Experience.FellowshipOne.com

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 

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

Ok, I admit it… I have a bit of an inferiority complex.  But I have it because I am misunderstood and underutilized.  Why don’t you love me?  I am faster than my sibling “Assisted Check-In” and way more flexible than my other sibling “Rapid Barcode Check-In”.  I know what you’re thinking… you’re afraid.  Why?  You were brave enough to try F1 Check-In when your friends laughed and said the technology was too new.  Have you aged so much that now you too are afraid of new things? 

 

Maybe it’s a comfort thing.  If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?  Check-In is going great.  You’re thinking our staff has grown to know and love “Assisted”.  They are so comfortable with it they just know it as plain old “Check-In”.  If you would only try me out on one station, I can show you why I am 10 times faster than him. 

 

Newer churches, that have come to know and love, me will tell you that even though they still use “Assisted” to check a family with 4 kids into their rooms in about a minute, they are seeing much faster times with me.  I don’t like to brag but…  I have met the family with 6 kids and can check them into their classrooms in 10 seconds flat. 

 

I heard a rumor from a friend of a friend that some of you think I just don’t have that personal touch.  I will try and not be offended by that statement.  Sniff… sniff… (Be strong. I told myself I wouldn’t cry…) Look don’t ask me. Of course I will tell you that I am sensitive and personal.  Just ask Prestonwood.  Fellowship Technologies, my own creators, were a bit skeptical at first too. 

 

Prestonwood has said on numerous occasions that they were able to take the Check-In Greeters, make them real Greeters standing in front of the guests, actually talking to them rather than going through some check in script and asking people for their digits like they are looking for a date at a singles retreat.  Ok, so maybe I am a little bitter.  My Greeters are actually asking people about their day, telling the little girls how pretty they look in their fancy dresses, commenting on how good it is to see the Jones again, and making everyone feel like they really belong. 

 

I am also flexible.  Based on my mood I can change the way I look and act.  I have a theme for every occasion.  I show my serious side for the Men’s Ministry bible study on Saturday morning.  The kids love my Noah’s Ark screens and beg their parents to let them play with me.  One church caught me blushing while they were working on my CPU but it turned out to be just a bad video card. 

 

 

 

Hey, I bet you didn’t know that you can even use a finger print reader to Check-In rather than barcodes.  This works best with Youth Ministries because kids will lose a barcode but they hardly ever leave home without their fingers.  Another upside is that they haven’t read Revelations or George Orwell’s 1984 so making the leap from barcodes to the mark forced on people during the end times and Big Brother watching them is not as important as the latest Britney Spears album.  (OK, I don’t know anything about music either because the IT department has me locked down and removed all my mp3 files)

 

OK, here’s the deal.  I know and love you even though you don’t know me yet.  I am willing to take the first step.  I am going to the Dynamic Church Conference and I want to meet you there.  I even have my own booth.  To sweeten the deal (as if you need more incentives,) I will give you $50 off your registration if you register before the end of the month.  Just click here and type in “McMaster” when it asks you for a promotion code.  Mr. McMaster has worked out some sort of deal so you should probably plan on attending his “Creative Uses of Self Check-In” presentation since he is saving you so much money and he is some sort of genius. 

 

I’ve got a feeling this is the start of a great relationship between us!  Call me.

I have recently volunteered to be on site at churches when they go live with Fellowship One check-in.  Not too long ago, I always passed on these opportunities because I believed it to be a waste of my time and a waste of the churches money. I had explained to the church several times and they had watched hours of training videos explaining how to setup and run check-in. Not only that but I had just been there walking the church through the check-in process. What was there not to understand? 

 

The issues I will be presenting below I have seen at nearly every church I have worked with helping them to get up and running on check-in.  A common issue is facing the kiosk towards the guests. Anyone that has been to an airport lately and seen self check-in would say that they had them setup correctly. The problem was that these kiosks were not for self check-in.  In the diagram below you can see the problem. The “Greeter” manning the check-in station has to turn their back on the people they are checking in.

 

I know what you are thinking now and yes… I do come from a family of artists. Notice the angst on the children’s faces as the check-in greeter does a poor job of checking them in. It breaks your heart doesn’t it?

The next common mistake that I have seen deals with kiosk spacing. When churches initially setup their kiosk in an empty room they tend to place them two feet apart or less. This seems to make perfect sense even when they are testing and having their staff come up to the check-in station and pretend to be a family checking in on Sunday. The problem is that you will rarely ever have just one person checking into a children’s activity. What is more common is a mother checking in with two to four children orbiting her like satellites while dad graciously offered to drop them off at the door so he could “park” the car. What mom probably already knows is that dad only offered because of the chaos that ensues when dropping the kids off. If he can time it right, all the work will be done and mom will be ready for coffee and bagels by the time he makes his entrance. Sorry guys… if I can’t do this anymore because my lovely wife and mother of my 4 kids has figured this out than neither can you! In the wonderfully illustrated diagram below, you can see the proper placement of kiosks.

Lastly we address the issue of lines. Death, taxes, and lines are inevitable if you are human and a part of a growing, dynamic church. The only way to avoid lines is self check-in (which will not be addressed in this blog), teaching your parents not to show up 2 minutes before the service starts (yeah right), or a moral failure by your Sr. Pastor.  I personally favor self check-in.  In the first diagram, originally painted by Van Gogh and skillfully imitated here, you can see a well organized stanchion lined process for parishioners to flow through. 

At the exit will be a friendly greeter assisting families to locate the next available check-in station. There are several benefits to this which include a constant state of movement due to the interval of turnover at the different kiosks. It also helps reduce the chaos factor which can be seen clearly in the second diagram.  But my personal favorite reason for one line going to multiple kiosks is that you never get stuck in the slow lane. How many times have you been caught in the grocery store line behind the woman that can’t figure out how to write a check or the cashier has the motivation of a man going in for a vasectomy or the guy in front of you wants to argue that the item was clearly marked on the shelf as being .48 cents not .55 cents! CAN I GET AN AMEN!? That will not happen with multiple options available to you at the point of being the next in line. 

 

You do not need to have stanchions and a long line if you have enough check-in stations. The best approach is to have enough kiosks to be able to have only two or three families in any given single kiosk line. This is not always possible and chaos soon follows.

 

Matthew McMaster

Delivery Manager/Impressionist  

One thing I love about traveling is the adventure of it all.  I know lots of people that travel and hate every minute of the time they spend running from terminal, to check in counter, to hotel room, to meetings.  What I think they fail to notice is the exciting things that can and do happen when you visit new places and people.

 

This is one of those times.  I recently went to visit a church in East Texas, Nacogdoches to be exact.  The church was Grace Bible church.  They are a dynamic church located on the Stephen F. Austin campus.  Prior to coming out for a day visit I asked them if they had a place for me to stay the night.  They were a smaller church and I often stay with a pastor’s family when I am on the road to help save costs.  Many of my colleagues see this as pure insanity but I have made many a friend this way and for the most part it is better than staying in some anonymous hotel room.  They were happy to oblige and said that I could stay in their intern house where they put up college interns when they have them working on staff.  They mentioned that they would leave the door open and gave me the address.  The drive from North Dallas to Nacogdoches is about 4 hours and I arrived at the address around 10:30PM. 

 

Not a light on in the entire house and to say it looked like the Bates Motel would be a step up.  Not only that, but there were people walking around the area.  College students no doubt, but if you have seen kids these days they all looked a bit suspicious. 

 

Upon entering the residence that was either built in the late 40’s or early 50’s I had the strange sense that I wasn’t completely alone.  I searched the house and made sure that no one was there.  Many of the light switches didn’t work or were not connected to lamps so the house was dark.  One bedroom contained a freshly made bed with a towel set laid upon the comforter.  This led me to believe this was to be my room.  The other bedroom was tidy but had the appearance that someone had been sleeping there lately.  A bible and a coffee mug on the night stand were the main clues that I had.  There were no pictures or clothes lying around so I just assumed someone else had bunked here in the last few days. 

 

The front door did not have a dead bolt.  In its place was what can only be described as a screen door latch.  Suitable for keeping a screen door from flying open in the wind but nowhere near a security lock.  The back door was similarly secured with a screen door latch that when applied might be one quarter of an inch into a suspect door frame. 

 

Although I am always up for an adventure I have seen one too many movies where the killer sneaks into your room late at night and silently slits your throat.  I really don’t want to go like that so I latched both screen door security devices went to my room and promptly jammed a folding chair under the door handle.  This too would probably not keep a determined killer out of my room but I thought it would give me enough time to dial 911 or at least scream like a girl at the top of my lungs.  At this point I feel the need to tell you I am 6’4” and spent 9 years in the Marines.  But as my drill instructor was fond of telling us after we had been through combat training “any idiot with a gun can kill an unprepared Marine”. 

 

Sleep came without much tossing and turning.  I was dreaming of successful data conversions and happy customers (yeah right) when I was awoken by a loud crunch.  At first I thought it must be morning and the church was there to wake me up for breakfast.  I slowly got out of bed and stretched.  When I grabbed my phone to check the time I was surprised to see it was 3:33 AM.  I am easily distracted so I watched the clock for a minute and pondered what a strange time 3:33 AM was and also wondered when the last time I had seen this hour of the night.  Then I realized that the noise I had heard had definitely come from inside the house. 

 

I opened my phone and dialed 911.  I didn’t hit send but I also didn’t want to have to find those buttons if I came across an intruder.  I quietly moved the chair away from the door while I was intently listening for the sound of thugs stealing what little this residence had to offer.  I kept the light off in my room and opened the door.  The rest of the house was in complete darkness so I used my cell phone to light up the room.  I slowly moved to the front door while scanning the room.  I was thinking about a movie I had recently seen where Will Smith was in a similar situation.  He was trying to avoid blood crazed simi-vampirus humans in a dark environment and I was very possibly in the same situation.  It was 3:33AM anything is possible. 

 

The front door was locked and the screen door latch appeared to be doing its impossible job of securing the door.  At that point I was surprised by how much relief I had when I saw that latch.  It at least told me that no one had been through this door.  I then moved to the rear entrance as quiet as a mouse. 

 

As I approached the rear entrance there was something wrong with the rear door.  In the darkness it appeared that the frame was somehow dislodged from the door.  Upon closer inspection I noticed that someone had kicked in the back door and the screen door latch had failed me!  The latch had valiantly clung to the door frame but not the door.  I pressed the send button and held my breath. 

 

Thank God for 911 operators at 3:33AM.  I quickly and quietly caught the nice lady on the phone up with the situation and tried to explain how this was not my house and I was only a bit sure of the address.  She assured me that the police were on their way.  I moved back to the front of the house; mainly because there was more room to move around in and I wanted more room to fight in if simi-humanoid vampire appeared out of one of the homes many corners.  The 911 operator asked me if I had a weapon.  I told her no but that was a good idea and began to move back towards the kitchen to get a knife or a spoon or something.  She told me not to do that because the police were now outside the house and she didn’t want me to be shot accidentally.  This sounded like an even better idea so I put the butter knife back.  I asked her to tell the police not to shoot the big bald white guy in his underwear to which she laughed. 

 

I peeked out through the mini-blinds in time to see 3 police cruisers slowly and stealthily approach the house with no lights on.  As they officers exited their vehicles they left the doors open so as to not make a sound.  I thought this would be a good idea if you wanted to catch someone but my main goal was to not be killed so I opened the front door and motioned for the closest officer to come in.  He was a nice middle sized middle aged non-descript East Texas police officer.  The other officers went around searching the outside of the property. 

 

I quickly explained the situation and led the officer to the back door.  He agreed that someone had definitely forcibly entered the premises so he began looking around the living room with his flashlight.  Again the interior lights didn’t work so it was still dark in the house.  I went to the bedroom and put on some pants.  If I was going to be killed now I at least wanted to be wearing pants. 

 

The other officers entered the house and they all talked for a few seconds about the situation.  One of them noticed there were two closed doors and asked if those rooms had been searched.  I mentioned that I had searched them earlier in the night but not since the break in.  In one motion they all pulled their guns and flashlights and in C.O.P.S. TV show fashion they approached the door.  They grabbed the first door and flung it open while pointing their guns at the quivering vacuum cleaner tucked into the small closet.  Unfair as it might have been pictures of Barnie Fife popped in my head and I feared for my life again. 

 

The second door stood ominously as the last possible place for someone to be hiding.  I was fairly sure that whoever broke into the house was long gone and so when they grabbed the handle and launched into the room I was fairly shocked when they started shouting.  “GET YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!”  I was right behind the officers so I glanced around them and saw a terrified 20 something male getting out of bed wearing nothing but boxer shorts. 

 

Dread filled my soul as I realized this must be the intern.  I had assumed wrongly that the house was unoccupied.  After the police got the intern to show some ID and he explained that he actually lived there the officers turned to me and said “Then who are you!”

 

The officers all agreed that this would make a very funny story the next day at the church.  It is funny now but at the time it was a bit too close to scary to be funny.

 

Matthew McMaster

Delivery Manager (Part time vampire slayer wannabe) 

As delivery managers, we have a responsibility to wisely use the time and money provided by the local church to implement Fellowship One.  We are called to help empower the church to more efficiently bring people to the table of the Lord. 

I often view myself as an educator (amongst other things).  I am here to help people understand how to use Fellowship One in their unique environment, and use the wonderful technology we posses to empower the local church.  Sometimes people embrace this, other times it can be more confrontational to get people to leave the comforts of their current church management system and learn something new in the name of progress.  It requires people to leave their comfort zone and make themselves vulnerable, not many people like leaving anywhere comfortable.

The delivery team at Fellowship Technologies is an evolving team.  There was a day and time where we were all cowboys (and cowgirls), roaming the countryside, going from church to church, each doing our own thing as we best saw fit.  Those days are long behind us, and it hasn’t been a painless road, I must confess.  But I can tell you that the changes we have made have been for the best.  Without a structured process and product (being the service we deliver), we would lose our departmental and corporate identity.  We now produce a better, more standardized product, and hopefully a more efficient process, leaving us more time to deal with process change within the church itself.  In order for this to work, people must be open to change, and if necessary, the pain that goes along with it.

I have been delivering the Fellowship One product to churches now for over 2.5 years and I have learned so much during my tenure.  I have realized that, yes, I am a teacher to many, but those many are also teachers to me.  EVERY church I work with teaches me something.  It’s that something that everyone in my team brings to the table at regular intervals to help us produce a better, more refined product, making better and better use of the church’s time and money.  Without you teaching us about you and what you do, we become stagnant and stale and the product no longer evolves.  Each delivery manager learning something new puts us in a vulnerable place.  We have to ask ourselves if what we did before was the best way to do things.  If the answer is no, we have to admit we could have done things better and continue to work hard to discover where we fall down.  We do this all in the name of helping you, the local church; more efficiently bring people to Christ.

If I don’t learn at least one thing new during the implementation with a church, I feel I have failed the church, myself, and my future clients (even if it means learning how to be patient!)  I encourage all to make a conscious attempt to learn something daily that will help you tomorrow and the rest of your days.  And please never stop being a teacher.  We’re a team, and we NEED each other to help make the team successful.

Blessings -

Jeff Lewis
Delivery Manager

One mistake we have made in the past in the Delivery Team at Fellowship Technologies is putting all of our eggs in one basket. This basket was the Fellowship One Champion. We would pour all of our knowledge and experience into this one person. They in turn were supposed to lead the cause for Fellowship One at The Local Church. Many times they would end up owning it to the point where the church staff would look at Fellowship One as something they did not own or control. In hindsight, we were creating a silo. Not only that, but this was a very mobile silo that could depart the church at any moment and leave the church with a huge hole. On many occasions we would have to go back to an existing client because one person left the church and took all the knowledge with them. To combat this problem, we have begun advocating the creation of a Fellowship One Champion Team.

The Champion Team consists of one person from each ministry who will be responsible for Fellowship One in that ministry. The team begins by meeting on a weekly basis to establish standards in Fellowship One. This would include who gets access to Fellowship One, what security rights are to be given out to whom, what standard requirements are for tracking attendance, and setting priorities for check in.  Over time they will meet less and less, moving to monthly and possibly quarterly meetings. The exception to this is when large events come up such as VBS, conferences, volunteer fairs, and other large church events. When these events are announced by the leadership team at the church, the Champion Team meets to discuss how this will impact the system.  They also need to communicate with leadership as to what information will let them know if the event was successful. Will you be tracking registrations via the web? Will Check-In be used?

This is where the real benefit of a cross functional team comes into play. The children’s ministry champion knows check-in better than anyone else so they can help make sure the event is setup properly and possibly provide training materials for the volunteers. The youth ministry champion knows web registration better than anyone else and can help set that up. The finance champion can make sure that the funds are setup for possible payments. Not only that, but the ministries are discussing at a very basic level what needs to be done and by whom. Communication increases, understanding of roles and responsibilities increases, and return on ministry from Fellowship One increases. 

If your saying to yourself… what silos? It’s just me to run the children’s, youth, worship, administration, men’s, women’s, and mission’s ministries. Or some variation of multi-tasking ministries then you might not have silo issues. What you should still do is find a backup person that can help you manage and understand Fellowship One. In this scenario a key volunteer would be a good solution. They can work from home or from the office on their lunch break. Just don’t leave yourself open to becoming an island of information or a silo of one with little or no chance of taking a vacation without the world coming to an end. 
In the next blog I will be discussing the other critical cross functional team:  The Data Integrity Team.

Matt McMaster
Delivery Manager
Fellowship Technologies