When Faith Baptist Church (FBC) in Youngsville, NC started constructing Kidstown, their new preschool/children's building, the staff wanted to ensure that they implemented the most secure check-in system available for their Sunday school services. With an average Sunday attendance of 1,500 and a growing children's ministry, FBC's staff knew safety was important. With an optimal solution needed, they knew their technology provider of over a decade could help.

Cheryl Quigley, the ACS Administrator at FBC, knew ACS Checkpoint was the right solution but was unsure how to best implement their new system. She requested that an ACS Implementation Specialist visit FBC to assess their specific needs.

Prior to Checkpoint, children had to sign up for their Sunday school classes in advance. This allowed the staff to have the necessary security badges ready on Sunday and accurately keep track of the location of each child. "Our nursery and pre-school children can attend all 3 hours of Sunday school service, but our grade school children can attend only one hour.

So, we wanted to give our parents and children the ability to choose their Sunday school time slots on the day of services with the use of self check-in kiosks," said Cheryl.

"The main concern of our pastors with implementing the new system was enabling members to check-in to multiple sessions. I had to convince our pastors to allow multiple check-ins. They were afraid the attendance reports would be inaccurate and there wouldn¹t be enough classrooms/facilities," Cheryl explained. "But with Barry Moon's (our ACS Implementation Specialist) reassurances, our pastors were able to move forward confidently with our decision to implement Checkpoint. Learning what similarly-sized churches have done also helped in the decision process," she said.

Implementation Process
ACS Implementation Specialist Barry Moon visited FBC and performed a one day onsite needs assessment. "During my visit, I meet with various staff members to understand their present day practices and future goals of their ACS database," explained Barry, "since a main goal was to improve attendance tracking for multiple class sessions, I spent a lot of time reviewing their attendance structure and offered several best practices for the church to consider. I also provided suggestions on how they could promote classes to the congregation."

Checkpoint was demonstrated with discussions centered on badge techniques, kiosk locations, and the advantages of both manned and unmanned workstations. Then, a facility tour was conducted to identify classroom locations, traffic patterns, and optimal kiosk locations. Based on my visit, I compiled an action plan to help FBC during their installation phase and provided additional documentation containing best practices and recommendations for implementing a secure check-in system.

The Results
FBC installed nine self check-in kiosks with touch screens and two manned Checkpoint stations in three main areas of their educational facility. Barry provided technical assistance as needed during the installation portion.

"We implemented Checkpoint in September 2007," Cheryl stated. "During our busiest time, we have 700 adults and children attending our Sunday school services. Thanks to the strategic placement of our Checkpoint kiosks, we no longer experience long lines at check-in. Barry told us from the beginning to expect a few bumps in the road, but we have experienced few, if any, issues. The hardest thing has been educating parents on how to print the correct badge for the class session. However, anytime we had questions, Barry was only a quick phone call or email away with the solution," said Cheryl.

"I received initial training from Barry and in turn trained our staff and volunteers. I love that we have online check in now! It is so much easier, and I no longer spend my whole day tracking attendance. Plus, the children can decide on Sunday which class to attend instead of having to make the decision in advance," stated Cheryl.

"Not only do I recommend ACS Implementation to any church that can afford it, I also strongly recommend that you have a dedicated ACS manager to learn the system and share it with others in your church," said Cheryl. "It would have been great in the beginning to have Barry guiding us on how we wanted to use our databases in the future. We will definitely utilize the ACS Implementation service in the future to attain our ministry goals."

"Working together, FBC and ACS Implementation Services maximized the configuration of their check-in system, refined the data entry processes, and implemented a strong technology solution that complements the ministry initiatives of Faith Baptist Church." stated Barry.

ACS Technologies Products and Services Used
People Suite: People, Contributions, Attendance, Connections, Checkpoint
Financial Suite: Purchase Orders, General Ledger, Payroll, Accounts Payable, Fixed Assets
Growth Suite: Ministry Scheduler, CASS It!, Max It!, Church Growth Tools, Volunteer Manager
Services: Network/Multiuser, Implementation

About Faith Baptist Church
Faith Baptist Church's goal and desire is to find those who need Jesus, feed all on the word until we are fully established in Christ. We want to honor Christ in all we do and to live lives that reflect His character.

Web Site: faithnc.org