Imagine receiving an e-mail from a member of your church entitled “Please Help- 4th time sent.” I know of a church who received such an e-mail. It seems that they had a member who was in a difficult situation and needed assistance from the church. Through a series of miscommunications and unclear instructions, this member’s plea had gone unaddressed and the situation grew worse. When someone had a need, it was the practice of the church for staff members to send an e-mail to the person responsible for following up, but there was no tool available to staff or members for documenting and managing the outcome or results of such outreach opportunities.
You will be happy to know that the person finally received the care that they needed, but the incident was an eye opener for that church. In fact, this experience set them on a path toward finding a way to better connect with those who were in need, those who were interested in participating in certain ministries, and those with prayer needs. They also needed a tool to aid them in their assimilation of new guests. One of their goals was to involve more members in the outreach process, allowing them to follow up with needs and address them.
The answer to their ministry need was ACS Connections in conjunction with Access ACS. ACS Connections is a module within the ACS People Suite. Access ACS is an online tool that can integrate with your existing Web site, allowing members access to specific information from the database. Using these tools together allows church leaders to indentify and classify needs and assign others to follow up. Those who are assigned to follow up on these “connections” can enter notes about their outreach assignment and close the connection, allowing staff and pastoral-care teams to make sure that all outreach is completed in a timely manner. This combination enables more people to do more in the area of outreach.
Real Life Application
Here are a couple of applicable examples that can help explain how ACS Connections and Access ACS are being used today by churches just like yours to provide better follow-up.
Church “A” wants to personally call on all first time guests within 24 hours of their first visit. They implemented the ACS solution to help with this. On Sunday, all guest cards are entered into ACS. Once they are in the database, an outreach connection is created for each person or family. This connection is then assigned to a specific member for the purpose of following up with the guest. Once all the connections are completed, the church uploads them to Access ACS. After they are uploaded, an e-mail is automatically sent to the person with the assignment letting them know to log in to Access ACS so that they can find out who they are to call. Once the member makes the call, he or she can record any pertinent information online and close the connection. This has streamlined the assimilation process for Church “A”, allowing faster assignments and easier documentation.
Church “B” needs to implement a way to inform ministry leaders of people who would like more information about their ministry. On their welcome card are a series of check boxes, allowing guests and members alike to request more information about various ministries. Many of these ministries are led by volunteers. These requests are keyed into ACS Connections and uploaded to Access ACS. Ministry leaders will automatically receive an e-mail informing them that they have an outreach assignment. They are able to log in to Access ACS and find out who is interested in their ministry, follow up with them, and document their results.
As you can imagine, there are many different ways to use the ACS Connections module to improve communication and follow-up with members and guests, such as keeping informed and documenting hospital visits, prayer requests, staff assignments, poor attendance, and other miscellaneous but specific times when members and guests have connected with the church.
Serving as the Director of Technology Services with his local church, Keith is keenly interested in helping other churches succeed in implementing new effective tools in ministry. He has served as a Pastor of Youth and Worship for several churches and loves to take his experience as an ACS administrator and share best practices with other ministries.