Considered one of the fastest growing churches in the Tri-state area of Burlington, Kentucky is the First Church of Christ that currently ministers to approximately 2,500 people on any given Sunday. Providing the community with multiple services, ministries, educational programs and faith building opportunities requires a distinct understanding of the delicate balance between the business operations of the church and meeting the needs of the congregation and community.

No stranger to the role of Business Manager for the church is Gary Griesser. Active in this role for the past eight years, Griesser has learned first hand the importance of equipping the church with a software management solution that will meet their needs. Unfortunately, the administrative side of the church experienced just the opposite. The church continued to perform their functions despite some of the daily problems that were inherent with an inefficient system.

Multiple System Faults. For example, the system exhibited slowed response times on the network when multiple users logged on, a continued probability of high failure rates when running reports and finally the consistent lack of user support. “One time I was actually on hold for 45 minutes waiting for a live voice,” Griesser admits. It was evident that there was a better way to do business.

During his quest to rectify this situation, Griesser learned about ACS Technologies. After requesting to speak with other area churches that used ACS Technologies products, Griesser was impressed. “I spoke with five churches and I found five totally satisfied users,” explained Griesser. These were churches that he knew and trusted and came to learn about their complete satisfaction with their decision to select ACS Technologies.

Data Recovery. ACS was instrumental in stepping up to the plate to help the church during a pivotal time when trying to recover year-end data. The church was processing their individual giving statements for tax purposes however; all of this data was in the old software system. They needed to extract giving records from the database but couldn’t get any help from their previous telephone support team. When they finally reached a support member, they were told that it could take the computer about 24 hours to run the critical report.

24 hours turned to three days and then the report stopped running, devoid of numerous errors or problems. In an effort to meet the fast approaching deadline, the church scrambled to print out one record at a time. After about 400 of the 2,400 records were printed, the computer suddenly began printing out excessive amounts of useless data. Griesser stepped in and contacted ACS Technologies for help.

Data Conversion. ACS Technologies converted the data and returned the corrected data within two working days. From that point, while using ACS, it took the church 10 minutes to generate the report and one hour and ten minutes to print all of the 2,400 records. ACS Technologies provided an instantaneous fix. “I have gone through many software upgrades and data conversions but none as smooth and accurate as this one. We are now able to generate reports that we could never even dream of generating with the old system,” notes Griesser.

Currently, the First Church of Christ has a network that supports 30 people and is in the process of training the staff on ACS. Gretchen Knaup is their administrative assistant to adult ministries and also wears the hat of assisting with the implementation of ACS to their church. Gretchen has spearheaded the effort to get the data ready to upload for their transition to ACS and is the contact person for any ACS related issues.

Knaup commented, “I find that ACS is a very easy program to manipulate through. I can perform a variety of functions and not become frustrated.”

Time Saving Features. Having ACS has already saved time for the pastoral staff in a number of ways. Specifically, with ACS, all users can stay online and there is no slow down on the network. With their previous program, it could take anywhere from five to 15 minutes just to start up the program. If a pastor needed to quickly reference the name of someone from the database, it presented roadblocks when it really shouldn’t have. Now, the day-to-day interruptions are processed in seconds.

Another benefit of using ACS has been the full-picture capability that stores individual and family photos. This is particularly helpful for new pastors to better identify members in an instant thereby enabling them to minister to the congregations’ specific needs.

Mailings. Pulling together mailings is yet another example of a project that used to require a great deal of time and has been simplified with the use of ACS. The church newsletter mailings use about 700 labels for mailing. Prior to ACS, they had to sort the labels manually and process the five-and four-digit zip codes. Now, with the bulk mail capabilities built in, ACS fully supports CASS address verification and records ZIP + 4, delivery point bar codes, carrier route and line of travel bar codes. As a result, the labels are printed in five minutes, complete with codes and sorted as necessary.

Monitoring Attendance. Keeping track of attendance is also much more convenient because attendance records can be maintained by individual and by class or event. Knaup can easily print off rosters for all of the bible fellowship class leaders to monitor attendance. To track attendance at their Sunday services, the church bulletin has a tear off portion that each person that attends in the main worship center uses to mark their attendance. This information is entered in the attendance module easily because the module links to the People suite so the names don’t have to be reentered each time.

Overall, First Church of Christ is excited about the capabilities within ACS and loves using all the features on a day-to-day basis to make all their jobs easier and to focus on ministering to the needs of people first.

About First Church of Christ
The First Church of Christ is a non-denominational, independent church with no denominational control or hierarchy. They are self governed and determine their own affairs. The church belongs to a brotherhood of believers and is identified with other Christians around the world, who are known for their commitment to the Bible.  Unlike other groups, the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ have no man-made creed.  The Bible is their authority.
The church participates in world-wide missionary causes that are supported by local churches similar to theirs.  The missionaries are responsible to those churches that are supporting them.

ACS Products and Services Used
People Suite: People, Contributions, Attendance
Services: Network/Multiuser

Web site
http://www.1stchurchofchrist.org