Introducing Church Social – The web app for reformed churches

Church Social is a web app designed specifically for reformed churches. It helps congregations manage their membership information, share resources (bulletins, files, member directory, sermons, etc.), and communicate better online.

As reformed churches, we take church membership quite seriously. If you’re wondering why, I recommend reading this article from Rev. Michael J. Schout , pastor of the Grace United Reformed Church in Alto, MI. It may sound obvious, but having a church membership requires tracking your church membership. Historically churches have done this in a variety of ways, from paper cue cards, to Excel spreadsheets, to custom database software. This can require a lot of administrative effort, a task often handled by a volunteer. This is where Church Social shines. The app’s core competency is tracking church membership information. And, since it’s web based, there are some really practical benefits:

1. All that’s needed to access the app is an internet connection.
2. No more fighting software upgrades, or developing custom solutions.
3. Multiple administrators within a congregation can contribute to managing the data.
4. It’s easy to share reports and data with office bearers.

With Church Social you can store typical membership information, like names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, marriages, birth and death dates, families, notes, and more. Further, since Church Social was designed from day one for reformed congregations, it also has first class support for baptism and profession of faith tracking, wards (districts) as well as office bearer assignments (pastors, elders and deacons).

But, Church Social isn’t only intended for church administrators. It’s meant for all members of your congregation to participate in. Since signing up in 2014, members of our congregation have logged into the app a total of over 5,000 times! Accessing Church Social gives members access to the following features:

• Calendar of events (including birthdays and anniversaries).
• Member photo directory (with contact information, map view, and printable binder sheets).
• Messaging tools (quickly send emails to your whole congregation, or to specific groups).
• Groups (clubs, committees, bible studies, wards, small groups, etc).
• Schedules (usher, host families, deacon collection, serving elder, nursery, etc).
• File sharing (with private group files, ie. council only).
• Sermon archive (supports MP3, video and PDF formats).
• Bulletin archive.
• Library archive (a searchable, digital version of your physical church library).
• Photo galleries.

As you can see, Church Social has a lot to offer beyond member management. Our congregation makes heavy use of many of these features, but the most popular is probably the member photo directory, which provides quick access to member contact information. It also serves as an excellent tool for new members to our church, who can use the directory to put a “face to a name”.

Finally, as a website administrator, I appreciate the integration options that Church Social provides for our public website. It’s extremely easy to add your sermon archive to your public website, especially if you’re using WordPress. And the same for your public calendar. Within Church Social, when you add an item to the calendar, you can choose to make it public. When doing this, those events automatically appear on the public website. Meaning non-technical members of the congregation can contribute to keeping this content up-to-date!

Anyway, I hope that provides a good overview of how Church Social can be a blessing to your congregation. If you’d like to learn more, I’d recommend contacting Jonathan Reinink, the owner and maintainer of the app, at support@churchsocial.com. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you!