This afternoon I meet with Resurrection's executive management team to present my recommendation for our next church management system (ChMS). I've already spoken with the vendors regarding my choice. As soon as it's official this afternoon, I'll post about the decision.
Until then, let me just say that ChMS suppliers truly are our partners in ministry. They care passionately about the local church and its role in the Kingdom of God. We couldn't do ministry without them. At the beginning of this I knew that I would be making one of them happy and disappointing everyone else. To their credit, all of those we didn't pick have been extraordinarily gracious.
The most surprising thing I've learned through this process is how other churches our size, churches that are thriving and making an impact in the community and world, churches that I respect with IT staffs I respect, can use very well planned and well executed selection processes and end up making different choices of ChMS. When we IT directors discuss this subject privately, it seems we all pretty much agree with each other's analysis, yet our conclusions are different. I believe that's partly because we have different selection criteria or place different priorities on the various criteria. For myself, I think this is good news for the ChMS marketplace and for the Kingdom. It's quite valuable for us to have multiple healthy competitors, each with its own strengths.
If you're in the process of selecting a ChMS, don't copy our selection. Rather, I would strongly encourage you to use a very rigorous selection process so that you can proceed confidently with your implementation. If you get the selection process right, then you will make the right decision. Simple as that. If it would help you, we're happy to share documents or any other aspects of our selection process with anyone who requests them.
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