Accelerating the Dynamic Church : Fellowship Technologies

Year-end Report (January 2008)

jhook — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:34:00 GMT

We have run all the final numbers on 2007 and are happy to report the results of a very good year. This blog post also highlights some of our past year’s major accomplishments. Our customer count at the end of the year was 706 church partners. Of those current customers, 30 churches are on Outreach’s recent list of Top 100 Largest Churches in America. We are happy that in that list we can now count LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK), one of the most technologically advanced churches as a customer along with Phoenix First Assembly (Phoenix, AZ), New Birth Missionary Baptist (Lithonia, GA), Brooklyn Tabernacle (Brooklyn, NY) and Community Bible (San Antonio, TX). We also expanded into new countries and are now in a total of six (6) countries (US, Canada, United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand). We ended the year with 61 employees.

Our product, Fellowship One, made significant strides in 2007 including automatic address verification, new email functionality, a rapid data entry module for new households and contact cards, self-check-in capabilities, bulk uploading of individual and family pictures, as well as the start of an entirely new Groups module that will become the basis for many new features in 2008. We also began the development of a new Reports module that will allow our customers to write their own reports. The new Reports feature is scheduled to be available before Dynamic Church 08 in May.

We did not add as much functionality as we had hoped because we did a lot, and I mean a lot, of work improving the technical aspects of the system. We upgraded the entire application to .NET 2.0, implemented the latest version of MS SQL Server and deployed a 64-bit architecture, both hardware and software. These upgrades provide significant performance improvements across the board. In fact, the systems average render time is down to 0.2 of a second – that is a fast ping-pong ball coming at you! If you were not at my keynote speech at DC ’07, do not even attempt to understand that last comment.

We also invested significantly in building a new MVC application architecture. This new architecture provides us a great foundation for rapidly adding new functionality to the system. We can already see this paying off in the new capabilities we have recently developed. As the architecture matures, we should see even greater improvements in developer productivity.

We added some specific user experience enhancements that allow us to provide a better overall service. We now provide enhanced recorded videos for training purposes. We have divided these up into “chunks” so you can take training “as you need it” for individual parts of the application. This will save you time and help in knowledge retention. This also allows part-time staff and volunteers to take training whenever their schedules allow.

We have also added some things to help the broad overall customer experience. We launched Experience.FellowshipOne.com that helps build community among our customers’ staff members and allows you the customer to “vote” on desired new features. We also launched our RUGs (Regional Users’ Groups) to help encourage these communities on a more local level and hosted our first Users’ Conference with over 330 in attendance. This year’s conference is going to be even better as we roll out advanced and basic training tracks to offer something for everyone’s learning needs. We hired an experienced network support person whose primary job is working with customers to ensure that a customer’s Internet connectivity is not an issue for access to the system.

In Delivery Services, we modified our implementation methodology to improve the adoption of the application across the church pastoral and administrative staff. We understand what it takes to make a successful Fellowship One implementation and developed “best practices” that we incorporated into the system conversion process. We will continue improving these best practices as we begin to roll out process diagrams and recommended procedures to help you take advantage of all that Fellowship One has to offer.

To quote an old Frank Sinatra song, it was a very good year! But 2008 is going to be even better. Now that we have a critical mass of employees, we will be rolling out further enhancements to all areas of our solution offering. We are also making a concerted effort to better incorporate partners in an overall solution that provides added value to help you accomplish your mission of reaching a lost world and developing full-time followers of Christ. We want to be like BASF; we don’t do church, we make the church better

Grace to you,

jhook

CEO/President
Fellowship Technologies

Dynamic Church 07 - phenomenal!

Jeff Hook — Thu, 24 May 2007 18:12:00 GMT

It has been a week now since the Dynamic Church 07 conference commenced. What a great time! I want to publicly thank the Fellowship Technologies staff for all the hard work they put into making this conference better than I could ever imagine. The energy and sense of cooperation from everyone was fantastic! And the attendees from our church partners were outstanding! If you get the sense that I was happy with how it all turned out, you would be correct.

We had 330 attendees including folks from either partner churches or prospective churches, plus our staff and guests – in total around 400 people. Some people enjoyed the breakout tracks that dealt with strategic issues while others enjoyed the hands-on training classes. The feedback was positive from both; yet I agree with some comments I heard, so next year we will have both beginner and advanced tracks for training.

I sat in on several of the strategic breakouts and was very impressed with how some of our partner churches are addressing areas like volunteer management, change management and Fellowship One champion teams. I hope it came out in my keynote, I really have a passion for the local church and it warms my heart to see church staff members and volunteers serving others and “passionately attacking” how to help people learn to live fuller lives. See John 10:10.

Tony Morgan’s keynote was on target (he blogged about it on May 19th). Although I think one of the missing items on the list could have been "a church writing their own ChMS system." To dovetail it with my presentation, developing complex computer applications are typically not one of a church’s “core competencies.” I actually told Ed Young this several years ago not knowing I was actually commenting on the development of a system that eventually became Fellowship One. Terry Storch can vouch for the fact that I caused him and his team some heartaches around trying to justify the development of the system. In the end, I think Terry would agree that if possible "buy versus build" unless it is strategic to your mission and the end result offers a competitive advantage to attracting or serving your customers, or in churches' cases your congregation. This is rare in the church market that the ChMS system provides such.

This does not mean it cannot be done. It just takes a lot of time, energy and money to accomplish the full breadth of what a church management system needs to do. The first several features and functions are easy and there can be some quick wins. But the maintenance of the system as complexity of integration is added begins to bog down the progress of additional functionality. When looking at the stewardship of resources, custom development is probably the most costly alternative there is; perhaps not in the short run, but definitely in the long run - requirements and technology simply change too quickly for a small staff to keep up with and large staffs are expensive.

If you were in attendance at Dynamic Church 07, thank you for making our first conference successful – it is all about helping you be better at helping the church and your community! If you did not make it, we welcome you to join us next May when we all get together again for Dynamic Church 08! I have heard several people say that next year they are bringing even more of their staff. So make plans, set aside your budgets because we are already working on what should be another great conference!

Grace to you,

Jhook

Fellowship Technologies – three years old!

Jeff Hook — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:37:00 GMT

Three years, over 500 customers and counting! This week Fellowship Technologies is celebrating a milestone – completing our third year in business. We use this time to reflect on how far we have come - to celebrate our many successes, and also to introspect in order to learn from our occasional failures. But, wow, over 500 churches; 20 of which are large enough to be considered in the top 100 largest churches in America – that is quite an achievement for such a young company! But what I am most proud of is our people and their constant efforts to improve the level of customer service to our church partners.

I believe 2007 will be even better for us. We are no longer “the new kid on the block.” We have established ourselves as a proven thought leader in the church software market, one that offers a quality service for a reasonable cost that in turn provides a superior value. The processes we have in place and are always refining will help us implement customers more quickly and the product features that will be released will offer churches some exciting capabilities that they have not had in the past. We employ 52 people; about 1 person for every 10 churches. Is there another services vendor in the industry that is providing that level of support?

For those of you keeping a box score at home, as of this month, we are averaging the following processing volumes per week:

Check-in transactions - 171,000 +
Check scans - 112,000 +
Connection items / contacts - 154,000 +
Staff users of Fellowship One - 17,000 +
Church web users - 107,000 +
Reports - 16,000 +

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our church partners for helping us get to where we are today. Your desire to do more for Christ’s church is what drives us to be better. Thank you! I look forward to seeing you at the Dynamic Church 07 conference in May.

Grace to you,

jhook

Welcome to the new home of the Dynamic Church blog

Jeff Hook — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 16:41:00 GMT

Welcome to the new home of the Accelerating the Dynamic Church blog. My name is Jeff Hook, I am the CEO and President of Fellowship Technologies. We created 3Cords.org to be a free online community for Christian leaders to Learn, Educate, Advise, and Disciple each other for the purpose of increasing the effectiveness of the local church.

We wanted to foster a location where Christian thought leaders from around the world, from different backgrounds, skills, denominations, etc. could share their lessons learned in their area of expertise or interest.

The focus of 3Cords is not about Fellowship Technologies or about our flagship product, Fellowship One. True, our company and our product will be discussed amongst my blog and a few others. (Our Director of Product Management, Director of Human Resources, and our Product Development team all have blogs located under 3Cords.) And our user forum will also be located under 3cords. However, the focus will be on the best practices of the local church. We're excited that we already have six blog authors outside of Fellowship Technologies actively blogging on 3cords. And we have several more that have expressed interest that should begin blogging soon.

So get involved, become an active member of the 3Cords community, and increase the effectiveness of the local church!

Grace to you,

jhook

A really big God!

Jeff Hook — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:47:00 GMT

To start Fellowship Technologies the way it needed to be started required outside capital. Some of you have heard the story about how instead of relying on VC (Venture Capitalists), I relied on a group of “angels” that I refer to as VRC (Very Rich Christians). Believe me; they are much easier to work with than VC!

One of my good friends who is an investor in Fellowship Technologies owns a very large yacht. My wife and I are blessed enough to join him on a vacation in the Mediterranean this week. What amazes me every time I visit Europe or Asia is how many people there are in this world! I become in awe of God even more so because I see how much He loves. Based on what we believe, He loves me, my family, my church, my town, my country, etc.

But do we always keep the list going out farther or even that far? Too often we get caught up in our own little world, our own problems, maybe our church’s issues or community troubles, our country’s turmoil, and forget that God is focused not only on us, but also on billions of other people from all walks of life all around this world.

My management team is reviewing a book by Patrick Lencioni called Silos, Politics and Turf Wars. In this book, Mr. Lencioni points out that truly effective teams pull in the same direction for a common cause. He cites examples like an emergency room operation, or a SWAT team, or firefighters trying to fight a fire to save a building.

So if we are on God’s team, are we focused on the same thing God is? Sure we are “part” of that world and have to focus on our part. But do we really see the big picture? Do we talk to each other about God’s big picture? Do we educate our kids on what that big picture is? Do we pass on what our role is in that big picture? By understanding how big this world is, maybe we will focus our prayers more on the scope of God’s plan, not so much our own.

When you fully grasp the size of this world, it becomes much easier to humble yourself before God; to be less selfish because you realize you are just one of so many. A good check everyday might be to ask yourself, “Is what I am doing today helping God’s agenda or mine?” And then adjust accordingly, if necessary. You should do this no matter what your role is in your church.

Grace to you,

jhook

Acceptable insanity?

Jeff Hook — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:45:00 GMT

One of the things that we have encountered as we implement some churches is their lack of wanting to change the way they “do church,” yet wanting to experience different results. I participated in a seminar once that characterized such behavior as “insanity” – doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results.

During the sales cycle, we will be told about how a church wants to do this and that so that certain results can be achieved. However, when the point of implementation comes around, the fortitude and commitment to change comes up lacking. Yet, the desired results are still sought. How can this be?

If a person wants different results, they need to do different things or do things differently. Technology can be the change agent, but processes need to be evaluated and changed as well. Sometimes mindsets and motivations require changing. And even still, if these cannot be changed with the same people, then the people must be replaced. Perhaps these are hard words for a church to consider, but no less real if different results are desired.

At Fellowship Technologies, we are constantly changing to improve. I believe the really successful organizations are always improving; adapting to new opportunities. How has your church changed in the last year?

Grace to you,

jhook

Cha-cha-changes...

Jeff Hook — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 15:55:00 GMT

…let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect His will really is. - Romans 12:2

This blog entry continues with more start-up information about the company and what we are all about. One of the things the team at Fellowship Technologies understands is that we have to put aside our own agendas, egos and feelings for the sake of what we are trying to do for God’s Kingdom. As I read and listen to more pastors’ books and sermons, I am starting to understand it more. One of the pastors at the Catalyst Conference a couple of weeks ago, I think it was Donald Miller, said it very clearly - this “movie” is not about me or you, we play only bit parts. This movie, or set of movie episodes that we call our lives, is all about God. At times we may think we can “up stage” God, but sooner or later we are forced to realize that we do not have the starring role.

As the CEO of Fellowship Technologies, I am just happy I am able to play the supporting role that I have. I reluctantly started this company. In fact, when it was first presented to me by Terry Storch and Lawrence Swicegood at lunch back in April of 2003, I refused to even consider it. Even after God compelled me to change my mind and heart, I made it very clear in my prayers that if this was going to happen, God was going to have to be the one to make it happen. Too often, we want to just take the reins and push God aside.

The experience that caused me to change my decision to start Fellowship Technologies was truly divine – so much so that I felt that I could not ignore the call from God. And as many pastors can tell you, when called by God to do whatever, you initially think, “This is for and of God, it is the way to go.” In fact, I truly thought that I had no alternatives, the message was so clear.

But just because the path is clear does not mean it will be easy. There have been times here at Fellowship Technologies when the lessons we needed to learn were not easy. And isn’t that how Christian life can be? God can still be part of what we are doing, but that does not mean it is necessarily going to be easy on us. We think it should be, right? If it is God’s will then shouldn’t it be easy! That’s just not how it always is because change and growth are not easy.

Many churches I talk to are uncomfortable with change; uncomfortable with doing things differently. However, to do some of what God needs to do through us requires us to get out of our comfort zones, out of our traditional ways of doing things, out of that mentality that has us always thinking in OUR ways. We need to think in HIS ways. Many times if it is right and God is in it, it will not be easy! Learnings from the Apostle Paul would indicate that the easy way is many times the path outside of God’s will. Creation is all about doing new things, different things. So make change happen!

Grace to you as you go out and CHANGE!

Jeff Hook

Welcome

Administrator — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 14:03:00 GMT

Welcome to the Dynamic Church blog! Here we will share our views on how technology can be utilized by the local church to effectively care for people, efficiently manage resources, and enable real growth. We will also be discussing our views on Church Managment Systems, technology trends, and many other topics. We welcome your feedback and comments to our posts and hope you will find this blog informative and thought provoking.

If you would like more information about Fellowship Technologies or Fellowship One, please visit one of our websites:

FellowshipTechnologies.com - our corporate website with detailed product information
Dynamic-Church.com - a demonstration church website using our WebLink product
CloseTheBackDoor.com - what sort of things are left unsaid by your congregation?

Grace to you,

Jeff Hook
CEO and President
Fellowship Technologies