Experience.FellowshipOne.com

Accelerate with Passion

Administrator — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:41:00 GMT

At our Dynamic Church Conference in May 2008 we were blessed to have Randy Draper, a business leader, lay leader at Fellowship Church, and dynamic speaker, give a keynote speech titled Accelerate with Passion. If you are feeling a bit down, stuck in a rut, frustrated with your current position or responsibilities, or just need a bit of inspiration then I strongly encourage you to take some time to watch Randy's message. I promise that you'll be challenged, inspired, and likely laugh out loud. Feel free to pass it along to others who might benefit from it as well.

I've embedded the video below, you can also access it www.vimeo.com/fellowshiptech (All of our future videos will be hosted at that address)

Enjoy and God bless!

Dynamic Church 08 - Randy Draper - Accelerate with Passion from Fellowship Technologies on Vimeo.

Seeking IT Pro with Passion for Tech and Local Church

Administrator — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:02:00 GMT

Are you searching for a career with true meaning? A job that allows you to use your God given talents to empower the local church through advanced technology? A job where everyone you work with shares your passion, drive, and intense work ethic while keeping in check the priorities of God and family before work.

Fellowship Technologies is currently seeking an IT professional with passion for technology and the local church. Click here for a detailed description of the role and experience required. Please pass along if you know someone.

Please send inquiries and qualified resumés to careers@fellowshiptech.com.

Take A Census

FTDeliverySvcs — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:00:00 GMT

Attendance carries the stigma from your school days where everyone had to be in class and everyday attendance was taken.

Census means that on some interval of your choosing you stop and count how many people are actually involved in this activity. Like the US census taken every ten years you can choose any interval you want and ask "how many people are in small groups?"

To do this you need to setup your activity schedule to reflect when you want your census taken and not which days of the week your small groups meet. Consider a census on a quarterly basis; you would create an activity schedule that occurs on March 31, June 30, September 30 and December 31. The idea is you communicate with your small group leaders to post attendance 4 times in the year. the small group leader can still use the manager tool weekly for email, contacts and membership purposes within the group but you as a church only want a quarterly census to track if the groups as a whole are growing or not.

You can adjust the census dates to any duration or interval. Maybe monthly or bi-monthly is more in line with how often you want your census. You can even build the schedule on an as needed basis. Suppose you launch a new small groups’ series in September and you want a census in December you can add that date to your activity schedule for the leaders to post attendance to. Then you can add another date the following spring to see how the groups are doing again.

At this point you may be thinking how do I know when my groups are meeting if my activity schedule is set up for census taking and the not weekly meetings? If you need to know what day a group meets or even what time of day you can use Room Location Properties to track this information. By defining properties and choices and then making the associations between them and your small groups you know who meets when, where and even why (special interests).

If you are not taking attendance today with your small groups consider taking a census instead.

Jeremy Jackson

F1 Strategy: the next few years (Dynamic Church '08 presentation)

CurtisHarris — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:13:00 GMT

It's a bit long, but here is the presentation I gave at DC08 re: our strategy for Fellowship One. It includes:

Development strategy
How we choose the projects we work on
Our active roadmap
How you can help us both define projects and shape the future

Check it out here -> F1 Strategy: the next few years

Safety in Numbers

FTReportingSvcs — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:41:00 GMT

We’ve all heard the phrase, “There’s safety in numbers”. This saying usually conjures up a certain sense or feeling in the one who hears it. In the church world, the phrase can often mean different things. To the new visitor, safety may come from blending into the crowd without being put on the spot or making a commitment. To the church member, the safety might come from the community the church provides. To the Pastor, the ‘numbers’ might be attendance, or giving; some measurement of health. Whatever your perspective is on the phrase – it is the people, the ‘numbers’ if you will, that provide the sense of safety.

Let’s drill in on that last scenario for a second – with the Pastor, the numbers involve some sort of ‘measure’ or ‘metric’, such as giving, or attendance, or involvement in a small group. Here at Fellowship Technologies, providing the ability to record, track, and analyze these metrics is at the heart of what we do. A church is all about the people, and we are all about the church. We provide an exhaustive set of data points whereby a church can better understand ‘the body’ and the effectiveness of their ministries as a whole.

In my role as Director of Data Services I care about each one of these data points; how we collect them, how we retain them, and what we do with them. My belief is that data can be used as a very effective tool to analyze the health of a church. I also believe that data-driven tools like Fellowship One can help make a large church small again in one sense. With a church of 100, it is not difficult to know everyone’s name – to know what is going on in the life of each family. As a church grows, it becomes increasingly difficult without good information. Data Points will never take the place of people – at the very core it is the relationships that really matter – but good data in the right hands at the right time can help make all the difference.

Over a series of blog posts I would like to dig a little deeper into what we are up to in the Data Services realm of Fellowship Technologies. Some of the topics I plan on discussing are Data Conversions, Data Quality, Data Reporting, Data Warehousing, Data Analysis, and Data Mining.

Geoff Whitney

DC08 RESTful rewind

FTProductDev — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:19:00 GMT

A few of you guys wanted the video from the conference on the RESTful API. We decided to go back and condense the presentation to give you a more tangible look @ the new API.

Look for more videos in the upcoming weeks to address questions and thoughts that have been coming our way. Thx guys for the awesome feedback - you guys rock!

Download here

- F1Dev

Parent's of... Children of...

CurtisHarris — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:23:00 GMT

Hit the IDEAS tab and sort by praise points... #4 on the list is the request to send an email to the parents of participants. Awesome! Great idea! Of course you may also want to send an email to all parents of kids who qualify for VBS; or, for that matter, create a group, export data, create assignments, etc.

Good news! As you know, we are aggressively attacking the ideas list (31 of the top 100 will be closed by the end of Summer) and very soon we will be able to deliver on #4. Check out my latest video on the UPDATES tab and let me know if we need to change anything. Thanks.

Nothin' in Life is Free...

tpolk — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:36:00 GMT

Love is! Well at least that’s what Damon Waynes tells Stacy Dash in the 1992 movie “Mo’ Money.” But Paul told us about the freedom a believer can have in Christ’s love when he wrote 1 Corinthians 10:23 and Galatians 5:13-14. (Below are the Tammy-versions of these verses)

Everything is permissible – but not beneficial

Everything is permissible – but not constructive

Everything is permissible – but I will not be mastered by anything

Do not use your freedom for the flesh - but for love in serving one another

Paul said we were free from the law of old in three little words “everything is permissible.” And then essentially he asks us to make a choice, the choice to choose love. Choose God over what is permissible; choosing to please God in every moment, in every day and in every way.

Life brings so many choices every day; what to wear, what to eat, who to spend time with, what to say or what not to say. We face a million choices in our mind and we can replay these choices in our head, rehearsing what we could have said, what we did say, if only we would have said it this way or that way because out of the mouth comes the overflow of the heart. Does your mouth reflect your heart? He calls us to give love to all through service but what happens when you don’t feel equipped to serve? Not ever. It is not your natural state of being. Serving others is a frustrating, annoying and a downright drag to you but you do it anyway, out of obedience hoping the feelings will come. Or maybe you have a servant’s heart but you are tired and broken down from always being the one giving.

God says come to me, ask and it will be given to you. He can change even the ugliest attitude. He has the power to raise the dead; he can surely turn you into a person willing to serve another. But he is not going to do it like Clark Kent changes into Superman; He wants you to voluntarily choose what is right. He delights in your journey to get to know him better, to serve his people and to watch as you fall in love with Him. He has the ability to spark the passion of service in even the coldest, hardest heart. If you call on Him, He will answer!

Let this be your prayer…Lord, please tender my heart as a heart that wants to benefit others, that wants to constructively expand Your Kingdom, and that can have a passion for someone other than for self. I know you have given me the believer’s freedom and that you tell me everything is permissible but show me self control in the “everything.” Break my heart for what is not permissible and then reveal to me who you want me to serve in a selfless, sacrificial love. Let me demonstrate your presence in my life by serving in love. Amen!

Serving you in Love…Tammy

I am Delivery...

FTDeliverySvcs — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:44:00 GMT

I know where Seat 21F is and the value of “exit row seating”

I know how useless airlines upgrade points can be

I have 2 sets of toiletries, one for at home, one for my suitcase

My toothpaste is less than 3 ounces and is carried in a one quart clear plastic bag

I don’t wear sandals to the airport

I’ve been to Buffalo Wild Wings in 14 different cities

I use up all of my words every day before I go home

I pray with my clients and my co-workers pray with me

I can’t believe they pay me to do this

I’m a “preferred” renter with EVERYONE

I’m a WebEx Ninja

I became a Skype fanatic before many people heard of VOIP

I am glad I will spend eternity with my clients

My CEO asks me how everything is going – and knows my clients by name

I know Fellowship One better than the people that wrote it; and make it do things they never intended

I can multi-task 10 projects at once and track everything to the nearest tenth of the hour

My wife doesn’t understand why I don’t like to eat out on the weekends

I pay for Internet access in hotel rooms in Manhattan, NY and get it for free in Manhattan, KS

Why do I always see Tom Park selling cars, no matter what city I go to?

I know when it starts to sprinkle outside that DFW airport shuts down

My office is where I can boot up my laptop

I know where the power outlets are at the airport

I always wear a long sleeve shirt on an airplane, even in July

I’ve had flight attendants recognize me

I know what should be on a guest registration card; and what shouldn’t

I’ll never ask for a spare razor from the Best Western in Ocala, Florida again

I love local commercials

McDonalds doesn’t have the same menu everywhere you go

I know what PDX, LAX, PHX, AUS, SFO, IAD, and DFW stand for and I have my favorites

I can book a trip faster than most people can put their shoes on

My drink of choice is coffee from the churches break room

I live for takeout food and a big TV in my hotel room

Checking baggage is for vacationers

If I arrive for a flight just as boarding is starting, I’m right on time

I am on staff at dozens of churches

My passion is my ministry

I wonder why the Dev team doesn’t copy and paste more to speed things up

I AM DELIVERY

FTeU Contest - Teach and Win!

FTEducationSvcs — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:10:00 GMT

We’re on a mission here in the Education Services department. Our mission is to help you learn how to use Fellowship One and then how to teach others to use it. So… we’re holding a contest. Watch Bill’s video blog below and become a star!

Deadline and fine print

All entries must be submitted to education@fellowshiptech.com by June 30^th. You may submit multiple entries but please submit them in separate email messages. Judging begins on July 1^st overseen by the clearinghouse of fine auditors that make up your Customer Services team at Fellowship Technologies.

Videos should be less than 5 minutes in length and can cover any Fellowship One topic or best practice process related to Fellowship One. If you need a FREE video capture tool, we recommend using Jing, it can be downloaded for free at www.jingproject.com

We will announce a winner on July 14th and your video will be featured in our blog and video llibrary. Additionally, choose your prize—a customized Bob shirt or a starring role in a Bob video.

Don’t let the size of the fishbowl stunt your growth

csimmons — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:23:00 GMT

I'm frequently engaged in conversations about an individual's career through informal one-on-ones, mentor sessions, semi-annual checkpoints, or interviewing prospective new hires. Frequently one of the following statements are made -- "I feel limited in my current role", "I feel like I've accomplished all that I can in my job", "I need a new challenge", "Will this role allow me to grow?"

Taken by themselves the statements and questions are valid. There are times when someone is ready to be moved to a new role or promoted to new levels of responsibilities. There are legitimate instances where someone worked in a "dead end" job at their previous employer. However, it's been my experience that often the individuals making those statements and asking those questions are placing self-defined limitations on themselves based on the perceived scope and responsibilities of the role they were assigned within an organization. Or put another way, they are letting the size of the fishbowl (role) stunt their growth unnecessarily.

You shouldn't feel limited by your current role or situation. Joseph never let his circumstances or role limit what God had planned for him (Genesis 37 - 50). He didn't complain or "shut down" when things didn't go as planned. Instead, Joseph kept his eyes on the prize, working as for Lord and not men, and through prayer, hard work, dedication, loyalty, and a servant heart he was rewarded with new challenges and new responsibilities.

So I encourage you today to feel empowered in your role and responsibilities, whatever they may be. You can grow and make a positive and lasting impact regardless of your circumstances.

God bless,

Curtis S

Why Was I Successful at DC08?

FTDeliverySvcs — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:27:00 GMT

After all the cheering and applause died down following the DC08 conference (mostly in my head) I had to stop and look back at a very successful event and wonder why it (and more importantly I) was so successful. God played a big role in this year’s conference no doubt. We sure did pray a lot. We prayed for Tara Coulson whose tireless efforts made the complicated things simple. She reviewed every presentation and training guide for typos and validated the material. Personally I can’t imagine doing this but she did it with a smile on her face (maybe it was a grimace at times) and a bounce in her step. I personally think she personifies Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men.

We prayed for each other because… well… that is just what we do and who we are. We prayed for the safe travel of our guests, the DC08 Conference attendees. I found this particular aspect of prayer very fruitful. I prayed when I first received my list of attendees, then I sent them an email letting them know I was personally praying for each of them and also to ask if there was anything I could do for them and asked when specifically would they be on the road so I could pray again at that time. Once they replied I set reminders in Outlook to pray for them at the specific time they left their homes.

Another reason we were so successful was because we had a Tammy. I think everyone needs a Tammy. I think they are on sale right now at Home Depot for $499 but I am not sure about that. Tammy set time lines, Tammy sent email reminders, Tammy called you on the phone, Tammy griped at you when you didn’t have your presentation done, Tammy was mean when she needed to be, Tammy was a sweet heart when everything was going well, Tammy made the DC08 successful. Everyone is fallen and has a sin nature. When looking at the demographics of the people who read this blog I am sure you would agree with that statement. Not that you are more sinful just more aware. Sloth seems to be a big sin that has been pushed aside for more glamorous sins like Lust and Greed. Tammy is also a part time Sloth Slayer.

As a member of the Delivery Team I think we also had something working in our favor. You may not know this but churches are very busy around Christmas and Easter. At this point you are probably saying to yourselves “finally some useful information!” Stay with me now… Christmas and Easter fall before the DC08 Conference. Since they are busy during that time period they definitely do not want me around telling them all of the things I want them to improve upon or completely change. So I have time on my hands to write blogs and presentations. My manager Jeff has come to realize that this Christmas cycle seems to happen every year so this year he made it perfectly clear that presentations should be written during this annual “Christmas Event”. So as others were hastily writing/rewriting/preparing/panicking at 3AM prior to the conference I was sleeping like a baby. My work was done, my presentation was set, and I was ready.

Lastly, and this is just a personal note that I am throwing in for Steve at Christ the King who recently was reviewing my presentation that I sent him and wondering where all the presentation notes were, I never add my notes to my presentation slides. Sloth might play a role and it is something that I should do after the fact or maybe as a separate handout but having them in my presentation has always caused me problems. I want to know my material backwards and forwards before the event. If I am relying at all on notes I have a problem. No one wants to see me read my presentation. I need passion to sell the concepts I am presenting and notes are a stumbling block for me (Red Bull helps too but next year I am sticking to one instead of the 2 I had on the first day). I prefer to think of the presentation slides as guidepost along the journey of discovery.

I hope that you all enjoyed the DC08 Conference as much as I did. Don’t forget you can find most of the presentations HERE. Also I would like to close with an apology for those that attended the Creative Uses of Check-In session. Steve and I ended up doing way more of a standup comedy routine than I intended. If you missed the point (not 100% sure we had a point) of the presentation it was that you should be more creative with how you use check-in. If you were offended by some of Steve’s comments you can email him at sDrechsler@fellowshiptech.com. Or if you have a sense of humor you can email him and tell him how funny and informative he was.

Matthew McMaster

Delivery Manager (Part Time Public Speaker)

Redirected Passion

tpolk — Thu, 29 May 2008 02:25:00 GMT

I’ve heard it many times coming from people sitting on the other side of my desk… “I’ve just lost my passion.” Really, lost your passion, huh? Nope, you haven’t lost your passion. You just redirected it to something else. You have made a choice to either not make use of it or you intentionally let it die so you no longer possess it. Sometimes God redirects our passion for us when he is getting ready to move us to a new level in our relationship with Him. Paul is the prime example of a man who had his passion redirected by God, he listened and went to a new level. I have seen many people being redirected by God only to fight it every step of the way and miss out on what God was asking them to do because they would not change. Pharaoh refused to listen as God was redirecting his passion (yep, 10+ times, God is way more patient than me!)

Passion is a tricky emotion because it is just that, it’s an emotion. You can have the intensity one day and not the next. Passion is a deceiving little bugger, it makes you think you need to have that overmastering, reckless feeling, the one that drives you away from any amount of reason and sense to think you have it, but it's not true. You can have a consistent drive and love for God’s will everyday without the emotional highs and lows associated with the worldly view of passion.

I have had people in my office telling me all the reasons they should quit their job because they lost their passion but then they never quit. God has a way of making us discontent and disconnected with where we are so we will move, but some people just stay and become negative and miserable. If only they would have just listened to God and moved they may not have wasted their talents and made so many other people around them miserable by staying put. You’ve seen it too, the lifer at a company or a church who just does enough to get by, sits in his cube not making a difference, has a negative attitude and management does nothing about it because he has been “loyal” for 20 years. A no win situation. He has not contributed in years and his bad attitude is contagious, in fact it even runs off the contributors because they don’t understand why he is still around.

In my wisdom (not age, mind you J), now when people come to my office and confess all the reasons they should leave their job because they lost their passion, I ask them… “Do you want me to talk you into it or talk you out of it?” I also forewarn them, that if I talk them out of leaving then I will not allow them to have a negative attitude, they are to serve with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their mind and with all their strength.

So why do we think we lose our passion, could it be because it is not in line with God’s will? As they say in Texas, “might could!” If that is the case do you just wake up one day and your passion has changed? Might could, ask Paul. Or a scarier thought, you have total control over the passion God has placed in your heart and you have the choice to redirect it. Ouch, that means you might actually have to be accountable for your choices.

So how do you get your passion back in line with God's will? Simple, well, simply said, much harder to apply! Matthew 22:37 says it all…“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” Give God your “everything.” (I love blogging while listening to Lincoln Brewster, thanks for the line Lincoln!) God is a jealous God and he wants our “everything.” Once He has it, He can direct our passion. When He is in control of our passion, it will certainly line up with His will (might, could!) and it will be pretty hard to lose. Now, He might redirect it but then at least we know we are still walking in His passion.

Redirect your passion today to the true One and Only and then enjoy the passion He has in store for you! Givin' my all to Jesus! Tam

I have yet to see anyone who doesn't stare at this in awe during a demo

CurtisHarris — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:16:00 GMT

F1 Analytics... reporting on steroids. I have yet to see anyone who doesn't stare at this in awe during a demo; frequently following that dazed look is a frantic "how do we get our hands on this ASAP!" We have been working on our data warehouse for quite a while now and suddenly the light can be seen at the end of this tunnel. The video posted highlights many features, certainly not exhaustive, of the latest addition to our reporting toolset we have titled "F1 Analytics".

While I feature Rick Chatham in the video (he has been the guy running this show), I don't want to leave out some well deserved props for Geoff Whitney and Brian Vinson as both have played key roles in making the dream take root; I'm not even sure how to share the deep value and help they have brought.

-> Go To Post in Updates <- (must be signed in)

DC08 Session and Training Materials are now available

csimmons — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:35:00 GMT

As promised at the DC08 conference, the vast majority of the session materials are now available at http://www.dynamicchurchconference.com/sessions Some are unavailable because they didn't use slides during their session (e.g., Terry Storch) or we don't have access to the files... yet (e.g., PhoneTree). If we receive any of the missing files we'll post them immediately.

The materials from the Hands-on Training labs are available to download from the Education tab on the Experience community site.

Please note that some of the presentation slides will make more sense than others. We coached our staff and external presenters to minimize their dependency on their slides' text and bullets. Instead we wanted them to focus on their presentation skills and content. As a result I think we had some of our best presentations to date. However, as a by-product, the slides often only contain an image or just a few words. Perhaps next year we can video each session but with over 100 sessions and training classes that task is a logistical and financial challenge.

The three keynote videos / materials will be available in a few weeks once we're complete with the video editing (takes time to combine 3 camera angles plus PowerPoint slides and product demos).

God bless,

Curtis S

OK Twitter, You Win

csimmons — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:04:00 GMT

Recently, I blogged that I just didn't "get" Twitter. To me it seemed filled with updates from individuals starring in their own movie "I can't decide between Fruity Pebbles and Cap'n Crunch this morning -- it's going to be a long day". I just didn't need that additional noise in my queue, even from close friends.

Then I attended Terry Storch's session at our DC08 conference. He opened my eyes to the legitimate business uses of Twitter. So who am I to question a Digerati? So despite my initial misgivings a number of the FT Staff are going to dip our toes in the Twit. There are many, but some notables to follow are:

Corporate - ExperienceF1, F1ProductMgmt, and F1Dev
Jeff Hook, CEO - JeffHook
Curtis Simmons, VP Operations - CurtisSimmons
Jeff Pelletier, VP Sales & Marketing - JeffPelletier

Here's a tutorial for the newbies - Twitter in Plain English. Now if Twitter will just stay up.

God bless,

Curtis S

Dynamic Church 08 and Bob

FTEducationSvcs — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:08:00 GMT

Education Services is back from the Dynamic Church User’s Conference more fired up than ever. We have so many things we want to do – we’re just praying for the time to do them all!

We loved seeing new and old friends at the conference and took home all of your great ideas. Within the next few days, I’m told the power point slides will be available to download from the conference web site.

Cool things we learned at DC08

Jing is too cool! Did you notice all the presentations that included short videos? These videos were made using a free screen recording tool from TechSmith called Jing. This product installs on your PC or Mac and allows you to record yourself moving around the screen and then decide how you want to share it with others. We’re all about sharing here (and free never hurts anything). Check them out at the Jing Project site.

Tip: Those of you using WebLink can really benefit from this. You can now make videos showing how to create an account or how to register your child for VBS.

Second cool thing is that our customers are amazing! We knew this already, but to see you in action at the conference was incredible. Your presentations were dynamic and engaging and your questions were challenging and thought provoking. We are truly blessed to have you partner with us as we grow Fellowship One to new heights.

What about Bob?

While we were at the conference, Bob snuck into our video library (click on New Free Video Library). He’s in the following locations:

· Administration >> Administrator’s Overview

· Contact Management >> Contact Management

· Ministry >> Small Groups >> Small Groups Overview

· Coming soon to People >> Group Email will be a new character (Pastor RJ)

Check out Bob featured in Curtis Simmons' Keynote --->

What’s coming to education?

Next up for us is to provide you with supporting documents for the video library. For example, case studies that describe the benefits/advantages of different methods of configuration. Additionally, we want to provide you with other documents that will complement our existing documentation to help you do your job.

With that in mind, we need you. We would love to hear your stories about how you effectively use Fellowship One. Please comment below or send us a message at education@fellowshiptech.com.

Change and Accountability -- two sides of the same coin

FTDeliverySvcs — Mon, 19 May 2008 05:30:00 GMT

It seems to go hand in hand when you talk about change it brings up accountability. When you talk about accountability it inevitably brings up the need to change things. Fellowship One is an enterprise solution for a church. Enterprise means the whole church will be affected. I think people are less afraid of the change that comes with a new software solution than they are the accountability that comes with it. When you move to a common source of data it is easier to see who is doing what or not doing as the case maybe. Accountability is not a bad thing in and of itself. If presented well accountability can be seen as a benchmark to improving yourself and your church. If used as a threat then it creates resistance which often is mislabeled as resistance to change. Before you can determine accountability you must first know how to measure the results. Software does not hold you accountable it only measures the results of your efforts. If you know how to measure your own efforts then the change and accountability brought on by moving to a new system is minimal.

Jeremy Jackson

Lovin’ every minute of it

csimmons — Sat, 17 May 2008 06:32:00 GMT

Wow, what an experience the last couple of days! We kicked off our 2nd annual Dynamic Church Conference on Thursday and we’ve had an awesome 48 hours. And there’s still more to experience on Saturday.

I love our company’s unrelenting focus on excellence in everything we do.

I love the 65 committed, talented, caring people that work at Fellowship Tech.

I love the 366 customers and prospects that attended this year’s events.

I love the 18 sponsors / partners we had in our Expo this year.

I love that one customer was so committed to coming to DC08 that when she accidently broke her leg the day before traveling to the conference, that she went to the doctor and STILL made her flight into Dallas!

I love that our customers are so understanding that when the hotel completely messed up the Internet connections on Thursday morning for our Hands-on Training labs but I still had one woman compliment us on how well the room looked!

I love that our technology operations team is filled with talented technologists – they went to Best Buy in a heartbeat, purchased miscellaneous hardware, then acted like MacGyver and fixed the Internet connection, bypassing the hotel’s inability to resolve it. It salvaged the hands-on labs the rest of the day.

I love that the sessions on our new RESTful API and Fellowship One Analytics were packed and got rave reviews. I believe that’s confirmation that we’re heading down the right path.

I love that I got to meet Cynthia Ware and Joe Suh in person. I also had the privilege of hearing them speak during each of their sessions. (I also love that Cynthia Ware is an OU grad – Boomer Sooner!)

I love that I got applause during my keynote - I love it even more that the applause had nothing whatsoever to do with me! They were praising the fine work of our development team – I was simply blessed to be the messenger.

I love that I got sit in Terry Storch’s session. He challenged us all to our core with some serious “What if” questions.

I love that our company had Lincoln Brewster play a concert for our staff and attendees at Celebration Covenant Church. The church leadership, staff, and volunteers at Celebration are amazing servant leaders! We are very grateful to the church for hosting the concert.

I love that I got to spend over an hour with Lincoln Brewster at dinner Friday evening, learning more about him and his family. What an awesome guy – so talented and so “others” focused.

I love that our staff came up with fresh ideas at the conference like Power Start, an FT Store for shirts and other goodies, new ways to honor our sponsors, etc. And that most of the ideas were a tremendous success!

I love the energy and vibe of our conference. It’s an honor to participate in such an exciting and uplifting event.

I love that I get the privilege of working at Fellowship Tech. It’s awesome!

God bless,

Curtis S

Update: Get the latest sneak peek into Report Builder

CurtisHarris — Tue, 13 May 2008 02:04:00 GMT

The report builder project is going moving forward quickly now. We have one church previewing it and will begin expanding that out over the next couple months to ensure a smooth launch. I've dropped a video under the UPDATES tab, check it out here -> Sneak Peek Video (must be signed in)

A Kiosk that keeps on Giving

csimmons — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:30:00 GMT

About 2 years ago a new idea and company was born. Marty Baker, the Senior Pastor of Stevens Creek Community Church in Augusta, GA, had the idea for a new way to donate money to the church. A way to reach out to his congregation in the way that they lived day to day. He realized that fewer and fewer individuals carried checkbooks or even cash. So "dropping their donation into the offering plate" was not something that many of the younger members could relate to. So Marty began to observe what people carried and used in their daily lives, at the grocery store, getting fast food, at the mall, etc. The answer was Debit Cards. Debit Cards look like, smell like, and feel like Credit Cards but the money is withdrawn directly from your bank account.

So Marty experimented with building what looks a little like Check-in Kiosks that accept Debit Cards, with an attached pin-pad device. A member or visitor to the church can walk up to the kiosk, select the Fund to which they want to donate, enter an amount, swipe their Debit Card, enter their 4 digit pin code, and get a tax deductible receipt. It's a little like a reverse ATM in your church. J A big benefit of using a pin debit is that that it only costs pennies per transaction.

Marty took the idea to market and launched a for-profit company under the name Secure Give about 18 - 24 months ago. As of May 2008, Secure Give has about 60 churches as clients, including organizations like the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Hawaii.

New Partnership

We became aware of Secure Give shortly after the company launched but we were admittedly skeptical about its acceptance in the church. In recent months we've seen a real increase in interest from our client base concerning Giving Kiosks so we're excited to announce our new partnership with Secure Give.

The integration is pretty straightforward. Secure Give is programming against our Data Exchange API to extract / synchronize the list of Individuals the church has stored within Fellowship One. The church member walks up to the kiosk and is prompted to enter their 10 digit telephone number. If their member record is found, then the member proceeds and donates money to one or more funds.

On a periodic basis (nightly / weekly) Secure Give will pass the contribution records back to Fellowship One. We will then programmatically import that data into Fellowship One, matching it against the appropriate member record. If a transaction being imported does not match a member record within Fellowship One (the member is new) then that giving record will be posted to the Fellowship One unmatched queue. The church will then manually match the record to an existing member or create a new household just as they would for any unmatched contribution.

Competitive Landscape

New competitors are cropping up in the giving kiosk area. One of particular interest is Secure Pointe. The idea and user interface is similar but their pricing and delivery model is significantly different than Secure Give. We have provided Secure Pointe all of the same information we gave Secure Give and expect their integration to be complete soon as well.

Contact Information

For more information please contact either of the two companies listed below. They will also be at our Dynamic Church Conference in May.

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Secure Give
www.securegive.com
706-228-3210
info (at) securegive.com

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Secure Pointe
www.securepointe.com
Don Brock, dbrock (at) securepointe.com
Office: 336.993.4111 x. 305

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Remote Deposit Capture is coming to Fellowship One

csimmons — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:14:00 GMT

We’re pleased to announce our newest business partner, Profit Stars, a subsidiary of Jack Henry and Associates. Profit Stars will be providing a batch scanning and remote deposit capture solution for churches using Fellowship One.

Current Process

Many of our clients, especially larger ones, get hundreds and sometimes thousands of checks, into their offering plate each week. Before they can drive those checks to the bank for deposit they must first scan them into Fellowship One. As the checks are scanned into Fellowship One the data entry person enters the amount and visually verifies that the auto-matching process using the MICR code is correct. They also verify the activity, fund, pledge drive, etc.

Today, we only capture and store the front-side image of the check. A bit of trivia -- we have now captured and stored over 19 million check images! After scanning into Fellowship One is complete, they must then drive the checks to the bank for deposit. The church then waits for the checks to clear before they get access to those monies. Roughly 60 – 80% of the checks clear the next day, but checks drawn from smaller, more remote, banks may take several more days to clear. The diagram below illustrates the two step process of 1) Scanning into Fellowship One and 2) Driving the checks to the bank for deposit.

Our Interim Solution

After a long evaluation period we have chosen to partner with Profit Stars. With Profit Stars a church can use a batch scanner which can scan 30 – 100 checks every minute or so. The process is similar to the current one but with some big advantages. They open up Profit Stars, create a new batch, enter the total number of checks and total amount of money in that batch. They press go and the batch scanner quickly scans each check into the system. The church then presses save and moves onto the next batch.

But wait, didn’t I skip a step? What about entering the amounts, balancing the batch, etc.? The beauty is you don’t have to! Profit Stars leverages Courtesy Amount (CAR) and Legal Amount (LAR) Recognition technology to automatically read the written amounts on the checks. And for those it cannot read successfully they have a team of people on the back-end that will manually correct and balance the batch for the church. Next they convert those checks into either ACH transactions or Check 21 files for clearing. If all of the batches are scanned prior to about 6:00pm CT then Profit Stars will then make a deposit into the church’s bank the following morning for 100% of the total deposit -- even if all of the checks have not yet cleared (for qualifying churches).

Will you still need to scan the checks into Fellowship One? The software integration is still in progress. So if a church wanted to use Profit Stars now then they would have to scan the checks twice – once into Profit Stars and once into Fellowship One. Why start there? Well many churches are being pushed to use this technology by their local bank. So if the church is intent on using a Remote Deposit Capture solution, why not use Profit Stars instead? This will place you into a great position when integration is completed.

There are many churches that really want the security, convenience, and 100% next-day funds availability offered in this solution. They can complete the scanning into Profit Stars in just an hour or two and then can take as much time as they want to scan them into Fellowship One (since the deposit is already on its way electronically). The diagram below illustrates the three step process of 1) Scanning into Profit Stars, 2) Profit Stars deposits the monies into the church’s bank, and 3) Scanning into Fellowship One.

Final Solution

The integration into Fellowship One will be completed in an upcoming quarter. In this solution, a church that is using Remote Deposit Capture would only scan their checks once. The diagram below illustrates the four step process of 1) The church would scan into Profit Stars, 2) Profit Stars deposits the monies into the church’s bank, 3) Profit Stars will pass back to Fellowship One a file containing all of the check images, account/routing numbers, and amount, 4) We would then import the images and data into an interface similar to Fellowship One Contributions where the church could visually verify the activity, fund, pledge drive, and Household/Individual.

Who does a church contact for more information?

For questions or more information, please email us at remotedeposit (at) fellowshiptech.com

New features added to Experience Fellowship One

Administrator — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:08:00 GMT

In case you haven't noticed there are two new tabs on the Experience.FellowshipOne.com site. To access these new features you need to be logged in with your Fellowship One username, password, and churchcode.

The first new tab is labeled DEVELOPERS. On this tab you will find some exciting news about our new RESTful API which is under development. Attendees of our Dynamic Church Conference will get a sneak peek into this powerful new way to access Fellowship One and extend it's core features. In addition, you will also find documentation and code examples for our existing XML-based API that we call Data Exchange. Don't under-estimate it's power, we have many churches and partners leveraging Data Exchange on a daily basis.

The second new tab is labeled STATUS. On this tab you can see our current system status and receive information in the event that an issue arises. It also displays the total page loads and average page render time for the past 30 days. We have also added a tool where you can test your Internet connection speed to/from our data center which hosts Fellowship One.

Please take a moment to check out these new features, we hope that they enhance your experience with Fellowship One!

Check out a secret development project...

CurtisHarris — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:15:00 GMT

Finally, another behind the scenes look at what we are developing! Check out my latest video that gives you a tour of a project you have probably never heard of, but will give you the ability take report results and:

create a new group OR add to an existing one
send those people an email
export the files
(future) make mass changes to the data such as status change, add assignments, contacts, attributes, etc.

I am not always successful at this, but I do try to keep my videos short and to the point; this one is only 2 minutes 12 seconds... success!! Check it out by following the video under the UPDATES tab: Click here to find the video (must be signed in)

Q2 Road Map

CurtisHarris — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:31:00 GMT

All right, this is the last road map for a while... I know you guys would prefer to see the behind the scenes software development. Check out our Q2 road map over on the UPDATES tab-> Q2 Road Map (must be signed in)