Church Management System Meets Social Media

Posted by Scott Williams
13 Comments
August 31, 2010
Ministry | Pastors | Social Media | Strategy | The Church

Earlier this month Fellowship Technologies and The Table Project announced the formation of a new partnership that will combine the best in church management software with an innovative new social community platform.

Fellowship technologies flagship church management system Fellowship One (F1), is a web-based church management software solution for dynamic churches of any size or denomination and used by over 1,500 churches worldwide.    I have used Fellowship One for years and I have not began to even scratch the surface of what it can do…  It’s Awesome!

Fellowship One provides tools for managing members, visitors, volunteers, events, donations, and more.  A central feature of Fellowship One is the Groups capabilities that allow churches to easily manage hundreds, or even thousands, of small groups. Through Fellowship One Groups, the church can empower lay leaders to manage and report on the groups under their care while maintaining the ability to monitor the health and effectiveness of the small group ministry.

Some churches want to provide additional community tools beyond what is provided by Fellowship One. They desire aspects of traditional social applications like Facebook, but within a safe environment that is managed by the church, and preferably linked to their existing membership data.

The Table Project seeks to fill the gap between church management software and secular social media applications. The Table Project is a non-profit organization whose mission is to help churches “Live Church Together” through community-building software. They go beyond traditional social media through their platform called “The Table,” a custom tailored solution for the church that aims to move people beyond the pews and into authentic life-changing relationships.

The Table Project is currently conducting a private beta of their community tools with a number of influential churches. After incorporating feedback from the beta program, The Table Project will be made available to all churches. Basic integration with Fellowship One’s membership data is already complete with deeper levels of integration planned for future releases.

I am looking forward to seeing this come out of beat and released to all churches.  In the past these “Christian Only” social media platforms have had minimal success, because in my opinion they actually marginalize the “social” part of social media.  Due to the success of Fellowship One, the existing church membership data, the focused approach and the amazing capabilities of the church management system, this collaboration and integration with “The Table” Project can prove to truly be an added value for The Table, Fellowship One  and ultimately the church community.

I guess other churches will find out, when they get a seat at “The Table.”  For more information on Fellowship One, click here.

What do you think about a great church management system and social media combo?

  • http://e-devotion.blogspot.com Michael Harrison

    Ok. Scott. We use (CCB) churchcommunitybuilder.com and it rocks. Passing the word to others too. F1 and Shelby and more. Others need to take a look because the social media side as well as the beefy connections that CCB gives you with your people. Strong in kid checkin, contributions, people mgmt and such. I am sold. But you can tell that. There ya go.

    • Scott Williams

      Michael – Thx for your insight and impressions! I don’t know anything about community builder; however I personally really like fellowship one and looking fwd to the collaboration.

  • http://gregdavispsu.com Greg Davis

    Hi Scott – always a great subject when it comes to how we as churches can do better in managing and building the relationships and connectedness within our local organizations.

    At Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, PA (fellowshiptoday.com) we have been live on CCB (Church Community Builder) since January and find it be be very helpful in achieving this result. It is a ChMS that is relationship based and they strike a great balance between functionality and simplicity.

    I look forward to the coming months and years as technology begins to open some eyes to the possibilities of what ChMS can become!

    • Scott Williams

      I agree… I think we are just scratching the surface. F1 is a great product, so I’m sure it will be a great marriage. Several of the LifeChurch.tv campus pastors have been using f1 in various unique ways, it’s been quite efficient.

  • http://samgamgee.org tom

    Am excited by what the table project can offer. Am grateful for F1s good work. I’m a user of CCB and have leveraged it in my area including kids checkin and particularly connecting with students through twexting (a marriage of twitter and text messaging). When we realize how young social networking is its exciting to see folks like Church Community Builder and F1 among others harnessing the social web for Good. Good stuff.

    • Scott Williams

      Twexting… Thats a first. I agree, social media is so young!

  • Katie Smith

    I’m really excited about the possibilities that this partnership will offer churches. If leveraged correctly, churches can greatly benefit of connecting with people and spreading the Wod through social media, and this partnership will definitely “get the ball rolling”.

    In addition, the fact that F1 churches will be able to access this wonderful tool for free will also help churches use the funds and time spent to develop a similar system like this on other ministry related items (missions, etc.). Our church looked at developing a similar system last year, but had to put a halt to it due to the cost. Thanks, Fellowship Technologies, for listening to your customers and responding quickly!

  • Scott Williams

    Awesome, thanks or sharing. Saving money is always a great thing!

  • http://www.itsgoodgerhere.com Scott Goodger

    We are also looking forward to rolling out The Table Project to our Multi-Campus congregation. We currently utilize Facebook and Twitter as methods to communicate with our Members/Attendees.

    The upside to that is that ANYONE can see what is happening via those channels – They are GLOBAL and that’s cool. The downside is that you can’t go ‘deeper’ in your online community building through Facebook and Twitter.

    The Table Project results in us allowing our Members and Attendees to build community outside of their normal day to day interaction. They can communicate in area’s ONLY for their small groups, only for their campus, etc. and these areas are permission based.

    I know – it’s debatable whether or not relationships can be built in an online fashion. But, I do know this from personal experience with the Church IT Roundtable (CITRT) group AND Fellowship Technologies Employees: Relationships can be enhanced through online interaction using social media as the primary tool.

    Fellowship Technologies is a true leader in making it easy for churches to connect with their membership and this is just another way that they are helping us, as churches, build community with our people.

    Many thanks to Fellowship Technologies for seeing a need, acting upon it, and making The Table Project available for us!

  • Mike Y.

    The City has been around for years, and has had great success connecting people to each other and their church (from what I have seen and heard from members at Seacoast and Mars Hill). How does this compare?

    • stan

      we are abandoning the city. the interface is archaic, clunky to get around, and non-intuitive. it functions nothing like other social media. the support is timely but offers no solutions. the updates are non-existent. some of the interface and icons are counter-intuitive (click on a gold star (which puts a slash through it which means the topic is now “featured” (kept at the top) – so a star with a slash through it means the topic is featured?) it feels like a bad beta experiment.

      i click on the link to the table – and there is no comparison. the table project is so intuitive, allows for links and RSS feeds, lets users customize their home page with important apps, has a simple menu for personal, groups, and the church as a whole. The City asks new users to go through hours and hours of training and even then there are some functions that don’t make sense. I already have the table up and running. there are a few functions that I’d like to see the table adopt and once they do, we will never look back.

      (and who can argue with FREE?)

  • stan

    Features The Table Project Needs.

    1. integration with google calendar – number one priority of the techs

    2. building events with the ability to list tasks and items needed at the event (think cookouts or serve projects)

    3. this one I’m still experimenting with – true integration with facebook/twitter so that posts in The Table can also post to facebook or twitter by checking a box. i don’t want to manage several social media sites (the beauty of sites like hootsuite)a and I don’t want to cocoon and lose my unchurched connections on facebook. The Table does have a facebook app, but not full-featured from the little I have experimented with it.

  • stan

    Free – but we will donate when we get up and running

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