the same person because that person's name was entered differently. Although that's still possible with bvcms, it's less likely because of the way it's set up.
How did you learn about bvcms?
I started looking around at different systems, and was introduced to bvcms founder/developer David Carroll though a vendor I met while working on an unrelated project. I was concerned about David being a "small shop," but he put our fears to rest and showed us how we could use his Bellevue Church Management System to do all the things we were trying to do. There were so many features that it was a lock for me.
How did bvcms meet your needs?
The biggest win I had was with children's check-in. We have between 200-300 kids each week, and we would have kids stacked back as far as the eye could see trying to check in. I noticed a lot of parents get upset and leave the line, so the bvcms children's check-in feature with the touch screens, and the way it provides management for the staff and ministry leaders to be able to log in from anywhere and see the names of the kids they are working with, was very appealing.
What do you like best about bvcms?
I love the fact that even though I'm miles away, I can login and provide support. The ability for everyone to work from wherever they are is huge. Children's check-in runs smoothly every Sunday now, and we are capturing the parents' data as well. Now when they come to register for the first time, we register the whole family.
What difference has bvcms made from a financial, operational and ministry perspective?
David has given us excellent support, and financially it's been a big win. When we have an issue, David takes ownership and stays on top of it until it is resolved. The only reason I would ever be hesitant to notify David of a problem is because I know he's going to stop whatever he's doing to work on it. We have a system better than anything I knew was out there.
Case Study:
Silverdale Baptist Church
Silverdale Baptist Church is located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The church began in 1889 and today has a membership of nearly 3,700 with more than 20 staff members, including 10 pastors. Worship attendance averages 2,500-2,600.
Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, initiated the Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms) project in November 2007. It became such a success that it made sense to share this innovation with other churches as a free, open-source software project. Bellevue Church Management System interviewed Ken McCoy, executive pastor of Silverdale, about his experience with the system.
What problem or challenge did you face that led you to use the Bellevue Church Management System (bvcms)?
Our church is growing. As ministries and outreach grow, we have more individuals to keep track of and minister to. It also means we've got more reports that need to be done. Some of our reports weren't coming to us in a timely manner, and we were slower than we needed to be. We also were seeing rising costs and had a calendaring system that was not supported, so we decided to look at some other avenues to see what was out there that could help us better manage our growth.
Did you already have a church management system in place? If so, what compelled you to seek a different solution? If not, what compelled you to seek a church management system?
We tried to upgrade our servers and computers, but still found that some of the reports coming to us were slow.
How did you learn about bvcms?
In my position as executive pastor, I'm always looking for ways to make our daily tasks more efficient and effective. Our desire is to be better at everything we do and serve with excellence. I met David (Carroll, founder and developer of bvcms) through mutual friends, and as we shared what we did I told him I'd love to see bvcms. Even though I didn't work with the system on a daily basis, I could tell right away that it was pastor-friendly. That was important to me, along with our pastors having access to information as quickly as possible. I asked David to make a presentation to our ministry staff because they would be using the system daily.
How did bvcms meet your needs?
When I first looked at bvcms, I was thrilled at how quickly I could find a particular age group or section. For example, if I wanted to find a 25-year-old group of males that lived in a certain zip code and create a small group, I could pull that information up in less than five minutes. That's pastor-friendly: being able to find as much data as possible as quickly as possible.
As we've expanded our ministry, we've also instituted a check-in system that works extremely well. We're getting ready to switch to a new financial scanner that's going to work directly with our bank. This capability didn't exist with our other system. With bvcms, we will be able to export information directly from our bank to our church. Not having to post every check to every account will enable our financial assistant to spend more time on other things.
What do you like best about bvcms?
The fact that it's a pastor-friendly system. If I want to locate a family member, determine whether that family member is in a certain small group, or has a certain gift or ability, I can navigate the system quite easily. If I want to find the name of a family member or a phone number, or I want to find out if a particular person has a license to drive a bus, the bvcms navigation works quickly and takes me from one point to the next. In addition, customer service has been phenomenal. If we have an issue, they fix it. We had a scanner that didn't integrate with bvcms, but they were able to make that system integrate so that we didn't have to go out and buy a new scanner. It's user- and pastor-friendly software, which means we can access the personal information we need as quickly as possible so that we can minister to the individual.
What difference has bvcms made from a financial, operational and ministry perspective?
Bvcms has allowed us to branch out in some areas that we were a little hesitant to pursue with our other system because we didn't know how it was going to work, were concerned it would be too slow, or because the cost was prohibitive. If our staff is spending less time looking for information that's requested by a pastor, or a report is generated more quickly, then we're being more productive on a daily basis. I'm sensing less frustration in the workplace. It's a very smooth system and one that I have recommended to other churches to consider even though they're happy with their current systems. I think they'll find bvcms more adaptive and customized. For example, if we want a particular report that bvcms doesn't have, they will create a report for us. We are telling the system what to do, not the system telling us what to do. If there's one benefit I see as an administrator, that's it - we are pretty well able to dictate what this system can do.