Rebuilt Parish and MinistryPlatform
St. Columbkille Parish in Parma, Ohio, is complex to manage, with about 6,000 members and a school.
In May 2022, on the recommendation of evangelization mentors at Rebuilt Parish, St. Columbkille’s staff moved to MinistryPlatform, integrating all of those functions into a single program.
Until the parish signed on with MinistryPlatform, the complexity of their parish was multiplied by a frustrating array of administrative software: a database for tracking parish membership, one for giving, another for accounting, still another for the school, one for tracking volunteers, and so on.
Even with all that, “there was no common calendar. We didn’t have a place where people could go to schedule rooms,” said Father Anthony Suso, the pastor of St. Columbkille Parish.
MinistryPlatform works with the software that St. Columbkille leaders want to keep while allowing them to discontinue others. The result has slightly lowered the parish’s cost of administrative software.
“We got more value at the same price, if not for less,” said Scott Effertz, associate to the pastor. He joined the parish staff after two decades of working in business – and as an active parish volunteer — to assist Father Anthony with strategic planning and leadership formation.
Smooth Transitions with Data Migration and Coaching
The coaching that ACS Technologies includes with MinistryPlatform “ gave us a lot of insights into things
that we weren’t even considering,” he said.
He was astounded at how smoothly the data migration worked, having experienced many difficulties with such consolidations during his career. When three databases with about 5,000 records were fed into MinistryPlatform, it produced an integrated list with only 100 duplicates to clean up.
The value of MinistryPlatform goes far beyond having an accurate, easy-to-access list of parishioners. The records can be quickly crunched to show whether and how individuals and groups engage with the parish.
“We want to be able to measure discipleship growth,” Scott said. That’s why Rebuilt Parish recommends MinistryPlatform to Catholic churches that are re-orienting their planning and administration for a laser focus on evangelization.
Although congregations of many traditions use MinistryPlatform, the implementation team that assists Catholic parishes includes professionals with long experience in Catholic administration and evangelization.
“I really think that MinistryPlatform is above and beyond anything that the Catholic world uses right now, everything is there to make for thriving Catholic churches.” – Father Anthony Susa – Pastor
To learn more about Rebuilt Parish, click Here.
Learn more about MinistryPlatform by clicking Here.
To learn more about St. Columbkille Parish, click Here.
To read more about how MinistryPlatform supports Pastoral Care at St. Columbkill Parish, click Here
Please read more of the St. Columbkill Parish story Here.
