Does Your ChMS Help Your Pastor, Or Hinder Your Ministry?

“Drawing a blank” is a natural part of life. We’re all human, and we all have lapses in memory or simple oops moments.

But when you’re a pastor––the leader and a key part of your church family’s spiritual lives––it’s a much bigger faux pas when you just can’t remember someone’s name or important information to their lives. You meet so many people, and they each have their own unique interactions with you. You want to show them that they, as an individual, are important to you (because they are). With such an important role, it’s hard to rely solely on your brain’s memory bank.

Church management software is like a pastor’s star sidekick. If you’re not using one (or not utilizing yours to its full potential), it can hinder your ministry by making interpersonal situations more complex and keeping your database(s) messy.

Imagine the following stories without an effective, simple online system.

5 Times Your Pastor Will Rely On Your ChMS

Story #1:

You’re on your way to the hospital to see a member of your church family. Waiting for the elevator, you realize that you can’t remember his wife’s name or what school their children attend. It’s been awhile since you’ve talked to either of them in-person, and you’d like to brush up on their situation before visiting.

A great ChMS allows you to...

• Keep family information in the cloud so you can reference it easily on a mobile device before you arrive, so there’s no last-minute embarrassment as you start your visit.
• See family names, what the children have been up to in the past few weeks, the family’s whole history with the church, and the most recent changes in their lives.

Story #2:

You’re the youth pastor. Tonight, you’re hosting a movie night in the youth room. You arrive an hour before the event and discover that the power is out for the church and surrounding neighborhood. You need to notify the kids and their parents that movie night is being changed, and everyone needs to meet at the other campus.

A great ChMS allows you to...

• Send a mass text message to the members of your youth group and their parents so everyone has been notified of the location change.
• Access the phone numbers of your volunteer youth leaders who no longer need to drive to church tonight to help with cleanup of the facilities. You can save them a trip to the wrong location and thank them for their service at the same time.

Story #3:

A visitor calls the church and asks for a pastor to call him back. But there’s a catch: He can’t remember the name of the pastor. He says that they had a great conversation after the weekend service, and they talked about getting coffee together to talk about his search for a small group. He’d really like to speak with the same pastor.

A great ChMS allows you to...

• Pull up the name of the visitor and their new contact record to see which pastor entered the note about that weekend’s interaction.
• Assign a task for that particular pastor to call the new visitor to set up a coffee visit. That pastor will be notified and reminded to carry-out this task, ensuring the new visitor finds a small group soon.

Story #4:

You are the pastor overseeing small groups. You need to determine which small group members have missed their small group meetings every week last month so that you can reach out to them personally.

A great ChMS allows you to...

• Create a list of small group members who have been absent each week in the last month, separating out these absentees by each small group.
• Now you can send a follow-up email or text message, personally addressed to each of them by name.
• You can send these messages all at once, which allows you to start a conversation with each small group member about their absences and how you can help them as their pastor.

Read more similar ChMS savior stories in our eBook, Nine Questions to Ask as You Consider a Church Management System.