Unlocking the Future

By RaeAnn Slaybaugh

At the 49th-annual conference of the National Association of Church Business Administration in Keystone, Colo., we were introduced to a variety of new products — and old favorites — for the church market.

Get your MBA at 66% percent off! When asked why he was attending NACBA, Darrell Passwater (at right), dean of the School of Business at California Baptist University (CBU), said simply, “We’re here helping churches impact the world for Christ.”

In that spirit, he was excited about CBU’s online MBA program (www.calbaptist.edu/onlineMBA), which is now being offered at one-third its original cost. The new pricing structure is designed specifically for church administrators and is offered online for students across the United States.

The student pays one-third the cost, with the requirement that his or her church pays one-third, and CBU pays the rest using scholarship funding.

“The response we’ve gotten from our friends in NACBA and from current students is that the program is great, but that price can be a sticky issue for many congregations in terms of ability to reimburse the student’s tuition,” Passwater explains. “This [program] takes the price from about $18,000 a year to $6,000.”

Planning for your future. Representatives were on hand from Envoy Financial (www.envoyfinancial.org) to spotlight their company’s retirement plans and financial services.

For more than a decade, Envoy has been providing these services and currently serves more than 7,000 ministry professionals. From plan design to implementation, Envoy’s experts are trained to assist — or revamp — a retirement plan that fits any ministry.

Envoy can help you set up a 403b, 401k or group-benefit plan (FSAs, HRAs and HSAs). Executive financial planning is also available for top management, and educational resources are offered for all employees.

Your Web ministry is on the way. The experts at Dream3 (www.dream3.org) spotlighted what they call the “six pillars” of a successful Web ministry: expand outreach; cross cultures; equip ministries; strengthen prayer; support stewardship; and streamline operations.

The company offers an easy-to-use Web-based publishing application to accomplish these goals. With this tool, users can create their own websites in hours using an Internet browser. Once a site is set up, that church has a complete Web ministry, including an interactive calendar, online event registration, online donation capabilities, e-mail broadcast functionality, audio/video streaming, and automated content.

Fund raising with integrity. Formerly the Genesis Group, Generis (www.generis.com) professionals have helped more than 1,600 clients raise more than $2 billion to help “build their dreams.” Marketing Manager Jane Chance says that at churches, this usually takes the form of capital-campaign assistance — mostly for new construction.

“We believe it’s less about raising capital and more about raising the spiritual consciousness of a people,” she says. “When that happens, organizations — and individuals — are free to realize their ultimate purpose and potential.”

Call 15 people or 15,000 — it’s all the same to these guys. Reps from OneCall Now (www.onecallnow.com) — formerly MyTeam One Call — were on hand to promote their new name and enhanced phone-tree services. Currently, the OneCall client list numbers more than 5,000, and the server makes 1,000 calls per minute. In total, that’s more than 1 million calls per month.

Better yet, this automated phone-tree system interfaces with all major management-software products, making it even more user-friendly.

In July, the company launched the system in the United Kingdom as well, so now you can set the system to dial up around the world.

It’s easy being green. According to the spokespeople from RNL Design (www.rnldesign.com), a “green attitude” is sweeping America’s churches. Choosing eco-friendly design communicates environmental responsibility and a social conscience — two very good messages for churches to be sending today.

Examples are abundant in the High Desert Church project RNL conducted in Victorville, Calif. At this church, tube-shaped lights embedded in the auditorium ceiling bend natural light from the outside to illuminate the whole space. When it rains, runoff water is collected and recycled to irrigate the church grounds. (Soap is also extracted from the water that’s used for washing hands and, again, used for irrigation.) The children’s building even has a grass roof! (See photo on pg. 14)

“Churches are starting to wake up,” says RNL Principal Doug Spuler (below, right). “If you’re thinking long-term, this can save you millions of dollars over 30 or 40 years.”

That’s the ticket! ServiceU (www.serviceu.com), makers of online software designed especially for churches, highlighted their TicketU online ticketing service. This feature lets people buy tickets to church events anytime, anywhere and eliminates the frustration of standing in line. It even lets church leaders assign reserved seating for a more personal touch and offers commercial strength to support paid or free events and online or onsite ticket sales.

Other ServiceU modules support event management, room scheduling, event registration, online donations and e-mail newsletters.

Laying the groundwork with style. Mondo (www.mondousa.com) reps say their new Advance maple-look flooring is just right for churches, especially in multipurpose areas. Advance comes in either triple- or double-layer designs and 18 standard colors to suit any environment.

This unique flooring’s first layer is comprised of vulcanized rubber for safety and comfortable play. The second, “resilient” layer is made of 100-percentnatural and synthetic rubber. The bottom layer — for shock absorption — is tear-proof.

As seen on TV. It used to be that only large churches could afford to make television commercials, but with Faith Highway’s (www.faithhighway.com) packages, this is no longer the case.

For the past 15 years, Faith Highway experts have worked with more than 6,000 churches worldwide — and they’ve achieved impressive results. More than 80 percent of those clients saw measurable growth while running the commercials; more than 30 percent reported significant growth in the first six months of airing them; and 14 percent grew more than 75 percent in the first five months.

Break it up! Rich Maas, vice president of marketing for Screenflex Portable Partitions (www.screenflex.com), says he regards the church market as extremely viable. “I go to a fair amount of church conventions, and in the last several months I’ve seen lots of expansion,” he says. Chief among the reasons for this growth are the need for classrooms.

His company’s partitions are designed to meet this demand and feature quite a few customizable options, including wood-grain freestanding cabinets, multi-unit connectors, doors, marker boards, panel locks (to hold the panels in position at any angle), windows, wall frames and chalkboards.

Catholic-friendly CMS. Logos Management Software promoted its Logos Catholic programs (www.logoscatholic.com) — two dynamic tools that score an A+ with parishes across the nation. Logos Sacramental Register lets users manage their Sacramental records, organize registers and print certificates.

And, adding Logos II Church Management program lets them maintain a single member profile for Sacraments, contributions, religious education and family information.

Logos Ministry Schedule offers detailed member profiles that track each person’s active schedule and the masses when they serve. It also keeps track of exceptions (vacations, for example) and sets links to other family members.

Software built for a church, by a church. Fellowship Technologies (www.fellowshiptech.com) highlighted its revolutionary enterprise church-management solution (eCMS), Fellowship One.

Fellowship One was created for Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, to meet the need for a more effective, efficient way to handle the growing demands of a dynamic church.

Fellowship Technologies reps say their program offers a number of unique advantages, including secure data backup, free upgrades, a browser-based platform, contact-management capabilities, real-time attendance tracking, a check-in module, and Weblink, which integrates the church’s website with Fellowship One to provide online giving, event registration, small-group assembly and more.

It might say “lite,” but it doesn’t act like it. EMS Lite (www.dea.com) is a user-friendly room-scheduling software designed to manage the meetings and events that take place at a church facility. Starting and less than $1,300, this program is a cost-effective solution for churches that need to schedule rooms in a single building.

Standard features include Reservation Wizard; a graphical reservation book; month-at-a-glance calendar; and a number of clear, concise report functions. There’s also a user-defined custom-calendar function for virtually limitless reporting.

Users can also add Virtual EMS, a dynamic Web-based interface that’s easily configured to expose only the information you want to make public and adapt to your church’s rules for online requests and reservations.