Membership Focus. Black Rock believes in the power of a growing membership base to help expedite the Good News within its New England community. With few churches in their area experiencing such rapid growth as Black Rock in recent history, Black Rock considers itself a pioneer in the modern church-growth movement of the 21st century in New England. The church's overarching strategy is to assemble ministry teams within the church that are spiritually strong and able to handle various aspects of church membership growth. Black Rock's 154-year history has only catapulted it to further growth through viewing technology as a ministry tool with which to manage members. ACS has helped Black Rock achieve these goals and become more efficient at focusing on the members.

"We deal with thousands of individuals at every stage of life on an everyday basis. Technology allows us to minister to different people in multiple ways," notes Steve Treash, senior pastor of Black Rock Congregational Church. "With about 8,000 names in our database, ACS allows us to keep better track of people and helps us collect data in several categories in order to connect people with corresponding ministries."

Effective Ministry. Black Rock has found ACS to be a ministry tool necessary in evaluating church information through reporting, keeping track of facts and figures, and organizing information within each ministry at the church. Sue Maxwell, the assistant to spiritual development at Black Rock, uses ACS to help manage the flow of new and existing members at the church. When visitors fill out the registration card on Sundays, she simply enters that information into ACS and does a mail merge with a welcome letter. She's able to personalize the letter and follow up immediately with guests to make sure they feel welcomed. Sue also finds it valuable to print out class rosters using the Attendance Module for the Sunday morning class teachers.

"ACS allows me to provide detailed information to our staff in order for them to keep track of members more efficiently," notes Maxwell. "Additionally, I use the Reservations Module to keep track of retreats and missions trips. This helps our programs run more smoothly." Maxwell adds, "ACS makes a lot of the things I do easier than what I did before. My work would take much longer to accomplish without ACS. It is a very flexible program with many benefits."

Financial Specifics. With over 1,300 Sunday attendees and close to 8,000 names in their database, Black Rock uses nearly all aspects of the ACS software program. Tim Kanuch, Black Rock's business administrator, sees value in the ACS Financial Suite because it helps him manage the church's growth and present reports to the church ministers in order to help them focus on specific areas of the church. "A couple of key strokes in ACS and I can give committees and ministries the exact numbers they need to expand their ministries—the reporting tools are phenomenal," notes Kanuch.

Website Success. Through the use of ACS and other technology, such as the church's website (www.brcc.org), Black Rock provides members with key information that they need to become better informed and keep up with the current happenings of the church. "It's imperative for our website to be fresh and have new content on a regular basis. People learn quick if a site is stagnant—they have no reason to go back," comments Kanuch. "ACS allows me to automatically upload the church's events each and every day, as well as take payments over our website for church events."

Keeping Track. The Black Rock church office also uses other ACS modules to help better organize critical church information critical to membership success. Donna Anderson, assistant business administrator and financial secretary for Black Rock, finds the Ministry Scheduler module to be extremely helpful in managing church events.

"We're a very busy church with a lot of meetings going on at any given time. ACS helps us not overbook and keep track of who's using what room. I can print out a daily report and keep us from double booking meeting rooms in the church. Now there are no conflicts," notes Anderson.

When things run smoothly inside the church, it enables church staff to focus on the members and not administration. Black Rock uses ACS to keep track of small group and Sunday School attendance by using the ACS Attendance module. Leaders then have the ability to contact people in their groups when they haven't shown for a few weeks.