Church Executive May-June 2017 digital by Power Trade Media

MAY / JUNE â&#x20AC;˘ 2017

RICK

Holliday & NORTH POINT:

Technology + engagement = growth p6

PLUS 3 important lessons in succession planning p 9 Mobile-first: 3 ways to drive discipleship p 48 How to renovate (without the regrets) p 50

FROM THE EDITOR

What’s new? Plenty.

churchexecutive.com Volume 16, No. 3

This issue of Church Executive debuts five brand-new, thought leaderdriven series, from of-the-moment funding solutions, to volunteerfriendly video setups, to technology-driven discipleship, the fellowship & revenue potential of church cafes, and how to take the best care (proactively) of your biggest physical asset: the facility. In the first-ever “Fully Funded, Finally” Series installment (How Cornerstone Community Church fully funded its operating budget with digital giving, page 10), Lead Pastor Mike Morris of Cornerstone Community Church in rural Virginia, recalls a recent change that has helped the church not just meet its monthly budget for 2017, but exceed it. What made the difference? Digital giving. Founded in 2004, CCC meets in a converted storefront. With less than 7,000 residents in town, Morris admits finances have, until recently, been a struggle for the growing church. However, since launching a digital giving option last September, the church has months of (positive) results to show for their efforts. An expected budget surplus will let church leaders pay down the mortgage on our facility, free up more money for ministry and mission efforts, and expand the staff. If your church struggles with ensuring its AV setup meets AV team volunteers where they’re at, skills-wise, then be sure to check out the new “Pastor-Friendly Video” Series (Volunteer-friendly AV equipment: expert advice, page 25). As author Jason Davis, technical director at Faith Outreach Church in Clarksville, Tenn., explains, the end goal for your AV department should always be a consistent, professional result, no matter the level of volunteer you garner. “In any church AV department, volunteers like to feel they’re using the same equipment they see when they go to a major, high-end production,” he says. “At the same time, they don’t like to feel as if they’re being handed a large piece of equipment with no instruction.” To this end, Davis offers some informed equipment recommendations, as well as prolevel advice for striking the right balance.

4742 N. 24th St., Ste. 340 Phoenix, AZ 85016 • 800.541.2670 RaeAnn Slaybaugh Editor in Chief rslaybaugh@churchexecutive.com Stephen Gamble Art Director sgamble@churchexecutive.com

And in our digital issue [ churchexecutive. com/digital-editions ], you’ll find two new series: In “Church Cafés,” author Mike Bacile asks a common question among so many church leaders right now: Is our church ready to add a café? While a café offers many positive possibilities for a church community, Bacile says it must meet three important criteria in order to produce the fellowship and revenue, as intended. Check out our digital issue to find out the three questions to ask, and why. Finally, in the new “Church Facility Stewardship” Series (The 4 pillars to good facility stewardship), author Alexandra Altvater spotlights the fact that congregants rely on their churches to be more than places of worship, now; they’re spaces where small groups gather throughout the week, where children are educated and cared for, and much more. She also points out that the facility is the most expensive asset a church has, aside from staff. “We should care for them accordingly,” she says. “Often, we have to do more with less,” Altvater adds. “[This makes] it mission-critical to effectively prioritize the things that can make the most impact for the long-term, utilize your resources wisely, and plan for the future.” To help you do this, she outlines four proven pillars of solid facility management.

Joyce Guzowski Assistant Editor jguzowski@churchexecutive.com Judi Victor CEO & Publisher / Director of Sales jvfly@churchexecutive.com Mitch Larson Business Manager mlarson@churchexecutive.com Blair McCarty Senior Sales & Marketing Coordinator bmccarty@churchexecutive.com Hollie Broadbent Marketing & Sales Associate hbroadbent@churchexecutive.com

EDITORIAL ADVISORY PANEL Stephen Briggs Associate Pastor of Administration First Baptist Church | Hendersonville, NC Denise Craig Chief Financial Officer Abba’s House | Hixson, TN Mike Klockenbrink Chief of Staff Lakeside Church | Folsom, CA Dan Mikes Executive Vice President Bank of the West | San Ramon, CA John C. Mrazek III Executive Pastor Pathways Church | Denver, CO

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these new offerings, or on any of the other articles in this issue.

Sam S. Rainer III Senior Pastor West Bradenton Baptist Church | Bradenton, FL Mark Simmons Business Manager Christ Community Church | Milpitas, CA

All the best, In the new series from the trusted thought leaders at MMBB — “Technology-Driven Discipleship” — author Scott Romig spotlights why it’s so important to acknowledge how mobile phones can influence behavior, especially when it comes to ministry and discipleship. (A mobilefirst approach: 3 ways to drive discipleship, page 48) “Many churches have started to adopt mobilefriendly technologies, such as uploading their sermons into podcasting platforms or adapting church websites to be mobile-responsive,” Romig points out. “But these efforts only scratch the surface of the possibilities available at our fingertips.” churchexecutive.com

Eric Spacek Senior Manager GuideOne Insurance | West Des Moines, IA

LET’S CHAT: Email: rslaybaugh@churchexecutive.com Facebook: ChurchExecutiveMagazine Twitter: @churchexecutive.com

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Church Executive™ Magazine is published bi-monthly by Power Trade Media, a division of The Producers, Inc., 4742 N. 24th Street, Ste. 340, Phoenix, AZ 85016. Subscription rates for non-qualified subscribers, single issue prices and pricing for reprints of 100 or more are available from: info@churchexecutive.com. All articles in Church Executive™ Magazine are copyrighted and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the publisher. Copyright 2016 by Power Trade Media. No advertisement, sponsorship or description or reference to a product or service will be deemed an endorsement by Power Trade Media, and no warranty is made or implied. Information is obtained from sources the editors believe reliable, accurate and timely, but is not guaranteed, and Power Trade Media is not responsible for errors or omissions. Opinions expressed in Church Executive™ Magazine are not necessarily those of the publisher or sponsors or advertisers. Content addressing legal, tax and other technical issues is not intended as professional advice and cannot be relied on as such; readers should consult with their own professional advisors.

May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

May / June 2017

CONTENTS USING DATA TO MAKE BETTER MINISTRY DECISIONS

Panelists focus on the most relevant data points that can gauge the health of your ministry; how innovative churches are making their decisions through data; and the ways to enrich an empowered discipleship by leveraging technology.

Featuring Curt Swindoll, David Coombs & Karen Worrell

REMOTE ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS 18

SAVED BY THE SENSOR! 5 technology experts explain (in plain English) how these small, easy-to-install innovations can save your church’s life — or, at the very least, its budget.

Featuring Paul Carlotto, Mike Fitzgerald, Cheryl Kryshak, Marti Ryan & Marc Saulsbury

MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED ON THE COVER : RICK HOLLIDAY / EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF MINISTRY SERVICES / NORTH POINT COMMUNITY CHURCH / ALPHARETTA, GA

TECHNOLOGY, ENGAGEMENT & GROWTH: NORTH POINT’S 4-STEP ENGAGEMENT PROCESS For Director of Executive Director of Ministry Services Rick Holliday and the rest of the leadership team at North Point Church — one of America’s largest and fastest-growing churches — full engagement is the goal day in and day out.

A CRITICAL CHURCH-STATE SEPARATION CASE IN THE MAKING

By the Church Executive editorial & leadership team

ROBBIE BARNES / TREASURER & REBUILDING COMMITTEE MEMBER / FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH MAGEE / MAGEE, MISS. For historic First Baptist Church Magee, the unthinkable happened on December 11, 2013. As a police officer was driving by in the early morning hours, he noticed a flicker of light behind a frosted window, in an area that should not normally be lit. After driving closer to investigate, the he realized that a full-blown fire was occurring. Here’s how leaders were able to rebuild — better than ever — despite $2 million in damage.

By Joyce Guzowski

NEW! FULLY FUNDED, FINALLY

How Cornerstone Community Church fully funded its operating budget with digital giving Lead Pastor Mike Morris recalls a recent change that has helped CCC not just meet its monthly budget for 2017, but exceed it.

ENGAGING SPACES

3 key elements for an engaging lobby or welcome area 16 As church leaders, we need to break down barriers and create authentic spaces that allow for (and encourage!) this engagement.

Featuring Crispin Ketelhut Montelione, Deacon Marques Silva & Maryjane W. Fuller

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

Teach them how to say goodbye Churches must not only decide on a new leader, but also pay attention to the vital aspects of preparation and closure. By Nancy Beach

Our panelists discuss the topics and challenges of protecting children within the church environment — and how to establish policies that mitigate these risks.

SERIES CHURCH HIRING & STAFF MANAGEMENT

RISE FROM THE ASHES

Featuring Kimberlee D. Norris & Gregory S. Love

Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley could be hugely important in defining what can (and can’t) be done under the First Amendment with a government grant or subsidy program in which churches and religious institutions would like to participate.

FEATURES

Two esteemed attorneys and industry experts discuss the preeminent problem of child sexual abuse — and what every church leader can do to protect the children in their care

Featuring Rebecca DaVee, CPA; Bill Sims, CPA & Kari Eaton

Cover photo by Garrett Lobaugh

BE AWARE & PROACTIVE

Featuring Bob D’Ambrosio, Sharon Doty, R.J. Frasca, Sara Miller, Kimberlee D. Norris & Alex Smith

Panelists provide their definition of what a metric is, how to interpret it, and how it relates to ministry — plus, the top 10 sustaining metrics for churches and the benefits of cloud computing.

By RaeAnn Slaybaugh

PROTECTING THE CHURCH’S CHILDREN

Proactive, proven strategies for protecting the kids in your care, including: • The biggest risks and liabilities facing churches • What makes churches targets for sexual abuse risks • Screening, background check and check-in / check-out processes

CHURCH METRICS POWERED BY CLOUD TECHNOLOGY

To this purpose, they’ve created some great systems (facilitated by technology) that let leaders very accurately measure and manage four objectives in pursuit of full engagement: Group, Serve, Give, and Invest and Invite.

MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED

WHEN CHILDREN ARE AT RISK

By Mark R Ashcraft with Bruce Woody, AIA

38 EDITOR’S NOTE: The photo of Glenn Wood on the cover of the March / April 2017 issue of Church Executive was taken by Mahlon Yeager [ mahlonyeager.com ]. We regret the omission. churchexecutive.com

CHURCH INVESTMENT SOLUTIONS

Featuring John Regan

NEW! PASTOR-FRIENDLY VIDEO

Volunteer-friendly AV equipment: expert advice The end goal for your AV department should always be a consistent, professional result, no matter the level of volunteer you garner.

LIFETIME LEARNING

Transforming lives through community outreach & leadership development Jesse Eisenhart never dreamed of entering the ministry and following in his parents’ footsteps. However, as he watched them plan a new church, he felt God calling him to divinity school — a specific divinity school.

NEW! TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN DISCIPLESHIP

A mobile-first approach: 3 ways to drive discipleship It’s important to acknowledge how mobile phones can influence behavior, especially when it comes to ministry and discipleship.

By Scott Romig

By Jason Davis

CHURCH FACILITIES: BUILDING & CONSTRUCTION 50 FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT FOR CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS

So, you want to start a Christian school. Now what? Across the country, churches are answering the call to start a private Christian School — but they’re unsure about how to navigate the process. Does this sound like your church?

Is your church ready to add a café? A café has so many positive possibilities to offer a church community. However, it should meet three important criteria in order to really produce the fellowship and revenue most churches are looking for. We always ask churches the following three questions when they approach us to help create their café.

By Mike Bacile

CHURCH FACILITY STEWARDSHIP

By Rodney James

FINANCE & LENDING TRENDS

By Darren Thompson & Richard Koon

CHURCH CAFÉS

How to renovate (without the regrets) If you take the right steps (in the right order, with the right partner), a renovation project can flow smoothly, stay on budget, and have a positive effect on the ministries of the church.

The 4 pillars to good facility stewardship Aside from staff, the buildings are your most expensive asset, and we should care for them accordingly. Often, we have to do more with less, making it mission-critical to effectively prioritize the things that can make the most impact for the long-term, utilize your resources wisely, and plan for the future. From our work with church facility managers, we’ve identified four

If you’re considering refinancing, be aware of the environmental status of your property Over 27 years, series author Dan Mikes has seen a number of instances in which all the financial and other factors were right, but the loan could not be made because the collateral (the land and buildings) was unacceptable due to environmental contamination.

NEVER AGAIN: BEYOND INSURANCE

Risk for any religious organization — overseeing youth Examining the issues and solutions surrounding the three greatest areas of risk to children — location, culture and human predilection — and how every single person has a valuable role to play

By Crispin Ketelhut Montelione

pillars of the best facility stewardship.

By Donovan Loomis

LIFETIME LEARNING

Online education for busy pastors How Villanova’s Center for Church Management & Business Ethics is making it easy for busy pastors and church leaders to continue their education.

CREATING A CULTURE OF GENEROSITY

Beyond online giving: what executive pastors need to know How do you land on the right solution? And once you’ve found it, how will you get your church to actually use it?

By Jayson D. Bradley

CHURCH FINANCIAL WELLNESS

Estate planning: getting affairs in order isn’t just for seniors Like adults in their 40s and older, millennials should have a basic estate plan in place in the event of an emergency or untimely death.

By Matthew D. Hoffman, CFP®, ChFC®

CAPITAL PLANNING FOR CHURCHES Sustainability of facility stewardship at your church Many of our churches across the nation are older — but what drives some to thrive while others can’t seem to survive?

By Matthew Swain, RS

DEPARTMENTS From the Editor

THE PASTOR’S TOOLKIT: CHURCH BUSES & VANS

Whether you’re transporting your people to conferences, youth sports activities or evening worship services, it’s important to find the vehicles that suit your ministry — and your resources.

churchexecutive.com

May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

RICK HOLLIDAY / EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF MINISTRY SERVICES / NORTH POINT COMMUNITY CHURCH / ALPHARETTA, GA

Photos by Garrett Lobaugh

MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED

TECHNOLOGY, ENGAGEMENT &

GROWTH North Point’s 4-step engagement process By RaeAnn Slaybaugh

Not many people can speak firsthand about the growth of one of America’s largest and fastest-growing churches. But Rick Holliday — Executive Director of Ministry Services at North Point Church in Alpharetta, Ga. — is very blessed in this regard. 6

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

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MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED That’s because Holliday is one of the original six staff members at this 22-year-old church founded by Andy Stanley. His beginnings in church administration? Quite humble, in comparison. During graduate school, Holliday was on staff at First Baptist Church of Atlanta, which was led by Andy Stanley’s father, Charles. “I started out washing dishes, running a printing press, working in the gym, those sorts of things,” he recalls. But, with a graduate degree in business information systems finance in hand (coupled with an undergraduate degree in finance), Holliday soon found himself in an IT role at the church. At 24, he started running what he calls “a fledgling little IT department” there. In 1995, when North Point Church was launched by Andy Stanley, Holliday says the Atlanta area — like many cities — didn’t need another church. “It needed a different kind of church,” he clarifies. “We really wanted a church for people who were unchurched, or were returning to the gospel, or had never had an experience with God — or even had had a bad experience with God and decided to give it another try. We wanted those people to feel really comfortable here.” That, he says, remains the hallmark of North Point today. “We’re creating churches that unchurched people love to attend,” he says. “It’s the thing that keeps us all attached.” But, what role does administration play? According to Holliday, it’s all about facilitation: “We’ve created some really good systems that let us measure and manage, very accurately, the engagement process.” The elements of engagement For North Point (and for any growing church), ensuring “full engagement” is the goal. Here, it’s achieved through four objectives: Group, Serve, Give, and Invest and Invite. “We’re very cognizant of the fact that we can’t force anyone to have a relationship with their Heavenly Father,” Holliday points out. “But we’re also aware that there are some critical activities which we believe — once you’re engaged in them — make that relationship much more likely.” As Holliday explains, the Group aspect of the engagement process is a high priority. “One of our key phrases is, ‘Circles are better that roads,’” he explains. “So, the only numerical goal we’ve ever had related to Groups is how many people we can get into them.” To this end, Holliday points out that North Point is really a collection of hundreds (if not thousands) of smaller churches. “People meet in homes throughout the week, and we come together on Sunday morning for a common purpose.” The next objective — Serve — is attained when individuals reach the point where they’re willing to do something for others, not just for themselves. “That’s very healthy, spiritually. It’s a hallmark of growth,” Holliday says. “And honestly, Give is also super important to spiritual growth,” he adds. “When I recognize, Wow, God owns everything, giving is another expression of my commitment to a relationship with my Heavenly Father.” Invest and Invite, then, represents a final, pivotal step in the engagement process. “If you invest in the lives of your unchurched friends and then, at a critical moment, invite them into the right environment, we feel like God works in that mix,” Holliday says. “That’s one of the secrets to our growth. We don’t advertise a lot; mostly, it’s word-of-mouth — primarily by people investing and inviting in the lives of their lost and unchurched friends.” Where technology comes in (big time) At North Point, technology doesn’t just drive these four elements of engagement: it also enables the church to gauge and measure them. In addition to a relational database management system, much of the “measurement magic” at the church is driven by tools like Tableau: an interactive data visualization product focused on business intelligence. churchexecutive.com

“What we do with the data, and how we analyze it, is a fairly critical part of what we do,” Holliday says. So much so, in fact, that North Point recently added an Executive Director of Ministry Analytics to its management team. Specifically related to the Group and Serve aspects, Holliday admits it can be difficult to know when an individual isn’t involved in a small group, even with the help of technology. Primarily, this is because it’s something the church prefers to let happen organically. “Although it would be great to have a pew attendance document, it’s contrary to our culture,” he explains. “We value people’s desire to be anonymous. We don’t know who’s only attending our services or watching them online. Until they take one step toward us, we don’t have a way to know if those people have the potential to be in group. “For some people, [that happens] the first Sunday they get here,” Holliday adds. “For others, it’s years before they’re comfortable taking that step.” And the form it takes when it happens varies. Sometimes it’s a person joining a small group; more often, it’s a person providing their contact information. “If someone gets to that point, we’d definitely know if they’re in group or not,” he says. Beyond that, the leadership team at North Point purposely stops short of using data to identify which small groups and opportunities to serve an individual might be best suited for. Instead, they let members know where the church’s biggest needs lie and make those opportunities known. “We don’t really have a system set up that asks — and I’m not being critical whatsoever of systems that do this — ‘What’s your spiritual gift? Therefore, you should serve here, or here, or here,’” Holliday says. “We’re just very open with people to tell them where our biggest areas of need are, and then ask them to consider those.” Toward the next step of engagement, Give, North Point aims to make the act of generosity a natural, organic part of the process. To do this, they offer the option to give via echurch powered Pushpay [ www. echurch.com ] in the context of an app where other church content — sermons, messages, and other media — is also hosted. “Having all those points of engagement in one tool, in the app, is super helpful,” Holliday shares. “It lets our lead pastors, or anyone else, stand up and say, ‘Hey, pull out your phone to support this effort.’ It has increased engagement for us over the last year or so.” Prior to this option, the church used its own in-house giving tool that let people give through credit cards and ACH. Now, because Pushpay can be “white-labeled,” North Point is able to rebrand the tool so that it appears to be an extension of the church. “They’ve been really great about recognizing that we need to keep a relationship with our attendees,” Holliday says. Another benefit of this giving tool is the ease with which it facilitates progressive giving — more specifically, “percentage, progressive, prioritized” giving. Holliday explains: “Percentage is simply, ‘Pick a percentage and go for it; use that one.’ Prioritize is, ‘Consider making your giving prioritized over all those other commitments or desires you have.’ Progressive is, ‘Consider, on an annual basis (or whatever basis you choose) to increase the amount of your giving.’” Every time someone gives via the echurch app, they have the option to make that gift a recurring one. As a result, Holliday says, the church has definitely seen an increase in the number of recurring givers. “We’ve also increased the breadth of givers,” he adds. Using technology to help drive and manage the Invest and Invite aspect of engagement at North Point is, according to Holliday, a work in progress. “We pretty much can only tell if someone is investing and inviting if they say they are,” he says. “I guess we can also ask people who show up, ‘Hey did you show up at the invitation of someone?’ But, compared to the other [engagement objectives], this one’s a little more difficult for us to measure.” Even so, the church has identified a few “invite” methods of its own, with great results. Leaders are experimenting with Facebook and May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED

Facebook Live to deliver unique content to people in their communities with whom they don’t already have a connection. For example, the church recently promoted a program called “Parent Unscripted” on Facebook. It basically asks (and answers) a top-of-mind question for many people: How can I be a great parent? The church targeted its message to people within a certain radius of the original Alpharetta campus who appear to be young parents. “People who’d never heard of our church said, ‘Yes, I do have a desire to be a better parent, and I want to come hear your content,’” he says. “And we didn’t hide who we were,” Holliday points out. “We weren’t trying to ‘sucker them’ into coming to our church.” Aside from unique-content efforts like this, just having an online presence has proven beneficial for North Point in terms of seekerfriendliness. “Lots of people will stay in their pajamas and check us out online, and watch our service there, before they’ll get in their cars, drive to our church and interface with people they don’t know,” Holliday acknowledges. When they do “tune in,” seekers seem to like what they see; in fact, North Point’s services have been likened to TED Talks. “The ultimate compliment we’ve gotten is, ‘Hey, that was like a Ted Talk and a concert rolled into one,’” he says. “And we’re like, ‘Yeah. Exactly.’” Sustaining full engagement: technology’s role Once a member is “fully engaged” at North Point — as measured in these four areas — technology can (and does) play a role in helping the church maintain that engagement over the long term. Ironically, much of this depends on the ability to identify “red flags,” or gaps, in the engagement process along the way — and, more importantly, to react to these indicators as the ministry opportunities they are. “Each time there’s a withdrawal of engagement, it’s an opportunity to reach out and find out what’s going on,” Holliday explains. For 8

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

example, if a member stops giving, maybe he or she lost a job. If they stop volunteering, maybe someone in the family is ill. If they stop going to their small group, maybe they had a bad experience. The key in every instance: getting to why. “Sometimes it’s a simple as, ‘You know, I’ve been in group for 18 years, and we just decided to take a break for a year,’” Holliday shares. But what about those instances when someone really is at risk of leaving the church altogether? Well, as Holliday points out, the first step in stemming that exit is still the same: Why? “Churches, in general, are pretty good at looking at the front door and knowing who’s coming in,” he says. “I don’t know that all of us are so good at looking at the back door — knowing who we’re losing.” Once at-risk members are identified, the same technology can help the church try to re-engage them. It might be that a church leader has the information he or she needs to simply touch base with those individuals. The church is also contemplating conducting surveys among people who look less engaged than they used to be, to find out why. “In our experience, when they’re asked with the right motivation, people are happy to tell you what’s going on,” Holliday says. “It’s one way we can make this really, really big organization much smaller and more personal.”

QUICK FACTS ABOUT NORTH POINT CHURCH Year Established: 1995 Location of main campus: Alpharetta, Ga. Number of locations: 6 Number of staff (full- and part-time): 460 / 75 Combined weekly attendance: 35,000

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Teach them how to say goodbye 3 important lessons in church succession planning

By Nancy Beach

These days, I’m experiencing a collision of two of my favorite passions. My mind is often filled with lyrics from the remarkable musical Hamilton. I devoured the 730-page biography, wore out the CD in my car, and then, last month, had the breathtaking privilege of seeing the show in Chicago. I think a lot about succession planning — how churches can do a better job of healthy transition from one key leader to the next. There’s a song in the musical Hamilton that expresses what I long to see in more churches. George Washington decides not to run for a second term, which greatly disappoints and saddens Alexander Hamilton, his right-hand man. Here’s a direct quote from their song, One Last Time: Hamilton: “Why do you have to say goodbye?” Washington: “If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on. It outlives me when I’m gone. Like the Scripture says: ‘Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree.’ A moment alone in the shade. At home in this nation we’ve made.” Our first President was quoting his favorite verse, Micah 4:4, about his longing to have a moment of rest. Then, Hamilton and Washington agree that through this transition, they will “teach ‘em how to say goodbye.” I wonder what those two founding fathers would say to pastors and church communities today about how to say goodbye well — how to leave so a church can move on, flourish, and outlive the previous leader. When it comes to healthy transition, the How of transition matters just as much as the Who. Churches must not only decide on a new leader, but also pay attention to the vital aspects of preparation and closure. Here are three important lessons I’ve learned in the succession planning process. Lesson #1: Letting go is much harder than we expect For pastors, spouses, long-time staff and church members, the letting-go process is exceedingly difficult. Pastors who begin to sense it’s time to plan for succession can often feel anxious and concerned about their legacy. For years (if not decades), they’ve defined themselves in a role of faithfully

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serving their church, preparing sermons, and leading the staff. Many simply haven’t given themselves permission to imagine another season. For this reason, I highly recommend churches bless a pastor and spouse with the gift of a Life Plan experience — a few days with a trained person who can help define what a future fit might be for the next era of ministry. It’s also hugely important for both the pastor and spouse to have a confidante — a coach or good friend who’s a safe place to continually process the mixture of emotions throughout transition. Too many pastors feel a profound sense of loneliness during a season when they most need support. Lesson #2: Money matters I’ve been surprised by how many churches don’t have a financial plan in place for the succession process and for the future stability of their departing pastor. For this reason, some pastors stay in their role longer than they should, fearing they can’t retire with adequate resources. Ideally, these issues will be explored and planned for long before it’s time for the church to actively engage in succession. The church board or elder team holds a high responsibility to care for their leaders, to plan for their welfare in retirement, and to have funds set aside for the season of search and transition. Lesson #3: Celebrate the closure We can’t fully embrace the future unless we’ve honored the past. The pastor, spouse, staff and congregation all need opportunities to express their appreciation for the departing pastor, to share treasured memories, and to give appropriate honor and gratitude. I imagine George Washington encouraging church leaders with this message: “Say goodbye with intentionality, grace and emotional health. You are not the first to transition, and you will not be the last. Leave your church stronger for you having been there, and look ahead to your next season with great anticipation. Teach ‘em how to say goodbye!” For more than 20 years, Nancy Beach [ http://www.nancylbeach.com ] served as the Programming Director and a Teaching Pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. Currently, she serves as a leadership coach with Slingshot Group [ http://slingshotgroup.org ] and is a member of the teaching team at Chicago’s Soul City Church. May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

FULLY FUNDED, FINALLY How Cornerstone Community Church fully funded its operating budget with digital giving Founded in 2004, Cornerstone Community Church (CCC) is a young church located in the rural mountains of Virginia, meeting in a converted downtown storefront. In a city with a population less than 7,000, finances have been a struggle for the growing church. Here, Lead Pastor Mike Morris recalls a recent change that has helped CCC not just meet its monthly budget for 2017, but exceed it. Last summer, our church decided it was time to revamp our online giving. Until that point, we offered a solution that only provided ACH bank account giving as an option — cumbersome, complicated, and only a few families in the church used it. After an extensive evaluation of different online giving platforms, we chose Tithe.ly [ http://get.tithe.ly/ ] as our new provider. We were most impressed by the ease of giving it offered via mobile devices. We Mike Morris also liked that this solution charged no monthly fees. So, it was an easy decision for our administrative team. We launched the new service in September 2016, with positive results. We now have six months of use to help us identify new trends. These include:

After launching our new online giving platform, we quickly saw our giving trends change. We now see 34% of all giving occur online, which is a big increase from our previous solution. Another positive benefit is that 41% of our online giving is recurring giving, which makes it much more consistent from week to week. After the first quarter, the church is ahead of budget by two full weeks — a more than 5% improvement compared to the previous year. It’s also the first time the church has ever been ahead of budget during the first quarter! Increased giving per person. Our attendance has been consistent over the past couple of years, which means giving per person has increased. The average gift size through Tithe.ly is $162, which shows that people are using this tool for their tithes, not just for smaller gifts. More money for ministry. Based on the current average for 2017, we should exceed our annual budget by $30,000. And, if we take into account the increased giving for the third and fourth quarter, we’re on track to exceed our budget by more than $50,000! For a church our size, that’s a huge blessing. The increased giving will allow us to do two things. First, we can pay down the mortgage on our facility. This will free up more money for ministry and mission efforts. Second, this budget surplus will allow us to expand the staff. As a church averaging about 300 people in attendance with two Sunday services, I’m the only full-time staff member, serving as lead pastor. We’ve wanted to expand our staff for several years, but the lack of funds has prevented hiring another part- or full-time staff person. We’re pleased with the consistent increased giving we’ve seen since implementing a more robust online giving solution. I’d recommend all church leaders think about making mobile giving more accessible to their congregation. Our only regret is that we didn’t implement it sooner. Mike Morris is Lead Pastor at Cornerstone Community Church in Galax, Va. [ https://mycornerstone.org ]

A significant ramp-up in online giving = more consistent generosity. Our church is a little unusual in that the first quarter is typically our lowest quarter, financially. Our giving starts picking back in summer, but our biggest slump is the first three months, with January representing the lowest point.

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RISE FROM THE ASHES: How leaders at historic First Baptist Church Magee rebuilt — better than ever — after a $2-million fire

The rebuilding team at First Baptist Church Magee: (from left to right) Cole Bond, Committee Chair; Raymond Johnson, Vice Chairman of the Deacons; Dan Johnston, Chairman of the Deacons; Robbie Barnes, Church Treasurer; and Bro. Buddy Keyes, Senior Pastor. Not pictured: James Smith, Financial Review Committee Chairman churchexecutive.com

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MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED

ROBBIE BARNES / TREASURER & REBUILDING COMMITTEE MEMBER / FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH MAGEE / MAGEE, MISS.

RISE FROM THE ASHES How leaders at historic First Baptist Church Magee rebuilt — better than ever — after a $2-million fire By Joyce Guzowski

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For historic First Baptist Church Magee, of Magee, Miss. — founded nearly 120 years ago — the unthinkable happened on December 11, 2013. As a police officer was driving by in the early morning hours, he noticed a flicker of light behind a frosted window — in an area that should not normally be lit. After driving closer to investigate, the police officer realized that a full-blown fire was occurring. No alarms had sounded — the building was old, built in the mid20th century. After the fire was put out, and investigated, the source was identified: a battery backup CPU unit, or the battery itself. Robbie Barnes, treasurer and long-time member of First Baptist Church Magee, helped to assess the damage. The bulk occurred in the office suite, which housed the pastors and staff members. The origin of the fire, at the CPU unit, was in the secretarial office, just outside the church sanctuary. The door was closed at the time, and glass had melted in that area. Smoke damage was extensive. The fire had originated on the first floor, and the smoke climbed to the second and third stories, following the pipes, and creating a “chimneylike” effect. When all was said and done, the dollar amount on the damage was in the $2-million range. “You had structural damage, damage to furniture, fixtures, personal belongings, toys and all the things in the daycare, musical instruments, and sound system damage,” Barnes says. The magnitude of the damage was unparalleled in the church’s long history — save for some tornado and hail damage, a common occurrence in south Mississippi’s climate.

SERVPRO, a restoration and cleaning service provider, was called to tend to inventory and cleanup. It was during this time that the rebuilding team really began considering a contractor — and how they would ultimately make that decision. The discussion sparked a mention of GC3 (at the time referred to as GuideOne Taylor Ball), the construction / reconstruction division of GuideOne. A meeting was set up, and the team remained openminded as they prepared to talk with GC3. “They met with our team, and they explained how the process worked. They explained to us their relationship with GuideOne and that it would be a much more seamless process because they communicated directly with GuideOne,” Barnes explains. “This was opposed to having someone coming to us, and then we have to be the third party, the intermediary. We listened to them, we also talked amongst ourselves, and in the church, and decided that it was the best avenue for us to take. As it turned out, I think it was without a doubt a really good decision.” The communication between GuideOne and GC3 did provide a simplified process for First Baptist, something that was highly valued by the rebuilding team’s members. As GC3 had mentioned in their initial talk, much of the added work of functioning as an intermediary was eliminated altogether. Ray Hoover, who represented GuideOne, and Michael Schmidt, superintendent of the church’s rebuilding job for GC3, communicated regularly on the rebuilding process. “We would meet two or three times during the week at night, and Michael would bring us up to date,” Barnes recalls. “We’d get Ray on the phone if we needed to, and we’d just work through this whole process. They had a really good, open dialogue, and it worked well for us because we didn’t really have a lot of friction there.”

The first step forward After the damage assessment, the church began the process of deciding how to move forward. A committee was formulated; it consisted of Barnes, the treasurer; Cole Bond, the properties committee chairman; James Smith, the financial review chairman; Dan Johnston, the chairman of deacons; and Raymond Johnson, vice chairman of deacons. The team was rounded out by the pastor, Bro. Buddy Keyes. First Baptist Church Magee, a longtime insured of GuideOne Insurance, turned to its insurance agent, David Keyes of Insurance Associates in Magee, and its carrier, GuideOne, during the beginning stages of cleanup and planning. Keyes would be instrumental in guiding the church through the entire rebuilding process, as well.

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In addition to clear, consistent communication on the planning based on what he and the First Baptist Church Magee have been through progress, the committee members were often presented options for — from the shock of a disaster, to the lengthy rebuilding process — his not only rebuilding, but also improvements. The building that had response was three-pronged. “One, make sure you have good insurance coverage with a good sustained the fire damage had been standing for many decades, possibly since the 1950s. “Michael would say, ‘Look, I can put this back exactly insurance company,” he advises. “There were some coverages that our the way it was, but for the same money, I can do this and it would be insurance agent had put on for us that we really didn’t know about, and an improvement. Not only a necessary improvement for functionality, they came into play. Understand your insurance coverage, and understand but a safety improvement,” Barnes says. The options for upgrading took the limitations, because that can be critically important in a disaster like this.” First Baptist was the project above and beyond “Our church is like every other church. We don’t like change — we’re properly insured and had a basic rebuild — on the same budget. resistant to change. You think because it’s always been done one way, it’s replacement cost coverage; without it, renovations would Along with the time saved [how it] needs to be done forever. And that’s not the case.” have come with a steep price by eliminating the church — ROBBIE BARNES tag. The insurance committee as a third party between the insurance company and the contractor, there was a feeling of time had worked with their insurance agent beforehand to make sure they were saved just by virtue of knowledge of rebuilding. GC3 had experience adequately covered. Two, according to Barnes, is to make sure you have proper alarm systems working with insurance claims, so this meant that they were familiar with the process of fixing damaged structures. As Barnes points out, that alert you to an incident. Had the police officer not passed the church many contractors might not carry the same experience that an insurance that night, a total loss might have been possible. Barnes’ last piece of advice: Be open-minded. “Our church is like every company possesses. “With their expertise with dealing with fire claims and renovating other church. We don’t like change — we’re resistant to change. You think them — as well as, I’m sure, other natural disasters — they were able to because it’s always been done one way, it’s [how it] needs to be done forever. save us a lot of time, and a lot of expense, because they were already ahead And that’s not the case,” he says. “I think our church grew closer through this process,” Barnes adds. “It of the game,” Barnes says. This experience with claims created a seamless process, one that might have otherwise been absent, or left up to the forced us to … make some decisions that we probably would have deferred had this not occurred. Our church was strong enough to withstand that church to figure out themselves. and willing to be flexible enough to allow us to make some changes. Without a doubt, we have a better church than we had prior to the fire.”’ Making ministry work in the meantime And would First Baptist Church Magee done anything differently in the Over the course of the rebuild, First Baptist Church Magee held its services in its family life center, located across the street from the church. rebuilding process? “No,” Barnes says. “We had the right people involved in it, the right What could be salvaged from the smoke damage was safely removed from the church, with the help of GC3, and taken over to the center to insurance coverages, and the right contractor in GC3.” be used, as church members were not allowed to reenter the building as a safety precaution. GC3 also helped to rent any items that were needed, but not available. QUICK FACTS ABOUT FIRST BAPTIST Throughout the process, Barnes says he and his team viewed GC3 as much more than a construction company. In fact, Michael Schmidt CHURCH MAGEE flew out for the dedication of the new church. “This was really a true Year Established: 1898 partnership; he advised us throughout this whole process,” Barnes recalls. Location of main campus: Magee, Miss. “We were extremely grateful for the way that he handled it.” Number of staff (full- and part-time): 6 / 2 Combined weekly attendance: 300 Lessons from the trenches When asked what advice Barnes would give to other church leaders 2017 budget: $840,000 14

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

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KEY ELEMENTS FOR AN ENGAGING LOBBY OR WELCOME AREA

By Mark R Ashcraft with Bruce Woody, AIA

Getting people to engage in today’s fast-paced culture is challenging, with all the competition for attention we carry with us. Yet, at our core, we’re all social creatures seeking connection — real connection. As church leaders, we need to break down barriers and create authentic spaces that allow for (and encourage!) this engagement.

In a church lobby or welcome area, there are several aspects — both horizontal and vertical — that create connection. Let’s focus on three key concepts: #1: First impressions One of the most influential roles a lobby can play is to make a great first impression. Lobbies have personalities that speak to guests and begin

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

their experience — they need to speak to hospitality. As a person’s first point of contact with a facility, it must send the message: Welcome! We’re glad you’re here. Incorporating hospitality amenities allows for opportunities for people to connect at a conversational level, to slow down and let down their guard. Ample and varied seating areas give people options to gather and cultivate friendships with people they might have just met.

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At Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Va. (shown, left), seating incorporated along the edges of the main commons allows for these quick conversations without impeding traffic flow. A centrally located café with additional seating creates the opportunity for deeper connection — even becoming a destination itself. The use of glass and natural light is another way to enhance this welcoming feeling. Bright, open spaces feel comfortable, and being transparent is a good way to open doors to the community. Activity begets activity. Being able to see ministry on display invites and draws in curious seekers.

With proper wayfinding as a guide, lobbies can move people through a space during turnover between services, as well as provide areas to stop and connect. These two functions might seem opposed to each other, but a great lobby allows for both. It enables a sense of control at the user level, ultimately making guests feel more comfortable as they make spontaneous connections on their terms. By providing a strong first impression aligned with your unique brand and a well-planned design, you create a welcoming environment, setting the stage for connection to happen. We’re called to fellowship in Christ

#2: Brand integration A ministry’s brand should be considered as a design element. This is the easiest way to speak to the community and share a brand story that’s authentic and relevant. Every institution has an established identity that speaks to its core, to its philosophy of ministry. When someone walks into your facility, the building needs to speak the same language as your online and print presence to resonate with their expectations. This creates a more authentic experience. When Preston Trail Community Church in Frisco, Texas (above) decided it was time to relocate to continue its growth, one of the concerns was maintaining an established identity as a highly creative, communitydriven warehouse church. The design of the building references this identity, and specific elements throughout the campus help recall this vision to the average guest. #3: Wayfinding At their core, lobbies are connecting spaces. They move people from one space to another. To be effective, this should be an intuitive process. Both first-time guests and longtime members should be able to orient themselves and easily navigate the space. Architectural elements, lighting, seating groupings, finishes, materials and more can all be used to provide visual clues, along with well-placed signage. North Dallas Community Bible Fellowship Church in Plano, Texas (pictured, right) never had a significant lobby space before its current campus — just a maze of corridors. This was addressed by making the primary spaces accessible from a single, large commons across the front of the campus. No matter the door you enter, where you’re looking to go is visible. churchexecutive.com

and share the good news — we can start by removing our barriers and proclaiming: Welcome! We’re glad you’re here! Mark R Ashcraft is a senior associate of HH Architects [ www.hharchitects. com ] in Richardson, Texas. He serves as the Creative Director for the firm and has been blessed to work with many ministries during his 16-year tenure. Bruce Woody, AIA, is president & CEO of HH Architects. He speaks around the country about the importance of campus master planning and has been working with ministries for more than 30 years. May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

Saved by the sensor! 5 technology experts explain (in plain English) how these small, easy-to-install innovations can save your church’s life — or, at the very least, its budget

Recently, Church Mutual partnered with Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB), a Munich RE company, to offer a state-of-the-art sensor technology program to houses of worship. It makes a lot of sense, for a lot of reasons.

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Paul Carlotto Insurance Committee Member, New England Conference of the United Methodist Church First United Methodist Church of North Andover MA

Mike Fitzgerald Senior Analyst Celent

Cheryl Kryshak Vice President Risk Control Church Mutual Insurance Company

Marti Ryan Assistant Director The UW Internet of Things Systems Research Center

Marc Saulsbury VP Strategic Business Development Munich RE/HSB

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For a pastor who’s just learning about the availability of this sensor program, can you explain what it is, and what it does?

What is it about church facilities that make them particularly good candidates for Internet of Things (IoT) technology solutions like sensors?

Carlotto: It’s a really good way to use technology to warn you when you have a condition in your building, whether you’ve lost heat or have too much water somewhere. A sensor sends a text, email or both to the appointed person in the congregation. He or she can respond to that text and go to the church, hopefully preventing a lot of damage.

Ryan: From my perspective, it’s almost like a vacation home; the comings and goings are at various times, and various people need to manage the facility. I think sensors are a great way to provide collaborative management of a building, from a distance, across many users.

Kryshak: That’s a good explanation. I’d add that the sensors are small and easy to install, and the warnings for temperature are two-fold. First, you get a warning when temperatures are starting to fall. Then, when they really are a problem, you get another alert. Saulsbury: Right. It gives you real-time visibility into the conditions at your church. It’s this real-time nature of the information that’s new.

Saulsbury: That’s a great point. The occupancy and use of a church are like that, where there are long stretches when no one is in a particular room, or even in the building. Another thing is [as Kryshak noted], churches are cost-conscious. Big sensor networks and large, sophisticated equipment have been around in the industrial space for many years. It’s only now that it’s getting so much cheaper, and the sensors themselves are much smaller and more accessible to everybody.

What are some of the biggest benefits to church facilities in using this technology? Carlotto: As chair of the board of trustees at our church, I learn sooner that I might have a problem, and it lets me react right away. We have only a few people — trustees — who could pitch in to help if we had to clean up water, or whatever it happens to be. It’s just a lot simpler (and cheaper) to catch it in the beginning than to correct it afterward. Saulsbury: Yeah, exactly. The speed is critical in these situations, obviously, to help mitigate the severity of any loss you might have. On top of that, the hope is that it’s just easier; rather than actively requiring you to constantly keep tabs on things, you get an alert or notification at just the right time. And we’ve tried hard to make sure the notifications aren’t overwhelming, so you’re not constantly having to respond — only when you need to. Fitzgerald: Among analysts, we’ve been talking about ‘Internet of Things’ technology and how it’s going to change the meaning of insurance, the value proposition. This is a great example of that. Basically, instead of the traditional insurance value (‘We’ll write you a check once something has happened to make you financially whole’), this is moving that indemnity model to one of avoidance and mitigation. That adds huge value. Kryshak: Another interesting thing about the program is that it notifies you even in situations not covered by insurance. We had a scenario where someone left a window open in a basement, and there were torrential downpours. Water came right into the building. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be a covered loss; but because of the sensor, they were alerted, closed the window and mopped up the water without a much bigger mess. Carlotto: Same here. We had some pretty bad weather in New England last year. In our choir room, someone didn’t close the window all the way. Nobody saw it, and we had very strong winds that night. At 11:15 p.m., I got a notification about the temperature in the choir room being low, so I went down to the church. Even before I got into the room, I could feel air blowing all around. I found the bottom sash had come out of its track, and the space was quickly losing temperature. I was glad to have the technology, because I wouldn’t have wanted to come in the next day and find a huge mess. Kryshak: You make a really good point, because it’s not just about pipes freezing; it’s also about energy efficiency. Without the sensor, your furnace would have just kept running [to maintain the temperature in the room], which would have been expensive.

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Kryshak: I would add that the individuals who are usually taking care of the church are volunteers. They have so many other personal responsibilities. This technology can keep them apprised of what’s going on without them needing to be on-site. Fitzgerald: One thing also to mention is that many church buildings have some age. They might even be historic, which can make their valuations priceless. This makes it particularly beneficial to have this type of sensor monitoring in place. What are some of the costs — “real and soft” — that can be avoided by using sensor technology and IoT solutions? Carlotto: In 2010, we could have avoided about $350,000 in damages at our church if we had sensors in place. On a Saturday afternoon, our 5-inch water line — the main line for our sprinkler system — ruptured. It basically filled up the subfloor of our 6,000-square-foot facility, which houses four classrooms, our mechanical room, closets and some bathrooms. It ran for at least five hours and was only discovered when somebody stopped by the church. They were greeted by 4 feet of water flowing out at them. Kryshak: What a mess. Carlotto: Yeah. So, we lost our two boilers and everything in the Montessori classrooms. The whole basement level basically had to be rebuilt, and we couldn’t run our sprinkler systems, so we had to leave the building. We ended up going to another church for about six months. Because of that, we lost people who didn’t come back.

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Why is a wireless platform so important to sensor technology and other IoT solutions? Saulsbury: I think churches — in terms of occupancy and use — are a perfect corollary as to why this sensor technology is helpful. We talked about how some churches are pretty big buildings, so there’s the distance issue. There are also challenging construction materials to consider. But wireless technology adapts to those elements. Another consideration is security. Our church installations so far have been based on cellular networks; we purposely don’t connect to an existing network, for security reasons. We call it ‘network segmentation’ — it puts it on an entirely different network and doesn’t expose any of the church’s existing data. Ryan: One thing I would add to [ Carlotto’s ] experience is that while there’s a quantifiable cost savings, one of the soft benefits is peace of mind. Saulsbury: That’s an excellent point. It speaks to [ Fitzgerald’s ] comment about how insurance is changing. The value proposition insurance companies want to bring to the table includes things like peace of mind, comfort and visibility. Also, as [ Kryshak ] mentioned, energy and cost savings. Can you comment on other building control advancements and how they could positively impact a church’s bottom line? Fitzgerald: There are systems now which are much more interactive in terms of how property is used. Even in the home, hooking up Alexa to a light switch means you don’t have clap anymore! [ laughs ] You can just say, “Turn on,” and it’s on. This generates data that can be captured, stored, analyzed, and turned into meaningful information — information you wouldn’t have otherwise. So, if you get a smart building, you can do smart management of that facility. We’re going to see increasingly easy-to-use platforms — not just to turn the lights on and off, but to actually interpret how a building is being used currently, and how it can be optimized. Ryan: Well, you’ve definitely hit upon it. And, some sensors you could add are for smoke, fire and CO 2 . I bet even attendance-counting could be also sensor-triggered, not to mention the optimization of HVAC and lighting. It’s becoming very sophisticated. There’s a lot of movement in quantifying buildings, and how to maximize and optimize them. For church leaders who might be hesitant to try new technologies, how easy is it to install and use the sensors? Carlotto: I was with the tech at our church when he installed it. It’s very simple, and I’m sure I could probably do it myself without any problem. Kryshak: Yes. Really, it’s installed using Velcro strips, so probably the most difficult part is figuring out where to put the sensors; we give a lot of advice to that end. We also have monitoring and support available to anyone who has a question. If you’re in the middle of putting it together and you get lost, we have somebody available on the phone to walk you through it. Ryan: From our experience, we just sent a kit of smart and connected devices to 30 households across Wisconsin, and didn’t give them a lot of instructions on installing them. In each kit were motion sensors, electric outlets, water leak sensors, and a smoke and seal alarm. The average time to install those devices was between 60 and 90 minutes. 20

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Fitzgerald: If you really want to experience why wireless is important, go spend 30 minutes in the boiler room. So many places where you need sensors are inaccessible. You wouldn’t want to be running a wire or be worried about maintaining a wire in some of those spots. From your perspective, what would you like to see — or what other innovative solutions do you see coming along — that would benefit church facilities? Carlotto: While we were talking, a few needs came to my mind. One of them is for when my church loses electricity. I live 25 minutes away; so, if the power goes out, I’ve got a couple issues. If it happens during the day and I lose heat, then the Montessori School can’t stay there. If I lose power to my air compressor — which keeps my sprinkler system charged with air — and everything trips and the system floods, then the fire department will show up and I’ll have lines full of water. The sprinkler service company will have to come in to drain the lines and reset everything, which costs $550 minimum each time. Also, it would be great to have some kind of sensor that would tell me if one of our 15 hot-water circulators for our baseboard heat goes down. Right now, I wouldn’t know; nobody would. I’d like something that could monitor those kinds of things. Kryshak: Actually, [ Carlotto ], you should be getting an alert if the power goes out. The reason we know that is because your gateway is plugged in. When that gateway doesn’t get the electric power anymore, it goes to battery; at that point, you should get an alert that says the battery is being used, meaning you have no power — at least not to the gateway. Does that mean that the entire power went out in the whole building? No, I can’t say that. So, there’s something in place already, but certainly not to the extent that you’re looking for. That’s really good feedback for us. Another need we’ve been hearing from customers centers around fire. We have sensors that alert when temperatures go really low, so we need to develop something for when the temperature goes really high. That way, somebody can get in there right away. Saulsbury: What you’ve both said illustrates kind of a neat secondary effect: the sensor technology, once it’s installed, allows you to do a lot more than what you initially put it in for. On top of that, we’re always looking to incorporate other data sources. I believe [ Fitzgerald ] mentioned there’s all this new data that’s being created. If we could compare or correlate that to things like weather data and other outside data sources, it could be helpful. In the event of a power outage, for example, there’s some data that could tell you if the neighborhood is down. All of this is possible. But even these initial installations [ of the sensor program ] provide us a lot of opportunities to do some cool stuff. — Reporting by RaeAnn Slaybaugh

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Making the case for church investments In many churches, cash reserves are either immediately applied to ministry expansion, or deposited into a traditional savings, CD or money market account. However, do these options really represent the best possible stewardship of those funds? John Regan, Founding Partner and Chief Investment Officer at New Yorkbased Permanens Capital, believes John Regan churches should consider investing cash reserves in relatively low-risk, short-duration, highquality bond portfolios. Q: Investing cash reserves might seem counter-intuitive to the nature and mission of a church. Why? Regan: Churches are often very focused on expansion. Rather than accumulating reserves, churches often start new programs, acquire real estate or open satellite campuses. These activities add to budget expense and liabilities like maintenance capex, rather than add to reserves. As a result, there is a constant push-and-pull over creating reserves, versus starting new programs. The argument is to approach church governance in a similar fashion as to how trustees approach school governance. I serve as a trustee at one school and also serve on a number of other boards. These boards generally avoid spending endowment to hire more teachers or create new programs. Trustees often ask: What do we have to do to ensure that the school is here for the next 50-100 years? The debate can be framed by the following question: Should church leaders think like trustees or CEOs of growth companies? Growth is wonderful. However, if you build a program — an afterschool program for children or single-mothers for example — and then misjudge your budget and are forced to discontinue the program next year, does that serve the good of the community? That push-and-pull, and the balance of growing at a “measured clip” versus “rapid clip,” is something that we did not really understand until we began work with our first church client. Q: Churches often default to “investing” through a savings account, CD or money market account. In comparison, investing cash reserves might seem more time-intensive and, frankly, intimidating. What is the reality? Regan: Investing through a savings account should not be considered ‘investing.’ CDs do not offer any real rate of return and carry a penalty for redeeming early. The purpose of investing reserves is two-fold. Earning a reasonable rate of return is important while also maintaining the ability to access the money if there is an urgent need. We have seen churches purchase annuities and class these as liquid reserves. However, an annuity is not a real investment. It is not liquid. It is very common for a church to conduct business and invest reserves with a regional or community bank. However, many times that menu is limited, and so is the level of expertise. As a result, the church is presented with short-term, low-interest-rate options. These options are not the most liquid and tend to carry hidden fees and penalties for early redemption. churchexecutive.com

Q: How do the costs associated with investing cash reserves compare to setting up a savings account, CD or money market account? Regan: A savings account will not cost much, but it also yields less than 0.2% of interest. An investment account will cost around 0.5% basis points but can return 4% to 5% of interest. Q: When a church does choose to invest its cash reserves, how are those resources usually divided? Regan: Our experience is that churches generally create two pools, with two very different purposes. The first is a short-term, ‘emergency’ pool, which is the church’s operating cash reserves. Typically, this will not include any equity investments, just liquid bonds paying the church a reasonable rate of interest. Then, the church will create a second, longer-term, strategic pool. With this investment pool, the church is able to run a more balanced portfolio. Since this is money the church is going to need tomorrow, that pool should be structured like an endowment or a foundation with a focus on capital preservation, asset allocation and reasonable long-term growth. Q: Why is it so important to identify an investment advisor who understands the “business” of a church and how it operates? Regan: The first mistake we see churches make is putting their reserves in the hands of someone who is a member of the board or happens to be in the flock. This presents a conflict of interest and has its own set of governance issues. You never want to be put in a position where you may have to fire someone who is a contributing member of the church. A church might also choose to hire a local or regional bank, if its options are limited. This brings a whole host of higher fees. With a bank and a broker model, there are fees and sales charges associated with having someone act as a fiduciary and asset manager. At Permanens, we do not have individuals as clients. We are not interested in finding the next person with $2 million or $3 million to plan his or her retirement fund. We specialize in institutional investing for endowment, foundation and non-profit clients. Q: As a church is vetting its options, what should an investment advisor understand, uniquely, about a church client and how it manages its operations and finances? Regan: Before recommending any investment option, an investment advisor needs to fully understand the church’s balance sheet. The investment advisor has to know what liabilities the church has coming and what, if any, real estate purchases the church might be planning to make. Understanding the potential liquidity need is paramount before any advisor can properly begin tailoring an investment program. The most important thing to convey is that there is a new option for churches, and it can give them the liquidity, low fees and access they might not get locally or regionally. This option comes with the same investment expertise that is being used to run school endowments, which have very similar balance sheet issues. Coupled with that, it is important to have the proper fiduciary oversight of those assets. There should be a real focus on capital preservation and ensuring the reserves are properly invested for the longer term benefits of the church. — Reporting by RaeAnn Slaybaugh

May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

PROTECTING the church’s children We hear from child protection experts in this Q&A

Crispin Ketelhut Montelione

Deacon Marques Silva

Maryjane W. Fuller

Associate Director VIRTUS Program via NCS Risk Services LLC

Director of the Office of Child Protection and Safety Catholic Diocese of Arlington

Director of Human Resources and Safe Environment Catholic Diocese of Richmond

In the role of caring adults, we’re supposed to do all that we can to keep children from harm, and provide a safe place for all. Our panelists discuss the topics and challenges of protecting children within the church environment — and how to establish policies that mitigate these risks.

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

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What type of risks does each church face? Montelione: The problem is that we always have risk. There’s risk of physical harm and emotional harm. There’s risk of abuse, including sexual abuse, which can affect many different things. It can have long and far-reaching effects for the child and for your church. When we have risk and something bad happens, we have to repair that trust. We have to think about the future viability of our churches. Depending on the gravity of that situation, it can take years and decades to fix that, if it’s possible to fix it — because, sometimes it isn’t. We really must perform specific safe environment procedures concurrently. It’s akin to having a fence surrounding a garden. If we have a beautiful garden that we’re trying to protect, and there’s one plank missing in that fence, that’s a known risk, and something is going to get through. We always have obvious risks that we know about when we’re thinking about the location. For example, if it’s poorly maintained as a facility, that’s a risk itself. However, another risk is if you have registered sex offenders in a faith community. That’s a risk to children. There are also some lesser-known risks. One is a lack of access control and monitoring. There is also increased risk, automatically, within any church environment and any ministry because there’s always an assumption of trust and safety. That perspective brings its own risk. The good news is that we can drastically reduce the risk to children in virtually any church environment as long as we’re vigilant and we have specific protocols. What kind of questions must be considered when creating protocols for your church? Fuller: Controlling access is a very important part of our Safe Environment Program training. When we talk about control access, we’re asking, Do we have locks on doors? Do we have protocols on keeping doors in parishes locked when children are present? Do we have applications for our ministry? This gives us a chance to sit down and to share what our policies and procedures are. Face-to-face interviews for staff and volunteers are extremely important, as are background checks. This is important in any environment where children are involved. Code of conduct and knowledge of policies are just as important. In terms of monitoring programs and procedures, we need to keep a close eye on the programs that involve our children or where children are present. Is there some kind of video security? Are you walking through buildings and making sure that doors that should be locked remain locked? What are the secluded areas? Montelione: There’s a distinction between the things that you do before people ever have an opportunity to volunteer or to work, and then there are also the things that you do to ensure the environment is safe once people have access. What if your ministry programs are off-site? What types of risk are associated with this? Fuller: For myself and the diocese I work with, off-site happens when we go to retreat centers or on field trips. It’s a huge challenge, because we really do lose control in many ways. We take a lot of care in trying to understand where our ministry is going. Is it a retreat center? Is it in someone’s home? Is it a hotel? We want to make sure that we follow our code of conduct and that everyone is well aware of these policies. We also have to consider what to do if something involving boundary crossing or even possible abuse happens. Who do you tell? When do we involve civil authorities? When are we told as a church? I don’t think we can churchexecutive.com

do enough to protect kids, especially as we leave our churches and go to different locations. Again, it always falls back to: What is our policy? and How have we trained our adults? How do you deal with the risks associated with the internet? Silva: The internet is considered an off-site location because there’s a lack of transparency. You can never see who’s looking in or who has the availability to our youth. It becomes even easier access when we’re talking about anything with a data plan and can connect to the internet, such as smart phones, to tablets, to Apple watches. We also have various gaming devices like Playstation, Xbox, or even Fitbits. The challenge that we have is that we’re used to keeping strangers away from the kids by monitoring the environment around them. A couple of issues come up in regards to this. One issue is that children have access to things such as pornography. The main consumer of pornography are teens between 12 and 17 — and usually they don’t go looking for it; it can find them. Social media is another issue that’s very much out of control. The very nature of these applications and programs are interaction with the community through the internet, often times out of sight and hearing of adults. A challenge of social media is not only safety, but the reputation of the individual. Kids don’t understand that when something is out on the internet, it’s not private and it’s there forever. Even if they delete it, they can’t take it back. It’s not just what they put up themselves, it’s what their friends and families put out there, as well. I think we need a sober understanding — especially within our communities — of providing training for parents. I think the most vulnerable set of kids are the “it’s not my kids” population. Education, training and reinforcement need to start as early as possible. Are there challenges within different age groups when it comes to addressing internet issues? Fuller: Kids are far more savvy than adults in many ways when it comes to the internet and social media. The challenge is, we need to be just as savvy. We need to stay on top of it. It’s not enough to say, ‘Well, you know, I’m a different generation; let the millennials handle it.’ It’s just as much our responsibility. We have had some incidents within the state of Virginia where children have been abused when a perpetrator gained access via an app such as Kik. The parent didn’t understand or know what the app was all about. We, as caring adults, need to be as savvy as our kids on these topics. How does ‘human predilection,’ or human bias, factor in to our ability to protect children? Silva: We’re always combating the fact that we don’t want to suspect any inappropriate behavior from not only the people we love, but those who might be right next to us in our services or events. When an inappropriate action has taken place, there’s an attitude of disbelief. This also happens to be part of the grooming process. The individual who’s a predator is always looking to groom and keep people close to them, so that when there is an accusation, there’s a part of the community that’s going to defend. Overcoming disbelief is a challenge. Not only is there a disbelief about another person being capable of harming a child, but there’s a mentality present with parents who think that it couldn’t happen to their child, or in the parish. There’s no sign that predators wear; they’re able to blend in, and that’s what makes them so effective, unfortunately. We have to address myths and help individuals understand the truth about abusers and predators. May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

We also have to work on burnout and laziness. When adults start to relax too much, it can allow for loopholes that potential predators will identify to start the grooming process. How might culture affect Safe Environment? Montelione: It can affect it in two ways. You have a collective organizational culture as an entity, and there’s tradition within that entity that becomes culturally acceptable and establishes the “norm,” regardless of the actual behavior that’s occurring. Then, you also have the juxtaposition of the individual’s cultural identity. This could determine whether a particular behavior is appropriate or not, and is impacted by personal values, family, ethnic traditions, country of origin, etc. The problem is that it can negatively affect Safe Environments. It can either provide more access to the youth or less access to the youth. Even if the person has good intentions, they might not realize what they’re doing. It can unwittingly condition that child to more easily accept behavior on behalf of someone who has bad intentions. We want to be really aware of that and our own actions.

“We really must perform specific safe environment procedures concurrently. It’s akin to having a fence surrounding a garden. If we have a beautiful garden that we’re trying to protect, and there’s one plank missing in that fence, that’s a known risk, and something is going to get through.

— Crispin Ketelhut Montelione What do you frequently hear when establishing protocols and training, particularly in a parish that has become lax? Fuller: A lot of times people will say, ‘Well the person only volunteers two or three times a year, so we don’t need to worry about it.’ Or, ‘They’ve been a member of this parish for 20 years,’ and ‘We’ve been doing this long enough, we don’t need to worry about it anymore.’ We have to remind people that we don’t know what we don’t know. We need to take care and do a background screening of all employees and volunteers, and make sure they attend training so they know the warnings signs and policies. Folks are busy! Whether a parent, grandparent or youth volunteer attends a training, 9.9 times out of 10 they’re glad they took the time. There’s a realization by the end of the training that that there is so much to learn. You’ll always combat resistance to get people to attend a training; but in the end, the more we know, the more children we protect. VIRTUS provides continuing training via monthly online bulletins to keep the issues of child protection and child safety in the forefront. These updates have been positively received in our diocese. Silva: We’re trying to create an environment for our kids to have the opportunity to come in contact with the living God. It’s important that our communities can trust the local church. When an incident happens, it’s doesn’t just hurt a particular denomination — it hurts all of us. Because we do have the best intentions for our kids, for their safety and for the adults. 24

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Listen to the webinar! “Protecting the Church’s Children” Our experts explain how location (including off-site ministry locations and the Internet), culture and human predilection can weaken the systems designed to protect youth in your church’s care — and what you can do about it! Available now at www.churchexecutive.com/webinars Questions? Readers ask, experts answer Should the church allow access to wifi? Silva: The question I always ask churches is, Why are you allowing the wifi? What’s the point of it? Is it just for general access? The majority of the people coming in with their cell phones have data plans. If there is wifi access at your church, then I’d always require a password that needs to be given for our particular events. The reality is, if something happens while they’re connected to your network, you — as a church — are going to bear some of the responsibility for it. A lot of our churches do offer wifi access; but again, you have to have that password, and it’s used for particular events, at particular times, for a particular purpose. General wifi access isn’t usually offered. How can a church provide sacramental and worship opportunities to a registered sex offender while ensuring there’s a Safe Environment for children? Silva: Here in the diocese of Arlington, we write out contracts. From our perspective, that parishioner has a right to receive that sacramental assistance, as well as worship opportunities, but that doesn’t mean they get to choose it. We develop contracts that determine what service they go to, where they may sit, what they may do, and who they check in and out with. We sit down and have the pastor sign off on this. We have the registered sex offender sign off on it. Then, we do checks once a year to see how the relationship is going. That way, we’re able to give them the freedom to receive the sacrament and the worship experience, while managing the risk involved. You also have to recognize that sometimes, depending on the felony (here in Virginia, it’s a class 6 felony, which is child abuse), you can’t be within 150 feet of a school. Sometimes that means we have to move them from the parish so they can have sacramental outreach — but they aren’t violating their parole. Montelione: Those are all good points for the predators we know of, but it’s important to recognize that you’re not always going to know who has good intentions, who has bad intentions, who’s a registered offender and who isn’t. We want to be really careful when we look at the sex offender registry online. When we’re focused on a particular house, it opens up risk on all the other houses in the area, because we’re so fixated on one area. We really want to make sure everyone is held to the same standard. Where we know there’s a risk, we have other protocols that we follow. But apart from that, we want to hold everyone to the same standard. — Reporting by Joyce Guzowski churchexecutive.com

Volunteer-friendly AV equipment: expert advice By Jason Davis

Running a department full of volunteers can be a double-edged sword. We’re taking pro-level equipment and putting it in the hands of people who have just hours’ worth of training on them — and yet expecting pro-level results. Realistically, practices and trainings can only go so far. Moreover, the correct selection of gear from among hundreds of choices — from cameras, to speakers and cables, to hard drives — will help your department either soar or struggle.

ATEM Production Studio 4K: Broadcast Panel [ www.blackmagicdesign.com/ products/atem ] is a professional hardware control panel with smooth-acting controls, buttons and knobs for precise control of your ATEM switcher.

The end goal for your AV department should always be a consistent, professional result, no matter the level of volunteer you garner. ATEM Production Studio 4K: Broadcast Panel [ www.blackmagicdesign.com/ products/atem ] is a professional hardware control panel with smooth-acting controls, buttons and knobs for precise control of your ATEM switcher.

piece of equipment. Sometimes that’s a good thing, because we don’t want button-pushers. Yet, it can also handicap a volunteer to the point of not being able to troubleshoot a major issue during a service.

Jason Davis

Before even starting to look for gear and analyzing volunteers, we have to figure out what we want our final product to be. Make sure that you’re honest with your assessment of needs. The last thing you want to do is to plan for something small when, in all likelihood, you have something large you need to accomplish. After the plan is finalized, you’re left with two major tasks: (1) ordering and installing the gear, and (2) the most important task: getting volunteers trained to run that gear correctly. Relating to your volunteers = the make-or-break point No department can function without volunteers, and the AV department depends on its volunteers as much (if not more) than any other due to the arrangement and number of components. Even though no one likes to admit it, no single person can truly run the entire department. Keeping in mind that all volunteers have something to offer makes the job both very easy and very difficult. Knowing your volunteers can range from 13 to retiree-age has mutual benefits for both the department and the volunteers. Sometimes, however, finding the gear that’s the perfect fit for the job — and also the perfect fit for the volunteers — can be a very interesting dynamic. Picking AV gear that’s ultimately run by volunteers will always be the hardest part of any installation. Why? Because the gear has to be the perfect fit at that time to get the desired end result. It also has to be forgiving enough to being volunteer-run. Often, the training we give our volunteers turns out to be more of a crash course in how to get by than an attempt to establish a true familiarity with that churchexecutive.com

A happy medium There will always be a happy medium when picking AV gear for volunteers — especially when you have both young and old in the department, with skill levels ranging from professional to complete novice. As such, I like to err on the side of professional-level gear to bring up the watermark for everyone in my department. Luckily, there are very specific pieces of gear that help me do that. For instance, in my department, I have the need for a live display with a multi-camera switch + streaming live to a website and app + recording for later television broadcast. I also have volunteers who range from 13 to 60 years old. Two pieces of gear I chose specifically to accommodate this wide age and experience range are the Blackmagicdesign ATEM 1 M/E Production Studio 4K and the ATEM 1 M/E Broadcast Panel. These two pieces of gear are integral to our mission — not only to the number of inputs and the ability to send different feeds to recorders, but because of the ease-of-use component I’m not totally sure the volunteers even know are built-in. My older volunteers like the feel of the Broadcast Panel buttons. They like to physically move the T-Bar handle to transition between cameras. Meanwhile, my 13-year-olds would much rather (and do!) control the camera switches from their phones. This is definitely an example of meeting the volunteers where they are and enabling them to use their current skill sets to accomplish the global goal. In any church AV department, volunteers like to feel they’re using the same equipment they see when they go to a major, high-end production. At the same time, they don’t like to feel as if they’re being handed a large piece of equipment with no instruction. As a department leader, you owe it to your volunteers to research all the possibilities and make informed decisions that are tailor-made to your specific needs, volunteer base and environment. Jason Davis is technical director at Faith Outreach Church in Clarksville, Tenn. May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

Financial Management for Christian Schools

So, you want to start a Christian school. Now what? By Darren Thompson & Richard Koon Across the country, churches are answering the call to start a private Christian School — but they’re unsure about how to navigate the process. Does this sound like your church? In this second installment of our three-part “Financial Management for Christian Schools” series, we’ll discuss next steps, as well as some significant questions your team should consider before moving forward. In our first article, we engaged Robert “Bo” Gutzwiller, Superintendent of Foothill Christian Schools in Glendora, Calif., and international executive board member for the Association of Christian Schools (ACSI) and Western Association of Schools and Colleges. He shared insights from a successful industry executive about the questions churches should answer before starting this new ministry. If your team has spent significant time in prayer and completed internal and external assessments (as we outlined in our first article), you might be asking yourself … what’s next? Planning: Before launching any new ministry, your leadership team needs to invest significant time into developing a strategic plan. One result of your planning might be that your facilities have the capacity, but the staffing and expertise are not available. If so, you might consider an option that allows you to fully use your church campus, limits the risk and expense, but still fulfills the vision and exposes the community to your ministry. We see a growing trend of independent Christian Schools who are looking to partner with churches that can accommodate their school operations. Recently, ACSI commissioned Barna Group to conduct a research project on the state of private Christian schools. Gutzwiller was a key contributor to the report and revealed that — due to increased scrutiny — independent Christian schools might be well served to consider partnering with a church ministry to provide better protection for their religious liberty. Gutzwiller went on to say that if the mission of the Christian School is being fulfilled, one key benefactor is the church. ACSI President Dan Egeler added that bringing in companion ministries can allow the church to reach outside its walls and more effectively fulfill the mission. Competition: It will be important for your church to understand the local market and economic factors that might influence the growth, profitability and success of the school. Options for education continue to expand as public charter and magnet schools offer viable alternatives to traditional public school. In addition, homeschooling options continue to expand as internet based resources grow and make this a feasible option for more families. Local economic factors also play a role in the type of ministry your church decides to offer. In rural areas, the cost of private school is shown to be more of a deterrent. Tailoring the type of ministry to your community will allow your school or daycare to meet the specific needs of families in your area. 26

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Cost: Like most start-up ministries, schools require an investment of time and money. It’s likely that your church will need to provide financial support to the ministry for several years, depending upon your cost structure and growth projections. As you look at growth and break-even analysis for your school, it’s important to consider that more than 80 percent of private Christian Schools have less than 150 students. According to the Barna research report, parents choose private Christian Schools because they’re seeking a safe environment that will focus on character development, while also providing a quality education. However, cost was the No. 1 answer when parents were asked why they did not choose a private Christian School. The research revealed that if cost were not a factor, 38 percent of parents would prefer to send their children to a private Christian school. Keeping costs down and tuition affordable is a constant challenge, as schools tend to have higher expense ratios than a church or other ministry. Successful schools are able to generate revenue from other sources, as tuition and fees might not be enough to cover all operational expenses. In our next article, we’ll discuss some of the common pitfalls and missed opportunities from a lender’s perspective. Darren Thompson is VP / Credit Services for America’s Christian Credit Union in Glendora, Calif. Richard Koon is VP / Ministry Lending for America’s Christian Credit Union. churchexecutive.com

Is your church ready to add a café? By Mike Bacile

The most frequent question I get from churches is, “How do we know if our church should build a café / coffee bar?” A café has so many positive possibilities to offer a church community. However, it should meet three important criteria in order to really produce the fellowship and revenue most churches are looking for. We always ask churches the following three questions when they approach us to help create their café.

Question #1: What is your weekend attendance on a normal weekend? Basically, are you large enough to open a café without creating a burden on your bottom line? We have discovered a good rule of thumb: if your church has at least 500 in attendance on a weekend, you can financially support a café if it’s set-up and running correctly. By café / coffee bar, we mean a location that serves espresso drinks, coffee, smoothies and frappes. The attendance number represents total attendance during the weekend; this can be broken up in to many services or just one, as long as there is a total adult and children combined attendance of more than 500. Question #2: Why do you want a café? If you meet the size rule of thumb, this is the next question — and, we believe, the most important question of all. Different churches have different reasons for a café, but most of them center around the desire to build fellowship and an opportunity to raise money for missions, projects, etc. A café is a unique aspect for a church because it’s often the only thing in the church that’s designed to build revenue. It’s a business and should be set up and run, to a degree, that way. If it’s running properly, it can build revenue for mission trips and church projects. However, churches that are performing well realize the café is a place to build fellowship. We often train new café volunteers to realize they’re not working in a “café,” but are building fellowship in their community. They are providing a safe space for new visitors to come and enjoy their community. Question #3: Who in the church supports building the café? It’s very important that the entire community understands and supports the café. When the entire church — from the pastor to the volunteers — understands the value of the café as a tool to build community, that’s when you will see the most success. If the café is only seen as a financial tool, it can be difficult to build success, especially with fellowship. Projects that we work on are the most successful when everyone sees the value of the café as more than just dollars in a cash drawer. If your church has the attendance, the vision and the support, then adding a café might be right for your community. There are many other items that must be considered of course — location, volunteers versus paid employees, what to do about free coffee, and more. These are all very churchexecutive.com

important components; but, without a solid foundation, it will make it tough to be successful. In return, our questions ultimately lead to the two questions churches ask the most. The first is: “How much does it cost to build a café”? On average, churches that have attendances from 500 - 750 get an equipment package between $18,000 - $21,000. If attendance is between 750 - 1,000, we will generally estimate $28,000 - $31,000 in equipment. Churches with weekend attendance over 1,000 will often do equipment packages of about $30,000 - $34,000. Please note: This does not include buildout of the space, including cabinets, plumbing and electric. However, this will make your location rival any coffee house in town, and give you the equipment you need to make anything that your local Starbucks might sell, only better. The second most common question asked of us is: “How much money can the church expect to raise in profits off the café?” Obviously, the size of your attendance, your layout, equipment, training, products and even service schedules affect this number. However, I have found it equally important to consider if your community understands why you have a café. If they understand the café’s purpose, then most churches should expect that 20% to 30% of their weekend attendees will purchase something from the café. An average café drink produces about $2.50 in profit, and drip coffee produces about $1 in profit (for a 10- or 12-ounce drink). If you add quick food items (nothing you have to make), then you can gain even more revenue. The key to a financially successful café is efficiency! A quick, easy menu with key drinks and an assembly line volunteer group will be able to produce the speed, quality and fellowship your café is looking to create. Mike Bacile is owner of The Daily Java, a wholesale coffee equipment and product provider for more than 21 years. He speaks at many conventions around the country about the 25 steps for setting up a successful café. Over the past decade, Bacile’s company has focused on making church cafés a successful part of their communities, and The Daily java has been labelled the “church coffee house experts.” May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

CHURCH FACILITY STEWARDSHIP

The 4 pillars to good facility stewardship By Donovan Loomis Between Sunday worship, youth activities, and all the groups that meet throughout the week, your church is a hub of activity. Your congregation relies on the facilities to not only be a place of worship, but also a launching pad for ministry. Church leaders are expected to be intentional in how they manage the church’s resources, as you care for your church with the same attentiveness that you would your own home. Aside from staff, the buildings are your most expensive asset, and we should care for them accordingly. Often, we have to do more with less, making it mission-critical to effectively prioritize the things that can make the most impact for the long-term, utilize your resources wisely, and plan for the future. From our work with church facility managers, we’ve found that the four pillars of the best facility stewardship are: 1) Preventive maintenance 2) Work order management 3) Asset management & capital planning 4) Safety

Planning for the future starts with knowing what resources you currently have (and how you can make the most of them). 3) Asset Management & Capital Planning Once you know the status of your assets and what resources you have, you can truly begin to assess how to use them and plan for the future. Being able to see detailed information on each asset in your facility — particularly if it’s expensive or large — will help you know whether it’s better to repair or begin to budget for a replacement. Joining asset management with capital planning will also enable you to forecast budgets years in advance based on what might fail in the future, ensuring that you’re using your church’s resources where it will make the most impact.

4) Safety Our facilities should be a safe and welcoming place, free of distractions. Safety is a natural aspect of stewardship, and it can’t be emphasized enough. From ensuring that your facilities are up to date with codes and regulations to natural disasters or even acts of violence, there’s no such thing as being “too” prepared. With a safety management solution, you can ensure that everyone in your congregation is prepared. Having plans and protocols available via a mobile app for staff and volunteers will reinforce safety training, equip everyone to be prepared in an emergency, and ensure that everyone has the most up-to-date information.

A preventive maintenance program can extend the life of your assets by 35% 1) Preventive Maintenance One of the best ways to fix a problem is to prevent it before it even starts. Preventive maintenance (PM) is key to being a good steward of your facility, as it can help you plan better for the future. Instead of reactive maintenance, a PM program can help you ensure that everything is running as it should be with fewer surprises. In addition, this program will allow you to schedule routine maintenance that can extend the life of your assets by 35%, while reducing energy consumption by 10% to 15%. 2) Work Order Management At times, all the things on your to-do list can feel overwhelming as you’re pulled in multiple directions. A work order management system can help prioritize and streamline incoming requests and keep things from falling through the cracks. Plus, with a work order solution in place, you’ll be able to start seeing trends that might arise in your facilities. For example: If you see that a particular air handling unit is continually requiring maintenance, you can begin to justify a replacement over repairs … which brings us to our third pillar. 28

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Doing more We use software for so many other facets of church operations, why not use software to properly plan and care for our most expensive assets? Focusing our efforts on the four pillars that make the most impact is one of the best ways to do more with less, and having a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is a powerful tool that can help you ensure that you’re staying on track with your church’s goals and keeping track of everything. To be a good steward of your church, you don’t have to invest exorbitant amounts of money in order to achieve results. By being resourceful and focusing on the areas that will make the biggest impact, you will have more resources to devote to the mission of the church: equipping the ministry. Donovan Loomis has more than three years of experience in church facility management and serves as Dude Solutions’ Industry Specialist focusing on religious organizations. He graduated with a BS degree in 2012 from East Carolina University. churchexecutive.com

LIFETIME

LEARNING

Online education for busy pastors How Villanova’s Center for Church Management & Business Ethics is making it easy for busy pastors and church leaders to continue their education. Continuing education might seem like an impractical proposition for many busy pastors. During a typical day, pastors are engaged in the daily lives of their congregations. They spend their time offering counseling, consoling the bereaved, visiting the sick, and reaching out to the disenfranchised of their church communities. When they are not directly interacting with their flock, pastors spend significant time preparing for services, writing their sermons, and planning for the future of their congregations. For more than a decade, Villanova University’s Center for Church Management & Business Ethics has offered an extensive array of online and satellite educational programs for busy pastors and church leaders. In addition to a Master of Science in Church Management (MSCM) that can be completed online, Villanova also offers online webinars that can be taken individually or together for a certificate in Church Management. “These programs offer busy professionals the opportunity to learn church management concepts in a flexible and user-friendly environment,” says Michael Castrilli, an adjunct professor in the MSCM program, and instructor in the webinar series. Master of Science in Church Management The online Master of Science in Church Management is an innovative, two-year graduate business program that provides busy pastors and church leaders with a high-level skill set in church management. It is ideal for professionals who cannot take leave of their positions to relocate and pursue full-time study. With the exception of a one-week residency on the beautiful Villanova campus, the program can be completed online in only two years of part-time study. The program aims to provide the practical skills necessary for successful stewardship of a church. “Participants are able to join a live online classroom and actively participate through polling questions and opportunities during the session to engage in Q&A with the faculty,” says Castrilli. “Flexibility is a key component of the program. For those days / times when participants can’t join due to a schedule conflict, they can go online and view the recorded session.” Examples of courses offered: • Civil Law and Church Law for Church Administrators • Stewardship and Development • Financial Reporting and Controls • Human Resource Management in a Ministry Setting • Information Technology for Churches Church Management Certificate Webinar Series The Center for Church Management & Business Ethics, in partnership with Our Sunday Visitor and AmericanChurch, Inc., also offers the Church Management Certificate Program webinar series. The series of 12 web seminars is designed to allow busy pastors, priests, business managers and other church administrators to continue their education without having to leave the privacy of their home or office. churchexecutive.com

The webinar series is designed to help church leaders of all denominations deal with common temporal problems. Webinar participants will learn how to use those resources as effectively as possible to meet their ministry goals. This innovative series of 90-minute webinars can be taken as a whole program for a Certificate in Church Management from Villanova University, or individually, depending on the interests and needs of the pastor or church administrator. Examples of webinar topics: • Church Security and Loss Prevention • Leadership Development • External Communications / Church Marketing • Church Websites • Social Media for Churches • Church Budgeting According to Castrilli, “The webinars attract a wide variety of church professionals with diverse roles and responsibilities. This provides opportunities for participants to not only learn from the instructor, but also from other students in the program.” This article is provided by the Center for Church Management & Business Ethics at the Villanova School of Business in Villanova, PA. May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

What executive pastors need to know By Jayson D. Bradley

You know you need a digital solution for giving at your church. But with all the options out there, online giving is becoming old-hat. How do you land on the right solution? And once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve found it, how will you get your church to actually use it?

CHURCH EXECUTIVE â&#x20AC;˘ May / June 2017

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e’ve helped many executive pastors navigate these waters. Here are three steps that you can take to get your church to decide on (and actually use) a digital giving solution. Step 1: Prioritize your online giving options You need to really consider all your giving options and prioritize them based on their future potential and how they’re being used now. For instance, consider the cash and checks you take during a church service. There’s a good chance that this makes up the lion’s share of your giving, so you don’t want to discontinue this practice right away. But when you consider that about 50 percent of people carry less than $20 in cash at any given time, and that 38 percent say they never use checks, it might not be wise to make the Sunday offering the center point of your giving. Online giving is an important option because it allows people to give from your website. But since more people are using mobile devices to surf the web, your approach to digital giving can’t stop here. (I mean, have you ever tried to fill out an online form from a cell phone?) Text-to-give addressed a lot of these issues in recent years, but it really pales in comparison to mobile app-based giving. When you consider that people downloaded 25 billion iOS apps and 50 billion Android apps in 2015, you know that even grandparents are using their phones to get stuff done. The ability for someone to open an app like Pushpay and give in seconds or sign up for recurring giving makes mobile giving a trustworthy priority — one that a good executive pastor should champion. Additionally, echurch’s Total Engagement Package creates your own church app where people can hear or watch sermons, keep up-to-date, and generally stay more engaged with the life of the church. Since it comes bundled with Pushpay, people feel like they’re giving to your church, and this makes it an even bigger win. Step 2: Get your leadership on board One of the problems that executive pastors run into is getting their leadership behind them. It’s not enough to get leadership to sign off on a new online giving option; they have to get behind your rationale for prioritizing it. They need to understand why you’re prioritizing certain giving solutions and deprioritizing others. Once you have them on board, you can start moving your church toward adopting the solution you’ve chosen. Your whole leadership team needs to be aligned not only on the new tool, but also on the way you will roll it out to your congregation. This is important because adding a new giving solution without communicating how you’d prefer people to give is a mistake. Instead of making giving easier, it becomes more confusing for your church members. It also puts a strain on your treasurer, who will have to juggle money coming in from multiple sources.

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GET THE TOOL YOU NEED TO START

If you’re ready to learn more about mobile giving and how to get started, download a FREE copy of Mobile Giving Done Right @ http://echurch. com/resources. It will help answer your questions about how to get started, and what common pitfalls to avoid.

Step 3: Get your church to adopt it Breaking your church out of its comfort zone isn’t easy. If congregants have been in the church for a while, they’re probably at a point where the offering is seen as an important Christian tradition. You can’t assume that they’re going to immediately rally around a digital giving solution without some effort. You’ll want to talk about making the change as often as you can, using all the channels you have at your disposal. Talk about it from the pulpit, send emails, and discuss it in Bible studies and small groups. Make it a centerpiece for your membership class. Start reprioritizing giving. As you talk about giving, you create more opportunities to champion your new giving solution — and to get your people to sign up for recurring giving (which should really be your ultimate goal). You can download a free copy of our ebook, Teaching Your Church to Give [ http://echurch.com/ resources ], which will give you a lot of tools to make your church more generous — and get its congregants to use your mobile giving solution. Of course, the right team makes all the difference. That’s why we set up Pushpay churches with a dedicated representative who works closely with you to get your church to use it. And it works: Pushpay generally has an adoption rate that’s 10 times higher than the average church using mobile giving! Jayson D. Bradley is a writer and pastor in Bellingham, Wash. He’s a regular contributor to Relevant Magazine, and his blog, JaysonDBradley.com, has been voted one of the 25 Christian blogs you should be reading.

May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

ESTATE PLANNING: getting affairs in order isn’t just for seniors By Matthew D. Hoffman, CFP®, ChFC®

When we think about estate planning, drafting a will, and getting your financial affairs in order, millennials aren’t the first demographic group that come to mind.

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

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Most people don’t start to think about this topic until they’re a little older and more established; they usually have achieved milestones such as marriage, homeownership and parenthood. According to a recent study on Caring.com, nearly 80 percent of the younger generation seem unconcerned about the future, with only 22 percent of 18- to 36-year-old Americans having a planned will or trust. Two of the most common reasons for not planning were: (1) they felt they did not have enough assets to warrant making a will or doing some estate planning, and (2) they felt they still had time before they needed to make plans. It’s no surprise that people in their 20s and 30s would not have estate planning at the top of their list of financial priorities. In their minds, the creation of legal documents — such as living wills, last wills and testaments, medical and legal powers of attorney, and trusts — are akin to speaking a foreign language. Most believe that you don’t need to work on these plans or documents until you reach your 50s or 60s. In a March 2017 article, USA Today reported that millennials (those born roughly between 1986 and 2000) would rather enjoy the present than prepare for the future. The millennial group includes individuals who are young professionals and those just graduating from college or seminary. Many of them might be in the process of repaying student loans while they work towards professional career goals and others are attending college after postponing it. They might not have a lot of money now, but this is the time in their lives when it’s important to start saving and investing for the future. Like adults in their 40s and older, they too should have a basic estate plan in place in the event of an emergency or untimely death, which can happen at any age. The elements of estate planning Basic estate planning tools for millennials might include a will, trusts, life insurance, employee benefit plans, and healthcare directives and powers of attorney. The will allows the individual to name a personal representative to handle his or her estate and can name the guardian for his or her children if both parents should die. This can be critical for millennials who are parents of young children. A will also provides for the disposal of sentimental assets to family or friends, and is the place to state funeral wishes. The trust is a useful instrument for managing the assets of an estate. A trust may be created while still alive or contained within a will. churchexecutive.com

Life insurance provides for a family in the event of death by replacing lost income and covering additional expenses resulting from the death. Employee benefit plans might include a retirement plan and group life insurance benefits. If participating in either plan, be certain that the beneficiary designations name the correct person or entity, as these are not governed by a will. Healthcare directives and certain types of Powers of Attorney may ensure that someone who you have chosen has the authority to act on your behalf if you are incapacitated due to an accident or sudden illness. Stop and think The first step in estate planning for millennials (or anyone) should be to take some time to ask yourself the following questions: What happens if . . . Who should receive my assets? Spouse? Siblings? Friends? Charity? Who should be the executor of my estate? There are no right or wrong answers; they are personal and specific to the individual. Ideally, estate plans should be established when millennials are young adults, and then reevaluated throughout their lifetime as priorities and life circumstances change. The Caring.com study also shows overall, that Americans need to take estate planning far more seriously than they do presently, and they need to get started earlier in life. Just one in five millennials say they have a will or living trust. Creating a will is a good first step to take, and can offer a sense of peace of mind regardless of your age. Most local attorneys can draft a Last Will and Testament at an affordable rate, and there are now many low-cost do-it-yourself options available. Also, a Certified Financial Planner™ professional will be able to assist you in the estate planning process. Don’t put off making decisions that will affect how and where your assets will be allocated. Take the first step toward getting your affairs in order. Matthew D. Hoffman, CFP ®, ChFC® is Chief Client Services Officer and is also an officer of MMBB [ www.mmbb.org ] serving as Corporate Secretary. Hoffman has worked extensively in the financial services industry. Prior to joining MMBB, he was a vice president at JPMorgan Chase and a financial advisor in the private client group at Merrill Lynch. May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

When children are at

RISK

Proactive, proven strategies for protecting the kids in your care

Bob D’Ambrosio Ministry Consultant Shepherd’s Watch Background Checks from Group Publishing

Sharon Doty Consultant to the VIRTUS Programs National Catholic Services, LLC

R.J. Frasca Director of Marketing and Product Development Protect My Ministry

Sara Miller Director of Marketing SmartCare

Kimberlee D. Norris Attorney / Sexual Abuse Litigator Co-founder MinistrySafe

Alex Smith CEO KidCheck Secure Children’s Check-In

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

churchexecutive.com

Q: What are the biggest risks and liabilities facing churches in the area of protecting children?

children and the good names, reputations, finances and well-being of our adult parishioners at risk.

D’Ambrosio: The days are over when ordering a background check on a new volunteer was the ultimate ‘extra-mile’ effort of an ultracareful church. Today, a background check is standard practice — period. But, it’s also just one part of a screening effort to ensure safety. Churches need a comprehensive safety plan, including screening, safety policies and procedures, abuse awareness, and training.

Norris: Churches too often have the misconception that ‘sexual abuse doesn’t happen here,’ which is inaccurate. Child sexual abuse skips no spiritual paradigm. In fact, one large study indicated that the prevalence of child sexual abuse is slightly higher in ‘very religious environments.’

Doty: One of the biggest risks churches face is youth ministers, choir directors, counselors, teachers and coaches who think they don’t need to pay attention to prevention efforts. Many assume it won’t be an issue in their ministries. Another challenge is that many regard the issue as if it’s resolved or ‘someone else’s problem’ — i.e., issue fatigue. Recently, for example, a church secretary elected not to share information about scheduled abuse prevention training with a group of homeschooling parents / church members. Why? Because she was uncomfortable with the subject matter. Another problem is perpetrators’ use and proliferation of social media apps to groom youth. Parents need to familiarize themselves with these apps, and which ones their children use. Frasca: I‘d say the biggest risk is not truly knowing those you’re working with. Estimates have shown 90% of child sex offenders have no previous criminal records. Also, developing a comprehensive program to protect your children and church from predators can be a very daunting task. Miller: Not every state requires faith-based child care centers to be licensed; so, many protections are overlooked, such as CPR / SIDS trainings, background checks and ratios. Not being able to remotely access information in times of emergencies is another problem. Many churches use outdated systems for child tracking (including pen and paper). This hinders children’s safety on a daily basis. If all parents’ emergency contact information is written down in the church and filed in an office, how would it be accessed if a fire broke out at the church and children had to be evacuated? How would each classroom know who was present? Being able to access that information on a mobile device makes it easy to be prepared in any situation. It also speeds up the sign-in / signout process. Smith: The No. 1 reason churches are taken to court are allegations of child sexual abuse. Even if abuse isn’t proven, a single accusation can be devastating, both financially and reputationally, to the church, resulting in a destroyed ministry. Q: What makes churches targets for sexual abuse risks? Doty: A culture of trust and welcome. Unfortunately, this is a magnet for predators who see the church as vulnerable and take advantage of that. Also, there are some who think the ‘healthy suspicion’ piece of our safe-environment training undermines a culture of trust and welcome. What they forget (or simply don’t realize) is that God encourages us to welcome the sinner and to support those who wish to change their ways — but that doesn’t mean complete, unsupervised access to the most vulnerable among us. Another concern is that we’ll damage a welcoming attitude for volunteers. Volunteers are great, but there’s a lot at stake when we give them too much access. Without proper screening, we place our churchexecutive.com

Frasca: Sexual predators will always target a highly trusted environment where children are present. Churches inherently feel safe for parents when it comes to their children, making them an ideal target. Miller: Churches aren’t the only settings vulnerable to these risks; any unlicensed child care setting is at risk because there are no minimum standards that must be met. If a child care setting is unlicensed, there are no requirements for ratios or background checks, which can leave children at risk. Smith: Predators know how to portray themselves as professional, caring and kind — the ‘ultimate volunteer.’ And everybody is always short of volunteers. Predators know this and capitalize on it; in fact, more than 90% consider themselves ‘religious’ or ‘highly religious.’ So, they know (even if they agree to a background check) that it might not be followed up on, and references might not be interviewed. It’s important to point out that only about 10% of sexual abuse cases get prosecuted in the United States. Consequently, quite a few offenders won’t show up on the National Sexual Offender Registry. No one wants to believe a human being is capable of targeting a child for sexual abuse. But the sad truth is, they will work tirelessly to gain trust and access to their victims. D’Ambrosio: Churches often buy into one of three myths regarding background checks: (1) that they ‘know’ everyone in their church; (2) that one background check, performed once, is enough; and (3) a local or state check is adequate. Sadly, in as many as 93% of child sexual abuse cases, the child knows the abuser. Most perpetrators are well-known acquaintances. Additionally, many insurance providers now mandate re-screening — annual background checks — to maintain liability coverage. Finally, people with a criminal past move from state to state. They might have committed a criminal offense outside the state in which they reside. Q: In large churches, how common is a written child protection policy? What common oversights or mistakes do you observe? Frasca: It’s very common for larger churches to have documented child protection policies in place. Although they cover most of the basics, many of these policies are dated and / or incomplete when it comes to everything that should be included. A good protection policy should be reviewed often. If churches don’t have the right expertise inhouse, it’s wise to consult experts in the area while developing policies. Miller: Even with policies in effect, many times background checks are only performed one time, prior to employment. Large churches can better their policies by writing in background checks on a more routine basis, depending on budget. Smith: Most large churches are aware that such a policy needs to be in place, and insurers even require it. They’re also aware of the risks of operating without one. May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

As with any operating document, however, a child protection policy can easily be written and then shelved, rather than treated as a living document that needs to be updated, referred to, and followed. A lot of children’s ministry directors point to a lack of leadership support for abuse prevention efforts, or the raising of awareness of the risks in the church. No one wants to push people away or alienate volunteers, and there’s a perception that vocally supporting these efforts sends a negative message about the church. The reality is just the opposite: an effective abuse prevention policy is the No. 1 thing on a new family’s mind when they enter a church. D’Ambrosio: Although many churches have some elements of a written policy in place, they often lack a comprehensive program to minimize liability and protect children. A total-safety program for volunteers should include: up-to-date position descriptions; policies and procedures; background screening; reference-checking; supervision; and documented training and orientation. Churches must demonstrate due diligence. And the standard is high, since most public schools and secular organizations that offer children’s programs are already implementing these practices. Whatever a church establishes as its safety protocol, it has to be consistent and applied to everyone. Doty: In the Catholic Church, a written policy is extremely common; in other churches, perhaps not so much. Many non-denominational megachurches haven’t addressed this issue at all. Some denominations have policies in place for screening and for physical-environment safety, but enforce somewhat limited application. Obviously, churches with no policy are putting lives at risk every day; yet, many are unconvinced it’s an issue. Other churches with policies in place are focused primarily on avoiding liability if there is an issue. They actually look to see where they’re vulnerable and then enact policies to shore off those areas. (For example, if a church’s central body has no local control over how a congregation functions, that church might only have programs that apply to regional or area-wide gatherings.) In some cases, these programs are highly recommended; but the only mandate for prevention education that we’re aware of is the Catholic mandate in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. Norris: Many churches have written policies that look like ‘War and Peace’ and aren’t truly followed. Policies are what you do, not what you say you do. When an allegation of sexual abuse results in civil litigation, both defense counsel and plaintiff’s counsel will immediately request the church’s policies. Policies demonstrate a church’s reasonable efforts to address the risk of child sexual abuse, but they’re only effective if applied. Often, church staff members and volunteers need to understand the ‘why’ of preventative protocols in order to adopt the ‘what,’ and that boils down to training. Intrinsically, you can’t address a risk that your staff members don’t understand. Q: What does a truly comprehensive screening and background check process look like as it relates to protecting children in the church? Miller: It includes using fingerprints for checks of FBI criminal history records; using fingerprints for state checks of criminal history records; checking the child abuse registry; and checking the sex offender registry. These checks should be done on a routine basis for both perspective and current employees. Personally, I believe most large-church clients try to do everything they can to protect children in their care. And although they often have 36

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

policies in place to protect children, they don’t always go far enough to ensure children will always be safe at church. The biggest area where churches are falling short are ratios and background checks for current employees. Because many faith-based centers are licensing-exempt, they don’t have to follow the ratio requirements other child care centers in the state must adhere to. So, church classrooms might have more students per teacher, making it harder on the staff. With regard to employee background checks, most church clients don’t do them routinely for current staff. They might do it preemployment; but, if an employee is charged with a crime during his or her employment, many employers will miss this. Smith: For a new volunteer, several elements make up an effective onboarding process. A background check is one of those things, but not enough on its own. You need to require a complete written application. Get references … and actually call them. Do a face-to-face interview. We also recommend a waiting period of 30 to 60 days, which lets you find out: Are they faithful? Are they regular attenders? Are they connected? A social media check is always important, too. So often, the challenge for churches in doing a truly comprehensive screening process is the cost. And it’s not even a one-time event; you should rescreen every 12 to 24 months. To share the burden, we suggest asking volunteers to pay for their own background check (usually between $10 and $20). I’ve never heard of anybody refusing. Finally, quite a bit can be accomplished by simply communicating your church won’t take a passive stance on abuse prevention. Make sure volunteers know you have a thorough screening process, and you’ll deter a lot of really bad behavior. D’Ambrosio: A thorough background screening must include social security verification, criminal records from jurisdictions in all 50 states, and the National Sex Offender Registry. If driving is part of the ministry role, then a motor vehicle report should also be included. Church leadership must first decide which criminal offenses would automatically disqualify someone from serving with children. For example, would a speeding ticket that happened 10 years ago prevent someone from working in the nursery? Also, establish which positions will require screening and which positions are exempt. The volunteer who makes reminder calls to your Sunday school teachers will not need the same level of screening as someone who works directly with the kids. Make sure your background check provider owns and maintains its data, and is Federal Credit Reporting Act (FRCA)-compliant. A good source provider pulls from multiple court registries to offer comprehensive search options. Large churches (like small ones) often bend the rules when it comes to safety. What’s required for a comprehensive risk management program is to identify what processes will accomplish eliminating or lowering your risks — then enforcing those processes, period. Being found negligent, just once, could result in financial damage your church or ministry couldn’t survive. Doty: A truly comprehensive screening and background check includes: a written application (for both staff and volunteer positions) that includes references for people who can talk about the person’s work with children; a face-to-face interview that includes reviewing policies, letting the person know about the monitoring practices, and making expectations and consequences of violations clear; a criminal background check that checks across the country for any wrongdoing that could compromise the person’s ability to work safely with children; and a written or electronic acknowledgement from the person that they read and understood practices and policies. churchexecutive.com

Some large Catholic Churches have found ways to complete this process even with large numbers of staff and volunteers. At one church, staff gleaned the names of all the HR professionals in the church membership and invited them to participate in a two-evening screening process. Those HR professionals took on applicants and conducted the interviews, checked references, and went through the policies and procedures. The entire group was screened in two days. When churches are committed to the process, they can find creative ways to accomplish it. Frasca: A truly comprehensive screening program contains not only background checks suited to geographic location and position being applied to, but also a detailed child safety training program. Additionally, the program should include a rescreening policy. Even in large churches, we find it’s actually quite common that not everything that can and should be done, is — simply because they’re unaware of all that entails. In a large majority of cases, we see churches lacking in the area of proper child safety training. Background screening will only catch those who have already been caught, or throw red flags that might identify discrepancies in one’s past. Child safety training teaches employees and volunteers how to spot signs of abuse or potential abuse. The first and most critical step in stopping abuse and protecting children is identifying when they’re at risk. Norris: Criminal background checks have become a standard of care; making a reasonable effort to access the past criminal history of an applicant. Because less than 10% of sexual abusers will encounter the criminal justice system, criminal background checks can’t be relied upon as a standalone screening system. An effective screening process utilizes forms and processes meant to illicit a high-risk response from applicants or references. Effective screening encourages an inappropriate applicant to ‘opt out’ during the screening process, before he or she has harmed a child. Q: What elements does a truly risk-averse, comprehensive child check-in / check-out process at a church look like? Miller: There should be a check-in and check-out process for Sunday school and an additional process for churches providing child care. While similar, each setting has different variables for success. Elements to consider are efficiency, technology barriers, safety, parent buy-in, and effectiveness. All the layers of a comprehensive plan might be in place; but if parents aren’t on board, the process won’t be effective. Again, this answer is different depending on the care that’s provided. Many churches have multiple points of entry that should be monitored for safety and security. For churches that provide child care throughout the week, do parents have to enter through one door? Are they able to do drive-thru drop-offs? How can staff accurately track check-in and out from vehicles? With today’s technology, the internet allows centers to track child check-in and check-out with mobile devices and systems that are more safe and secure than pen and paper. For ministry on Sunday, parents are typically on-site, and the need to update emergency contact information is different with the parents just down the hall. For churches providing child care, parents typically drop off children in the morning and can be reached through different methods throughout the day. Do parents prefer email or texting while at work, or do they always prefer a phone call? Technology has changed the way teachers and directors communicate with parents, and making sure you have a system that works for families in your church is crucial, especially in case of emergency.

churchexecutive.com

Smith: Having a secure children’s check-in process is a very important piece of the overall safety puzzle. In today’s environment, a good check-in process should significantly enhance security, be intuitive and easy to setup, provide quick access to important data, and not be limited to a hardware station. The process you implement must be one your staff, volunteers and parents can quickly understand, consistently use and easily follow. Looking at the check-in / check-out process as simply attendance tracking misses the point. Secure children’s check-in can also reduce the workload for children’s ministry leaders. Features such as parent-maintained accounts, Express Check-In (parents check in on smartphone), and broadcast text messaging and email can free up time and direct effort into building relationships with new and existing families. It’s the people behind the process that determine the ultimate success of the system. Without the proper implementation, training and ongoing support, little value will be added. Whether you have 50 or 3,000 children, the process should be scalable and seamless, with an emphasis on improving child safety. D’Ambrosio: Child check-in systems allow for accountability and give the staff an accurate census of who’s in the building. A lost child is most parents’ biggest fear — and for church children’s ministry workers, too. When designing a space for children’s ministry, be sure to have a single entry point. The access point should be staffed to authorize clearance for any adult who enters. Only adults who staff the program, and are identified with a photo ID badge, should be allowed to enter. Doors intended as exits should not allow reentry from outside. It’s also wise to have windows that open to the hallway or are built into each door for clear visibility. It’s best to have a consistent procedure and follow it regularly. Child safety standards (including check-in and check-out processes) should be observed anytime you have a church-sponsored event. This also helps parents embrace the policy and get in the habit of using it. Digital paging systems allow the parents to be contacted, at any time, for any reason. They enable parents to respond immediately when notified. Doty: The essential elements of a safe check-in / check-out program are: a sign-in sheet that includes the name of the child; the name and signature of the person checking in the child; the name and signature of the person who picks up the child; and the time for the check-in and check-out. Additionally, there should be some way to identify which child is which (example: name tags that include the number that corresponds to the number of the check-in / check-out sheet). Contact information for the responsible adult is also necessary — cell phone number or the number given the child and parents at check-in. In this case, that number can often be shown on the large video screens in the sanctuary as a way of letting parents know they’re needed in the nursery or children’s program. Additionally, you need a way to confirm the name of anyone with permission to take the child if it’s someone other than the person dropping off the child. — Reporting by RaeAnn Slaybaugh

May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

BE AWARE

& PROACTIVE Two esteemed attorneys and industry experts discuss the preeminent problem of child sexual abuse — and what every church leader can do to protect the children in their care

Kimberlee D. Norris & Gregory S. Love Child sexual abuse trial attorneys at Love + Norris in Fort Worth, Texas, and co-founders of MinistrySafe Q: Just how big is the issue of sexual abuse in churches? Norris: Every study in the past decade indicates the same reality: the largest settlements being paid by insurers in church or ministry contexts are related to child sexual abuse. It’s the only realm in which statutes of limitation are getting longer, not shorter. In California, for instance, a 76-year-old man sued his church related to events occurring when he was between 8 and 11 years of age. Some states have abolished statute of limitation altogether. Moreover, very few states have any sort of tort reform or limitation on damages or monetary awards that stem from a child sexual abuse case. So, for churches, sexual abuse is a significant, long-term risk. Q: But why churches? They don’t seem like obvious targets … Norris: Offenders go where the barriers are lowest, and churches often embrace two misconceptions: stranger danger (the idea that this risk manifests from the outside in) and a big, pervasive cloud of “That type of thing doesn’t happen here.” Also, churches don’t have licensure requirements, which means protective elements related to child sexual abuse aren’t required by governmental authorities as a condition of licensure. Q: OK, so it’s a big problem. What can a church do to protect its kids — and itself — when screening? Norris: Churches should require an application, interview and references for employees and volunteers, all of which must include questions meant to elicit a high-risk response from the applicant. Years of offenders studies targeting male and female offender characteristics should frame the questions asked in an effective screening process. Screening personnel should be training to recognize RISK INDICATORS when they encounter them. 38

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Opt-out opportunities should be given throughout the screening process, allowing an applicant with the wrong motives the opportunity to ‘self-select out.’ Screeners should look for a pattern of interacting with the same age range and gender of child, kid-magnet activities or hobbies, vague reasons for leaving the last place of service, and failure to provide names and contact information of past supervisors, for example. References should be asked: “How long have you known the applicant?” Preferential offenders have a difficult time giving you references who’ve known them for a long time, especially in child-serving contexts. As well, “Would you feel comfortable leaving your own children in the applicant’s care?” It is our recommendation that references be checked by telephone, rather than in writing, because references will SAY things they would never write down. Q: What about criminal background checks? Norris: While it’s true that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, churches should understand what a criminal background check does — and doesn’t — do for you. Less than 10% of sexual predators will encounter the criminal justice system; in a study published last year by the Department of Justice, it was less than 3%. Two out of three kids don’t disclose abuse until they’re adults, if ever. As a result, criminal background checks are not a silver bullet, or a stand-alone screening process. Because there’s no one-size-fits-all criminal background check, be prepared to spend more money, premised upon the level of interaction a candidate has with kids, and the degree to which that interaction is less structured. And, at a minimum, refresh criminal background checks every five years.

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Q: What are “grooming behaviors,” and why should church leaders and volunteers know them? Norris: The grooming process of an offender is known, validated and understandable. Offenders ‘groom’ a child for abuse: gaining access to children who are the offender’s age and gender of preference, selecting a specific child, introducing nudity and sexual touch, then keeping the child silent. This process is recognizable, and church staff members and volunteers should be familiar with the process and how it might play out in ministry contexts. As well, staff members should be trained to recognize common grooming behaviors, and these behaviors should be addressed in policies and procedures. Common grooming behaviors include, for example, giving children gifts, privileges, access to activities — this is one behavior which must be addressed in your policy. For kids who have actual needs (school supplies, a warm coat, new shoes), these should be a gift from the ministry, not from an individual. Even if one person is the primary financial source for that provision, the child should never know who. Another common grooming behavior is barrier testing and erosion — touchy behavior, pushing physical boundaries. Churches must communicate what is and isn’t appropriate physical affection in the context of their program. For example, in 23 years, every case I’ve ever encountered of male-to-male predatory behavior has involved wrestling, in some form or another. With younger kids, it’s tickling, or lap-sitting with a child who’s too old to be sitting on an adult’s lap. What preferential offenders are looking for is trusted time alone. That means churches should have a two-adult rule in place and, at minimum, a mandate that prohibits one-to-one, unsupervised, unstructured interaction between an adult and a child in your program. Kimberlee D. Norris provides legal counsel through the law firm of Love & Norris [ www.lovenorris.com ], where she serves as shareholder and partner. Through MinistrySafe [ http://ministrysafe.com ] and Abuse Prevention Systems, she has trained more than 450,000 ministry staff members and volunteers since 2005.

Child check-in systems: not a ‘silver bullet’ By Gregory S. Love A child check-in system at your church is valuable — but not for protecting children from child sexual abuse. To understand what I mean, it’s important to understand the difference between two types of sex offenders: the abduction offender and the preferential offender. To the extent a child check-in system has value, it’s in the protection of children from an abduction offender. In reality, the abduction offender represents a mere 4% of the sexual abuse problem. Rather, the risk posed by the preferential offender is the problem. In fact, the preferential offender represents 90%-94% of the problem of child sexual abuse. The preferential offender is the risk that’s rocking ministries, and it’s not addressed by a check-in system. This is consistent with the statistic that 90% of children are victimized by someone they know and trust — not a stranger. In all fairness to the check-in system, it was simply not designed to address the risk of child sexual abuse. Additionally, the child check-in system provides no protection for peer-to-peer sexual abuse, one of the fastest-growing areas of sexual abuse risk. Gregory S. Love is a recognized expert in legal standards of care related to child sexual abuse, providing crisis response to ministries and churches nationwide as a partner of the law firm Love & Norris [ www.lovenorris.com ] and co-founder of MinistrySafe [ www.MinistrySafe.com ]. Love also serves as visiting faculty to Dallas Theological Seminary, and as a core instructor for MinistrySafe Institute [ MinistrySafeInstitute.com ], providing seminary-level instruction to ministry professionals.

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3/1/16EXECUTIVE 5:36 PM May / June 2017 • CHURCH

Sustainability of facility stewardship at your church By Matthew Swain, RS Each year, through blistering summer heat and winter’s icy blast, the church’s roof deteriorates a little more. The carpet in the narthex and office becomes a little more worn and tired. The boiler, air-conditioning and elevator continue to age. The parking lot begins to crack. Real property — the buildings in which we worship, study, and gather together in fellowship and prayer — is expensive to build and to maintain. To own property is to tie the congregation, financially, to a money pit. Many of our churches across the nation are older — but what drives some to thrive while others can’t seem to survive? One mark of those that thrive is that of good maintenance, which must be budgeted and planned. This is called sustainability. No matter the size of your facility or your campus — or if your congregation owns real property, buildings of any shape, size, age or condition — a Capital Budget Plan is a must! The church budget itself is an exercise in faith The vast majority of congregations are funded through at-will donations, not dues. Leadership must keep this source of funds in mind when creating and updating the annual budget. Wise use of these funds can help a church thrive for generations, while short-sightedness can paint a false façade over an otherwise bleak picture. Leadership is charged with setting a sustainable course for the congregation. We do that, in part, by setting up an annual budget. Incorporating the results of the Capital Budget Plan into the annual budget is the next step once the Plan has been created. This Capital Plan and annual budget should then be openly discussed, presented and clearly communicated to the membership, so those actually paying for the budget understand where their dollars are going. Of course, big dollars will be spent repainting exteriors, replacing heating & air conditioning systems, and replacing roofing, among others. However, these projects are not always visible to the member, nor are they always understood to be important to the member. By bringing these to the forefront of the budget conversations leadership has throughout the year, your church can be more prepared and can reduce the overall amount of time and budget dollars spent on maintaining these vital facilities so that you can focus on the core purpose of your parish. Sustainability encompasses managing our resources wisely, so that our staff, parishioners and guests continue to be well-served by the facilities that have been built to serve the mission, and so that future generations are set up for success. 40

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How sustainability is achieved There are many avenues for the pursuit of sustainability; but, one of the low-hanging fruits — often missed in the budgeting process — is sustainable budgeting for our major, predictable capital repair and replacement projects. Depending on the variables, this Capital Plan might be simple enough for one lay volunteer to prepare, or it might be complicated enough to require a team of experts to compile. Once the physical and financial analysis has been completed and the results are in, this is but step 1 down a road to a financially successful congregation that can focus the most of its time, talent and treasure to preaching the good news and making disciples. We must never lose sight of this end goal of sustainability as we improve the financial and administrative side of the church. The business aspects of the church are there to support, uplift and sustain the relational aspects of the church — both in fostering connections among the community of believers, and fostering the connection between believers and our Creator. Matthew Swain, RS, is Worship Facilities Specialist at Calabasas, Calif.-based Association Reserves [ www.reservestudy.com ]. He is a certified Reserve Specialist and has been preparing capital plans for non-profit organizations across the country for more than a decade. Swain currently serves as the national representative for Association Reserves’ worship facility clients. churchexecutive.com

Children Are Safer In MinistrySafe Churches

Industry Experts. Unabashedly Christ-Based.

WHY: Child sexual abuse occurs in all contexts. Increasingly, parents are asking, "What are you doing to protect my child from sexual abuse?" Sexual abuse claims carry massive financial consequences for ministries, and significantly impact public opinion.

WHO: Child sexual abuse is an equal opportunity employer: it crosses all spiritual paradigms and all demographics. Offenders seek access where the barriers to entry are the lowest. Unfortunately, this is often the church.

WHAT: MinistrySafe trains church personnel to effectively address the risk of child sexual abuse by utilizing the Five Part Safety System. From screening forms and tools, sample policies, online training and systems for monitoring and oversight, MinistrySafe provides turnkey resources to reduce the risk of child sexual abuse.

HOW: Churches pay an annual membership fee of $250 to gain access to state-of-the-art training, sample church policies, screening forms, and the MinistrySafe Control Panel. WHY MINISTRYSAFE: Created by sexual abuse trial attorneys with 20+ years experience litigating child sexual abuse cases, MinistrySafe provides tools and resources created by industry experts. www.MinistrySafe.com

LOVE & NORRIS, ATTORNEYS AT LAW: Gregory Love and Kimberlee Norris, co-founders and Directors of MinistrySafe, have a nationwide sexual abuse litigation practice representing victims of child sexual abuse. In addition, Love & Norris provide consulting services to secular and ministry organizations providing services to children. Representative clients include the United States Olympic Committee, Awana International, Sovereign Grace Ministries, the Church of the Nazarene, the Georgia Baptist Convention, and many church and para-church schools, camps, and ministries.

Protecting children and those who serve them.

Say Yes(!) To The Next Generation Capital campaigns are nothing new to Steve Williams, Senior Pastor at NorthPointe Community Church in Fresno, Calif. Even so, engaging professional expertise has been a great asset in helping this church meet — and exceed — its ambitious $5-million goal to fund a new children’s facility. In 1980, Steve Williams joined his childhood friend, Rick Warren, on staff at Saddleback Church, serving as associate pastor. He was one of the church’s first full-time staff members. In 1988, Williams founded NorthPointe Community Church. For over two decades NorthPointe experienced consistent growth requiring four capital campaigns which were led internally by the church staff. The campaigns helped fund the purchase of land , developing the property, and the construction of two worship centers. “During that time I had become convinced we would be better off executing the campaigns ourselves,” Williams says. Then, along comes a big, big vision … The most recent vision, however — a state-of-the-art children’s facility — represented something significantly bigger than anything their church had pursued before. “Our church had grown to more than 2,000 each weekend, and our kids had been in pretty substandard buildings all these years,” Williams recalls. “We needed to rectify that.” With a price tag of $5 million, the new project would cost nearly three times the largest amount the church had previously raised on its own ($1.7 million). “And our other campaigns had always fallen short of whatever goal we needed to raise,” Williams adds. “We didn’t reach our goal in pledges.” Church leadership decided not to take chances this time; they needed help. Williams found the right partner in Paul Gage, president and founder of The Gage Group.

“When it came to doing this [campaign], we just felt it would be wise to have a professional with his experience and track record,” Williams says. Paul’s expertise — coupled with Williams’ own steadfast leadership — laid a solid foundation for the pursuit of a very ambitious giving goal. They dubbed the campaign “Say Yes To The Next Generation.” One key component to the “Say Yes” campaign’s success was Williams’ own steadfastness. Having founded NorthPointe in 1988, church members knew he was in it for the long haul. Another important facet, introduced by Gage, was the necessity of securing lead gifts early in the process. He worked with Williams to identify and engage high-capacity givers. “We based our appeal on First Chronicles 29, how David led the building of the temple in Jerusalem,” he says. “There are some interesting passages related to high-capacity givers’ ability to really motivate everyone else to give generously, too.” In doing so, Williams and his team were able to secure $2.8 million toward the $5-million campaign goal from a dozen highcapacity givers. It was a new approach for Williams — and, admittedly, a difficult one at first. “The coaching that Paul provided helped me overcome my own fear and reticence to make a big ask was instrumental,” he says. “I just had to think big and bold, and not be afraid. These are people who feel blessed that you have the confidence that they can help you to the degree that you can.” Above and beyond expectations To date, NorthPointe has exceeded its $5-million campaign goal by nearly $1 million — and there are still months to go before it wraps up. All this is an amazing outcome on its own; it’s even more astounding considering the campaign faced an unprecedented challenge along the way. One year into the three-year campaign, the children’s pastor, Eddie Crain, suffered a heart attack and passed away. On staff for 13 years, Crain had built an incredible, purpose-driven children’s ministry from the ground up. Yet, instead of derailing a promising campaign, Williams says this tragedy reinforced NorthPointe’s commitment to making the children’s facility a reality. “I think people said, ‘I’m going to stick with this because my church needs me right now more than ever,’” he explains. This is a testament to the power of the campaign’s vision and compelling message. Williams says. “We were very clear in the beginning with our message that no one would be put under specific pressure. That’s just the way we operate”. Another critical piece, Williams says, is Gage’s “faith combined with realism.” “Paul is absolutely Christ-centered and biblical in his approach,” he explains. “He can think big — and help you think big — but he doesn’t hype stuff. He’s a realist.” And in NorthPointe’s case, that reality exceeded expectations. Williams enthusiastically is spreading the word. “For what it’s worth, I send everybody who comes to me wanting to do a campaign to Paul Gage,” he says. “I just really appreciate his willingness to serve the Church the way he does. Absolutely.”

Vision meets execution Williams became familiar of Gage from other leading pastors and he was also familiar with Paul’s father, Freddie Gage, a wellknown evangelist. churchexecutive.com

May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

In this discussion, the panelists provide their definition of what a metric is, how to interpret it, and how it relates to ministry. They also provide Salmon Sims Thomas’s top 10 sustaining metrics for churches, as well as the benefits of cloud computing and their Intacct dashboards.

Rebecca DaVee, CPA Partner and Tax-Exempt Specialist Salmon Sims Thomas

Bill Sims, CPA Partner / CEO Salmon Sims Thomas

Kari Eaton Outsourced Technology Supervisor Salmon Sims Thomas

Can you define metrics? How do they pertain to key performance indicators (KPIs)?

What cloud-based tools do you use to keep track of your metrics and data?

DaVee: Metrics paint a picture of relevance. It’s a picture that defines efficiency or effectiveness. Percentages are ratios, which are then translated into a metric. A KPI tells us if something is effective and efficient or not. When measuring ministry activity, if you add that to your stakeholders, you get sustainability. These stakeholders are donors — those who help fund your mission; volunteers — those who help conduct activities; and employees and leadership — those who get paid to perform ministry work.

Eaton: I think if you’re looking ahead and tend to favor innovation, development and progress, people will see you as bold or pioneering. At Salmon Sims Thomas, we value these qualities, and chose our preferred ERP partner, Intacct, based on them. Intacct, a cloud-based accounting platform, allows its users realtime access to their financial information. Accounting records provide information on resources available to an organization. When financial data is provided in real-time executive management can look ahead at what’s next, rather than looking back and reviewing what’s already happened. With Intacct’s accessibility — anywhere, anytime, on any device — and its ease of use, these insights are more readily available. With the click of a button, CFOs and CEOs have access to management reports that indicate what resources they have on hand, where their resources have gone, and the ability to forecast where funds could be used based on strategic modeling. This is a progressive and strategic way to manage their ministry activities.

How are your top 10 sustaining metrics organized? DaVee: Our metrics are divided into three categories. There are six operational metrics, three managed resources, and one sustaining reserve. Operational metrics look at sources and uses of funds. Cash in, cash out. Churches typically have 52 operating cycles — seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. Financial trends can be developed week over week, month over month, year over year.

Can you take us through the different metrics? Sims: With managed resources, funds are typically invested in longterm assets that are used to conduct your exempt purpose. This is property and equipment purchased and used to conduct your religious activities. Those assets may be debt-financed while other resources may be invested to generate investment earnings, such as marketable securities. Churches may also receive endowments that are intended to be used in perpetuity. In those cases, the earnings from those investments would be used for donordirected activities. DaVee: Our last metric is the sustaining reserve. This metric describes and defines the liquidity of your net assets. For each group of metrics, we will give you indicators that you can easily monitor and manage. 44

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Metric #1: Effective donor development DaVee: Public support is our first operating metric. Every church depends on donations or contributions to fund their event activities. When churches understand their donor database, they have the ability to create forecasting models that plan their annual budget, help determine how their congregation will respond to a capital campaign, or a funding crisis. This is our easiest metric. It can be based on total contributions divided by the number of donors. This metric can be based on dates, satellite locations, service times, whatever is relevant.

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Eaton: An example of using this metric is looking at weekly attendance, monthly attendance trends, monthly tithes, and offering trends. When your donor database or weekly attendance fluctuates, it can significantly affect your average donation. When an endowment or an estate distribution is received, this significantly affects your average donation. We take the attendance trend divided by offering to show what our average donor giving is. If you’re conducting a capital campaigning or raising funds for specific projects, you’ll want to segregate these sums from your weekly tithes and offerings. By dissecting your donations as well as specific donor data, you develop a broader understanding of your donors and can begin forecasting donor trends. We categorize average donation by locations. If you’re a multicampus church, you can track individual donations by campus. Metric #2: Effective fundraising efforts DaVee: Metric 2 is about how we can easily define the cost of raising $1 of a donation. Churches often have trouble determining what their fundraising costs are, because they don’t think that they’re actively raising funds. However, every time the contribution plate is passed through the church, we’re hoping to raise money to support the operating activities of the church. Any type of communication that asks donors for funds, that’s a fundraising activity. So, think about accumulating your cost to properly reflect your fundraising efforts. Eaton: On our dashboard, we’re able to see a KPI that identifies fundraising efficiency each year. For example, if you’re spending $0.37 to raise $1, that’s operating efficiently. Metric #3: Effective use of resources Sims: Metric 3 is about the effective use of resources. Let’s visualize an annual operating budget comprised of programs and supporting services. Churches typically budget program costs based on various departments while supporting services include membership development, G&A, and fundraising. One of our recommendations to our ministry and our secular clients, revolves around the percentage of fundraising. The concern is that all donors want every dollar that they give to go to your direct programs and services. That’s just the way God wired us. If we’re going to support something, we want to do it. The higher that percentage of programs and services is, compared to the other three supporting functions, the better off you are. Our recommendation — kind of our sweet spot — for non-church clients is at least 65% of your budget should be directed to program activities. The higher, the better. If a fundraising expense goes up, somebody who’s really looking at your financial statements is going to be asking the question, “Why did that happen?” Again, you can explain that. “Hey, we had a capital campaign.” After the capital campaign, the fundraising percentage ought to be lower, and your direct programs and services ought to be higher. Eaton: An example of this for a church is monitoring its programs and services percentages as it relates to what they’re actually spending, and the percent of what they’re spending that’s delegated to programs and services. They’ve been looking at this over the past several months. Their consultants have mentioned to them that they’re not operating very efficiently. If they’re only really utilizing about 9% or 10% of their expenses towards programs and services, and we look at a spike one month, we’re able to get into that information and see what’s making up that spike to determine if we’re really truly utilizing our expenses for programs and services. We can easily drill into the general ledger with a few clicks and see that we’ve got a capital campaign expense for $150,000 that was coded to program supplies for their outreach department, and even drill down into that original vendor invoice. churchexecutive.com

Metric #4: Effective personnel resources Sims: Our next metric is very relevant. For our CPA firm, compensation is our largest expense, and this is the largest expense at church. Compensation, obviously, includes salaries and wages; but you need to load it with employee-related benefits, insurance, retirement contributions, ministry assets used for personal activities, non-accountable planned expenses (where somebody hasn’t submitted their reimbursement properly within the timeframe), payroll taxes, and forgiveness of employee advances/loans. These are all our numerator components. By tracking these personnel costs on monthly basis, you can easily calculate averages by employees. You can sort this into a number of different ways. You can look at it full-time, part-time, or exempt versus non-exempt employee classification. Our metric that we recommend to our churches — the sweet spot, if you will — is between 45% and 55% of your total expenses. If you don’t have any debt (therefore, you don’t have any debt service), that percentage for compensation can go up slightly. But anything less than 45% and you run the risk of burning them out. Conversely, if it’s too much — if you’re heavy on people costs — you’re, therefore, not able to spend as much on other direct ministry costs. When you have a compensation cost that significantly fluctuates during the year, you can drill down into detailed expense accounts and see what caused the metric to shift. Metric #5: Effective facility management DaVee: Metric 5 is occupancy cost, which can be looked at in three ways: the types of cost compared to your total expenses, your cost per square foot, and your non-cash expense related to depreciation. We recommend that your occupancy costs are fully loaded. That means you include utilities, insurance, repairs and maintenance, lawn care, janitorial supplies, janitorial cost, and property taxes if you’re not exempt. Look at your chart of accounts, and make sure you’ve captured everything occupancy-related. Think about creating a reserve for future repairs and replacements. If you can take some of your cash reserves at year’s end and focus them, move them, target them, to some of your long-term projects, you’ll have funds available over time, so that you can strategically determine when to begin and how to finance a capital project. You’re in control, and those future repairs and replacement reserves can come from your depreciation

Eaton: We created a scenario regarding an ice storm that happened in February, for a family life center. On the dashboard, a graph shows our facility cost per square foot, and this would be a graph that our facilities manager is monitoring closely to ensure that he doesn’t have any huge spikes in his occupancy cost. We were averaging around $2.15 between December and January, and this jumped significantly in February because of an ice storm. Busted water pipes caused a lot of clean up, a lot of water spills, and power outages — causing a cost in reheating a large mega church. The facilities manager can drill down higher expenditures from this report and see the actual bill numbers that make up this cost, down into the original AP bill. You can even open the attachment and see that he signed this himself, approved by facilities manager, and that this was a legitimate expense due to the ice storm. May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

DaVee: By tracking this information this way, if you have a donor that wants to help fund some of these emergencies, then you can quickly provide support to your donor and get reimbursed. Customized dashboards allow real-time data for your managers, so they can drill down and provide information to stakeholders.

Listen to the webinar!

Metric #6: Resources to pay short-term operations

“Church metrics powered by cloud technology”

Sims: Our final operating metric is how resources pay short-term operations. Our recommendation to our clients is to maintain at least three to six months’ worth of unrestricted cash to fund your operating needs. Anything less than three months, and you start feeling it. You feel like you have a hand-to-mouth type of situation and you’re having to juggle payables. By tracking this metric year over year, you can develop cash management trends to identify and then effectively manage your cashflow. This metric helps identify reserve policy for short-term, longterm cashflow needs. Your cash fluctuates throughout the year. It’s not every month that it’s within that three- to six-month range, but ideally you can keep it there on average, and then monitor that accordingly.

Topics covered include: 10 ten metrics for churches; the benefits of cloud-computing; how to measure data to manage your church; and how to create customized, cloud-based dashboards using Intacct. View it now at churchexecutive.com/webinars Download the PowerPoint: tinyurl.com/metricscloudtechnology and capitalized, as a metric to your total assets. We’re talking about property, plant and equipment — what you’re using to conduct operating activities. We can easily look at our components of fixed assets, and we can see how they’re deployed to provide our exempt operations. Eaton: We’re able to quickly create reports. In our effective use of ministry assets, we’re comparing prior year versus current year asset balances, as well as the percentage that they make up of those asset reserves. We can also see the overall percentage change from prior year to current year, and highlight some of those bigger percentage differences so that we can see those quickly. Metric #9: Effective use of investment property DaVee: Investments are usually a big item of non-operating assets. A lot of times, churches are able to move their reserves into marketable equities. You can look at your investments compared to total assets; you can look at your investment earnings compared to your total investments; and you can look at investment earnings compared to your total revenue. This is really how funds are working to produce resources for the church.

Download a PowerPoint of the metrics at: tinyurl.com/metricscloudtechnology

Metric #10: Sustaining Resources

Metric #7: Effective use of external financing

DaVee: Our final metric is sustaining resources. Our firm believes that sustainability is revealed in the statement of financial position or the balance sheet. Think about it: the account that holds the accumulated reserves of the church is called Net Assets; or if you’re in fund-based reporting, it’s called ‘fund balance’ or the ‘equity account.’ If you’re a for-profit business, it’s called ‘retained earnings.’ These are the reserves the church has accumulated since its inception. The way you analyze your reserve is looking at your currents assets less your currently liabilities. This is your current ratio. How much is really liquid cash? Your non-liquid assets — your property, plant and equipment — can’t be converted to cash unless you sell or liquidate them.

DaVee: Cash is always king. Banks want to be assured that the operations can fund debt retirement. They want to know how much cash is available at any period of time, to fund big payments. You can easily track and create some metrics related to debt and financing. If you look at your interest compared to your total operating cost, you can view interest as a component of debt and say, “Okay, what’s our average financing rate?” We want church leaders to understand how much of their resources are leveraged. That’s the debt-to-equity ratio: how much do other organizations own of your property, or other assets. Eaton: For this, you switch from an operational dashboard to a managed resources dashboard. Another feature of Intacct is the ability to create multiple dashboards with different types of reporting depending on your user role. We can see across the top our percent of operating budget dedicated to third-party financing, our average rate of financing, and our percentage of what third parties own of our own resources. We can also create this in a report and compare budgeted projections to our actual projections. Metric #8: Effective use of ministry assets DaVee: We talked about debt and interest; now we’re going to flip to assets and analyze how much of your resources have been accumulated 46

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Eaton: Switching over to sustaining resources dashboard can show these reports in real-time. There is reserve analysis showing the percentage of assets and liabilities that are making up those reserves, as well as our liquid versus non-liquid reporting. These percentages are calculated automatically. You don’t have to pull these reports into Excel and do any Excel calculations to get this hard-coded in the system, and it updates in real-time. Another great feature is that we’re able to put these performance metrics along the top banner, so our senior pastors can see those total lines really quickly and know what they have in liquid assets, unencumbered long-term assets, and unrestricted reserves. — Reporting by Joyce Guzowski churchexecutive.com

Lifetime Learning

Transforming lives through community outreach & leadership development Prayer Garden, Regent University School of Divinity

Campus Chapel, Regent University School of Divinity

While playing football at a state university and completing his bachelor’s degree in advertising / PR, Jesse Eisenhart never dreamed of entering the ministry and following in his parents’ footsteps. However, as he watched them plan a new church, he knew he wanted to be part of something fresh and different. He felt God calling him to divinity school — a specific divinity school. “I was drawn to Regent,” he says. “When I came to interview, I could tell it was an amazing school. But even though everyone was kind, I felt intimidated by the level of professionalism and the intellect of the professors. I came up with all sorts of excuses why it wasn’t the place for me, but God kept knocking them down.” When Eisenhart’s aunt and uncle in Virginia Beach called him one day — unaware he was considering Regent — and offered him a free place to stay if he ever decided to enroll at the Jesse Eisenhart university, he knew it was meant to be. He decided to pursue master’s degrees in both Practical Theology and Human Services Counseling, so he could be a greater asset to the new church by providing the additional counseling churchexecutive.com

skillset needed for those struggling with trauma and addiction. He completed most of his classes on campus, and a couple online. “The online and on-campus experiences were different, but both very rewarding,” he says. “The way they designed the online learning really felt like a live classroom environment — still very informative and relational, even with people from around the world there.” It was the professors, though, who made the greatest impact on Jesse: “I came from a state university, and it’s so different to sit under someone who has a passion for you to succeed in life. It’s not a job for the professors; it’s a calling. So many theological schools have changed from how they were founded, yet not at Regent — their staff is united under that one strict call: to equip Christian leaders.” Today, Jesse has taken over for his parents as senior pastor of True North Church in southern New Jersey, which has grown from a handful of families to more than 1,000 people at two locations. He has led the church through ongoing community outreach — bringing life change in areas such as marriage, youth development, family and leadership development. True North Church has even launched Forge Leadership School to equip and train its students to effectively live out and fulfill the calling that God has placed on their life. “If you really feel called to lead people in a significant way, you need to surround yourself with people committed to your success,” he says. “Some colleges are committed to educating you, but Regent is committed to developing your personal leadership skillset — not just making good leaders, but making good people who can develop other leaders.” As one of the top 15 largest seminaries in the nation, Regent’s School of Divinity is a multidenominational seminary located in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The school offers a spectrum of course-delivery options — completely on campus, completely online, online with minimal residency and blended structures — to provide students flexibility in where and how they earn their degree. Regent’s Doctor of Ministry program is among the first in the nation to receive approval by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) to be offered completely online, with no residency. Other Regent divinity programs include the Master of Divinity, Master of Arts in Practical Theology, Master of Theological Studies, Master of Theology and Ph.D. in Theological Studies. “At Regent, no matter which format you choose, you will receive an affordable, streamlined, high-quality education,” says the school’s dean, Dr. Corné Bekker. “More than that, you’ll receive a biblically based education that emphasizes the vital role of the Holy Spirit in transforming lives.” Bekker adds: “The Regent University School of Divinity will prepare you for a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multigenerational ministry. You will experience academic excellence that reflects the mind of Christ and empowers you to serve with the heart of the Father.” Explore your program options by contacting an advisor at (800)723-6162, or visit www.regent.edu/divinity. May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

A mobile-first approach: 3 ways to drive discipleship By Scott Romig

CHURCH EXECUTIVE â&#x20AC;¢ May / June 2017

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When’s the last time you checked your phone? Recent studies have found that the average person touches their phone 2,617 times a day! The image of people wandering around, heads buried in their mobile devices, perilously unaware of their surroundings has become something of a cultural strawman. Last year, Chick-fil-a franchise owner Brad Williams famously launched the “Cell Phone Coop” challenge in an effort to motivate people to put away their mobile phones and engage with one another face-to-face. In exchange for a free dessert, diners at Chick-fil-a would be provided with a cardboard box in which all the members of a party were to place their phones, promising not to retrieve them until the end of the meal. While it’s wise to consider the pitfalls of being perennially pluggedin, it’s also important to acknowledge how mobile phones can influence behavior, especially when it comes to ministry and discipleship. Many churches have started to adopt mobile-friendly technologies, such as uploading their sermons into podcasting platforms or adapting church websites to be mobile-responsive. But these efforts only scratch the surface of the possibilities available at our fingertips. The following are just three practical ways church leaders can leverage mobile technology to drive discipleship in ministry. #1: Assign tasks to lay ministers Built within the definition of discipleship is the idea that leaders in the church are to find, grow and deploy other leaders. Churches commonly accomplish this through lay ministers and / or small group leaders. But managing dozens, hundreds or even thousands of lay ministers can quickly become a logistical nightmare. Any system that relies on manual processes is likely to succumb to human error. By relying on the smartphone’s ubiquity, churches can now use apps that sync up with the church management system. Lay leaders can receive information about church initiatives, report attendance, and make notes about the members they are discipling. This not only provides the church with data about who is and isn’t engaging in ministry, but it also allows the church to be proactive when they see dips in a given member’s attendance. Employing push notifications within the app, the church can instruct lay ministers to check on a lapsed member.

#2: Host church resources in a dedicated church app When you think about it, smartphones are pretty miraculous devices. Christians just a few hundred years ago would have considered themselves wealthy if they owned a personal copy of the Bible. Nowadays, we can access any translation of God’s Word with a mere swipe of our finger. Churches today are able to host all their teachings — from sermons, to equipping webinars, to Bible studies — in convenient, church-branded apps. Offering mobile-ready versions of church teachings empowers your members to access resources at any time and in any place. #3: Make giving convenient through mobile The power of the offering plate has always been its immediacy. People who come prepared to give with a cash or check don’t have to ask where to place their gift. In 2017, however, many people — especially younger members — don’t carry cash or checks on their person. Though many churches offer online giving, limiting donations to a desktop-only platform means people have to wait until they get home to give rather than when the spirit compels them in the moment. Mobile giving and text-to-give provides members the ability to fund the ministry initiatives that stir their affections on-the-go. This increases the chances that your church will have the resources it needs to accelerate discipleship. As mobile technology becomes more pervasive in our culture and churches, it’s vital that church leaders leverage innovation in the spreading of the Gospel. Though there is indeed a time and place to “unplug,” we don’t have to fear new technologies; rather, we should harness them in connecting people to one another, to their church and, most important, to Jesus Christ. Scott Romig is Vice President, Sales & Marketing Technology Products at TouchPoint Software in Dallas [ TouchPointSoftware.com ]. A self-proclaimed “nerd evangelist,” he has a strong drive to help churches disciple their members and raise dollars to fuel their mission. Romig can also be found playing on the worship team at One Chapel in Austin, Texas, or with his band, Dexter Freebish.

May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

How to

renovate (without the regrets)

By Rodney James

Remodeling church facilities can be a painful process — but it doesn’t have to be that way. If the church takes the right steps (in the right order, with the right partner), a renovation project can flow smoothly, stay on budget, and have a positive effect on the ministries of the church during the process. Having served as an executive pastor and lead pastor through three major renovation and expansion projects, I understand firsthand how construction can affect church ministries. So, having walked that journey and led many other pastors through that process, let me share some thoughts on how you can prepare your team and your church for a project of your own. Choose the right partner This is the first and most critical decision you’ll make about renovating your facilities. You need a designer and builder who have been in your shoes. You can’t expect architectural and construction professionals who haven’t served in ministry to help you plan and coordinate how a project will impact your ministry. If your partner doesn’t engage conversations about how your ministries can function around the areas of renovation, this should be a red flag. As a church and ministry designer and builder, our first conversations are 50

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based on how a church will continue to function throughout the course of construction. Our team understands — and builds into our schedule and communication with subcontractors — even unexpected factors such as funerals and other unplanned ministry needs. Choose a partner to design and build your project who can be a true source of counsel to assist you through the entire journey.

Project Profile: Asbury United Methodist Church (Tulsa, OK)

Construction will impact ministry flow No matter how large or small a renovation project might seem, it will in some way impact the regular flow of your ministries. However, that impact doesn’t have to be negative, nor should it be. In fact, a good communicator should use this opportunity to lead his or her people through a season of excitement, anticipation, and even growth, both spiritually and numerically. The way to do this is to stay focused on the future impact of the “results” of the project. Communicate the opportunity for lives to be touched, changed and transformed by the finished product. The project details are important to communicate, but the focus should always remain on the impact of the outcome — not the process. Budget accuracy (and “wiggle room”) is key To ensure a successful project, you must insure that your designer is providing you accurate construction costs with plenty of contingency for unexpected issues that arise during demolition and renovation. One of the greatest failures in renovation projects is not having an accurate budget during design. Designers often use square footage estimates or rely on simple historical data to determine budgets. But, the only way to accurately know what every line item is going to cost is to have real pricing during the design process. You need your builder (and even subcontractors) involved throughout design, putting eyes on the drawings and the existing facility to determine real costs for each aspect of the project. To design a renovation or expansion project, and then put it out to bid, is asking for sticker shock and a myriad of change orders that will push you over budget during construction. Having successfully completed hundreds of projects under budget, our team knows the absolute value of getting real pricing all through the design process. Expect the unexpected Plan for issues and problems. Having participated in multiple renovation projects — from both the ministry and, now, professional construction side — I know firsthand that every project has problems and issues. Having served on staff during major projects, I coach the church teams we work with on what to expect. Meanwhile, our team gives them great confidence that our job is to find solutions to every issue and problem. When a church has a relationship of complete trust in its building partner, the staff can have peace of mind, even when problems arise. We know the importance of keeping everyone aware of the progress and the process throughout the project; so, if something unexpected happens, everyone is on the same page and has the answers for what’s happening and how we’re going to walk through it. Renovation and expansion projects keep church facilities up to date and allow for continued growth. Even though the process will interrupt the weekly flow of ministry activity, it doesn’t have to be a painful process. Rodney James served as executive pastor, then senior pastor, at Sequoyah Hills Baptist Church in Tulsa, Okla., for 20 years. In that time, he led and completed multiple building and renovation projects. In 2012, James joined Churches by Daniels, Inc., in Broken Arrow, Okla., [ www.churchesbydaniels.com ] as Director of Business and Finance. He is now a Business Partner and Vice President of Business and Design. The company specializes in designing and building churches nationwide.

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Though the recent remodel of the sanctuary Asbury First United Methodist Church was a major undertaking, the church never missed weekend services or experienced disrupted weekday preschool and ministry events. Instead, a massive tent was set up each Sunday afternoon to protect the rest of the building from the construction mess. More than 10,000 square feet of plastic was draped from ceiling to floor surrounding the construction area. Specific tents for cutting concrete, demolishing portions of the existing stage, and tearing out sheetrock kept the dust intrusion to a minimum. The stage expansion took place week by week, with exposed framing and decking, right in front of the congregation. In fact, the imposition was used as an excitement-builder for what the new facility would be when finished. Moreover, the project was completed with minimal change orders — and 2.5 percent under budget! This kind of outcome is extremely rare with remodel projects, but the Churches by Daniels team took great care in accurately pricing every step of the project throughout the design process. Now, the renovation has had major impact on the Sunday morning worship experience. It has also extended the life of the new sanctuary beyond the next decade with minimal impact to the church’s ministries.

May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

Finance & Lending Trends

If you’re considering refinancing, be aware of the environmental status of your property By Dan Mikes

Throughout my 27 years of providing financing for religious institutions, I have seen a number of instances in which all the financial and other factors were right, but the loan could not be made because the collateral (the land and buildings) was unacceptable due to environmental contamination. While this is a fairly rare occurrence, it is not uncommon for a loan closing to be delayed due to the need for additional environmental testing — even in instances where the current lender deemed a previous environmental study to be sufficient to support the existing mortgage. Your leadership team should be aware of this risk, and, when seeking refinancing, should provide prospective lenders with copies of old environmental studies early in the process.

gainst the backdrop of another round of headlines about rising interest rates, many religious institutions (RIs) have reached out to lenders to assess whether now might be a good time to refinance. Even if you have a year or two remaining on your current note, it might make sense to seek a longer-term fixed rate now rather than take your chances with where rates might be when your loan matures. It typically takes about 90 days to go through the loan review and decision process, which includes securing a property appraisal, a title insurance commitment, etc. Ninety days might seem like a long time if you are concerned about rising rates. Vetting the environmental condition of your property early in the process can help you avoid unnecessary delays. Prior to funding a loan, lenders require that a certain level of due diligence is performed on the property being offered as collateral for the loan. These contingencies are typically listed in the financing offer letter. Most borrowers anticipate that the loan will be contingent upon a current

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

Market Value Appraisal evidencing that the loan does not exceed the lender’s maximum Loan-to-Value limit, typically 75 percent. However, many borrowers don’t realize that a great appraisal valuation doesn’t mean that the bank will accept your property as collateral. Appraisals are typically based upon an assumption that the property is free of any contamination. The following disclaimer language, or language similar to it, commonly appears in property appraisals: “No studies have been provided to us indicating the presence or absence of hazardous materials on the subject property or in the improvements, and our valuation is predicated upon the assumption that the subject property is free and clear of any environment hazards including, without limitation, hazardous wastes, toxic substances and mold. No representations or warranties are made regarding the environmental condition of the subject property.” In addition to the Market Value Appraisal, lenders typically require a clean “Phase I” environmental site assessment as a condition of the loan. The Phase I identifies potential or known environmental contamination liabilities associated with both the underlying land as well as the physical improvements to the property. The lender needs to be confident that if the property ever had to be sold to satisfy the loan, the value and marketability of the property would not be adversely impacted by environmental contamination. Quite naturally, RIs with existing debt might assume that if their property has met the hurdles set by their current lender, there should be nothing to worry about upon refinancing. After all, the prior lender required a “Phase I” before closing the existing loan. However, environmental standards can change, and sensitivities can also vary from one lender to the next. As an example of a fairly common scenario, a dated Phase I study references the past removal of a heating oil underground storage tank (UST), yet fails to reference any removal and closure documentation, or sample analytical results. Upon reviewing the old Phase I report, the new lender might require a ground-penetrating radar survey to confirm whether the storage tank remains on-site. In a worstcase scenario, a leaking UST is identified and, consequently, the piping, and any significantly contaminated soil, must be removed and disposed of offsite. Further, a “Phase II” will then likely be required whereby soil samples of the surrounding area are taken and analyzed. If your RI ever finds itself in this situation, prior to authorizing the Phase II work, ask your lender to review and approve your environmental consultant’s qualifications, as well as a map of the proposed sampling locations. This will limit the risk of having to go back for additional sampling. Also, whenever your RI is in the market to purchase land or buildings, be sure to require the seller to provide an environmental study. If one is not made available up front, any purchase agreement should be contingent upon the receipt and acceptable review of a clean study prior to the purchase. If a report is offered by the seller, be sure to have your lender look at it as early in the process as possible. I have seen instances where lenders have spotted issues like the one outlined in the preceding paragraph, yet the seller refused to undertake any further analysis of the property for fear of “opening a can of worms.” No buyer — particularly a RI — should be willing take on the reputational or financial risk of proceeding past such a red flag only to later find their leaking UST is contaminating a nearby water supply. The Federal Reserve has increased its key interest rates recently, and now might prove to be a good time to consider refinancing your debt. Upon engaging prospective lenders, be sure to share copies of any existing environmental studies early in the process. A qualified commercial lender can provide you with prompt feedback about what, if any, additional precautionary analysis you might need to initiate. Dan Mikes is Executive Vice President and National Manager of the Religious Institution Division, Bank of the West, San Ramon, CA. [ www. bankofthewest.com ] The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Bank of the West.

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Using data to make better ministry decisions Our goal with this discussion is to focus on the most relevant data points that can gauge the health of your ministry. Our panelists will also focus on how innovative churches are making their decisions through data — and the ways to enrich an empowered discipleship by leveraging technology.

Curt Swindoll Executive Vice President Pursuant

David Coombs Administrative Pastor Bellevue Baptist Church

What are some of the most important data points church leaders should pay attention to that they might not realize? Coombs: Several years ago, we developed a mission statement and the measures to watch and see if we’re meeting that mission statement. We call this our ‘vision frame,’ and we look through this frame to these measurements to set our program, as well as to measure our results. Some of those measurements under our mission statement — which is to love God, love people, share Jesus and make disciples — are measurements which we can quantitatively get some information from and monitor from our church management system. One of the 54

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Karen Worrell Systems Administrator TouchPoint Software

measurements of ‘love people’ is to be involved in a life group. We track extensively our life group attendance and the percentage and level of participation. One of the measurements under ‘love God’ is giving compassionate care to others at Bellevue. We measure that as far as our in-reach program, and how many people are volunteering in various ministries within our church. Worrell: I try to look at the numbers in a granular level. We try to reach people before they become unreachable. We notice classes that are declining in attendance, and we may step in and help them to learn how to use the management tool, such as TouchPoint, to reach churchexecutive.com

those people more affectively. We want the lay leaders to be able to reach out to the correct people and do what is necessary to get them pulled back in. Swindoll: We might want to expand our thinking around what is a data point. Many people think in terms of financial information, because we’re typically reviewing financials as leaders of churches and organizations. But, there are many examples of non-financial information that are important to pay attention to. I would challenge church leaders to think in terms of what are the things that they value in their environment. Then you have to ask, If we value these things, then what kind of behavior, engagement or interaction will be the evidence that people are operating in accordance with these values? How can church leaders use data in their church management systems to enhance the discipleship process? Worrell: We use our data to tell us where people are entering our database, why they have a record there, and what they’re attending first. Then we can use that to enhance discipleship efforts. Maybe someone enters because they registered for a recreation team, or they may have come through the women’s ministry. We use that data, then, to message them about other opportunities. We track all of this in order to be intentional with our discipleship. Coombs: We consistently look through our measurement window that we start with our mission, our measures, our values, and then our strategy. One of these measures is making disciples. The first measurement point is being personally accountable to other Christians. We measure that by the percentage of our membership that’s in a discipleship or life group on a weekly basis. The next point is being involved in equipping environments. We have multiple classes on Wednesday night to equip our people. We measure attendance and what percentage of involvement they’re giving. The next thing is multiplying disciple-makers. We started developing an attention on discipleship program with five people who started a group. Then, they grew to 50, and this year we’re over 500 people participating in a weekly organized discipleship group; they’re discipling two or three people [ every week ]. The final measurement of discipleship is giving biblically. We track giving and track the percentage of giving based on demographics. We measure giving against our average attendance to track how it’s going on a per-capita basis.

church, and get involved in a small group based on their profile. We’ve identified what groups might be best suited for them. We give them what would be equivalent to a DISC test to determine where their gifts are. They’re exposed to all ministries at this point. We’re starting 501- and 601-level courses, which are based on people’s involvement and what we’ve tracked through our system. We might want to engage these people in a leadership training for small or large groups. How might church leaders use their data to drive better generosity in an effort to provide the best ministry possible? Swindoll: Greater ministry should be leading to greater generosity. Often times, we’re working with church clients in looking at financial information as an indication of level of engagement and where people are in their hearts. The response to financial information is identifying where we have weaknesses in our church ministry efforts. We believe, ultimately, that if we can strengthen ministry, we can strengthen the work of the church; then, people will respond financially in kind. It’s important to connect the individual with things they’re passionate about. That’s when generosity, as well as engagement, kicks into high gear. Worrell: Everyone in the church should be giving, and so we recognize that part of our worship is giving to God and to the local church. We use data to identify generations that may not fall into the category of “I give because I was taught to give.” This can also include new Christians. We have reports that show us the demographics of our givers, the age range, and the amounts coming in. We want to see how we can help these people become more intentional with their giving. We know they want to give to something that has a great impact. We have to help them understand that giving to the local church is important, as well. We can engage them by perhaps finding these groups — whether it’s a class or just an age level — and invite them to something that will help them understand managing their money. A lot of people don’t give because they’re in debt. We can run reports in TouchPoint to find those that are not giving – but maybe they’re in a class and their attendance is good. We can then offer a financial course. We can do stewardship efforts, but it’s really derived at making people deeper Christians and understanding what giving is all about. Our data helps us with that. In what ways can church leaders use data to identify and expand the most in-demand small group and outreach offerings?

Swindoll: I think it’s important that we realize that data doesn’t have to dehumanize the discipleship process — it can actually enhance it. It’s important to think about the journey that your members or congregants are taking. One of the things we’ve encourage clients to do is map out that journey. What would a first step on the road to discipleship look like? And what would be the second and third steps? How can we create that environment in which people can easily take those steps? A church management system like TouchPoint can enhance this process because it helps us measure how people are progressing in their discipleship journey.

Worrell: This is where data becomes so important. We capture all this data so that we can know what’s speaking to people, what’s drawing them to our church. We capture their entry point and their interest and we use that in reports, such as our “week-at-a-glance” report, that gives the attendance each week. We can drill down to individual classes. Then, we can be intentional about trying to spin off a new class. We also want to look at the people who are coming to the church, what brought them in, and what programs are reaching them. If we have an event that draws a lot of people, we want to look at the numbers after that and see how many people return to a worship service. If the percentage of people who are coming aren’t diving deeper, then we need to reevaluate where we’re spending our dollars.

Coombs: Our process to get people through their journey is to start with a 101-level introductory course for anybody who wants to come. It tells you the requirements for membership. It also gives people information on what we believe and who the pastor and staff are. After that, we have 201-, 301- and 401-level [ courses ], which gets them through the process of learning how to get involved in the

Coombs: We’re sorting and mining through a large group of people. Everything we’re doing is constantly drawing that huge net in our community and then mining that to find out where those key folks are who we can administer to through our church fellowship.

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May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

Worrell: We have a task management system inside TouchPoint that we use to track the contacts made to a person; then, we can assign people tasks. You might find that somebody has an interest in the choir because they made a visit. If you insert that information, then the next person knows, I’m going to invite them to attend choir.

Listen to the webinar! “Using data to make better ministry decisions” Join these experts and learn: • The most relevant data points for gauging the health of your ministry • How innovative churches are making better decisions through data • Ways to enrich and empower discipleship by leveraging technology Available now at www.churchexecutive.com/webinars

Swindoll: You’re personalizing communication. Sometimes it’s supported by entering a task into the system, that will then also support email communication to small group attendees, for example — not just a mass church-wide communication. We need to think about tailoring and customizing our communication to specific groups of people who share common areas of experience, need or interest. I’d encourage church leaders to do surveys of people who have gone through a study or a season of involvement with a particular group or volunteer effort. Don’t just ask a question about satisfaction level, but what need did they have in pursuing that study or volunteer service? Was it met? I think if we understand more about where people’s needs and desires are, then we can customize and tailor the communication to those people, as well as with others who share those same needs.

Coombs: We’re currently employing some external software. It blows my mind that we have access to data that shows zip codes that are targeted, and that’s where we see the most members coming from. In our community, demographics are changing, but it can tell you down to a house on the street what ethnicity that person is likely to be — whether they have a family or not, and what their income bracket is. When we go into a community, we’re prepared to respond to the necessity of that community and their particular needs, and we’re prepared to respond to what we might offer as a ministry outreach to that particular house. Swindoll: I think these kinds of tools help us understand where we’ve wasted investments in the past. This is one of the ways that external data can help enhance our internal data, and give us a more complete picture, so that we can be more efficient in the investments we’re making in the community and in our church. Who in your church performs the majority of the data analysis? Is it primarily a person who’s very familiar with the database, or the individual ministry leader? Worrell: I usually pull things out of the database for people. When it comes to analysis, [ Coombs ] probably does most of that. I give him the data and can perform some of that, but then I pass it off to others. However, someone like the minister overseeing families can run reports himself. He’ll look at that data himself and will get into some of the reports on his classes — not external data, but just attendance, family makeup, etc. Then, he can pass that information on. So, it’s a combination of people; but typically, I run large reports because I’m familiar with the data, which gets passed to David, who does the analysis. Do you track how much time, dollars or just general resources you spend across ministries to capture data points? If so, what do you find is a typical investment-to-benefit ratio? Worrell: We track how much we spend on a particular ministry in our general ledger — and we capture the involvement and attendance automatically in TouchPoint, and then we can compare that with what we have in our general ledger. Do prospects get DISC assessment, or is that just for members?

QUESTIONS? READERS ASK, EXPERTS ANSWER I’d like to use “big data” — the kind used by predictive analytics — to do targeted outreach to the most spiritually receptive people in my church’s neighborhood. What’s a comparatively inexpensive way to purchase such a package that incorporates the analytics of who to target and then the contact information of how to target them? Swindoll: What’s important to understand is that we’re not limited in our analysis, these days, to just information that we have on file. It’s important to track information on our members and people who are in attendance, or volunteering, or involved in small groups — those kinds of things. That’s incredibly valuable behavioral information. If we can connect our data to the external data sources, it gives us that much more information we can use to understand our people. Once that’s done, it becomes interesting to look at the data elements that are shared by people in a targeted group. That might, in turn, help us to find other people who share those same characteristics but aren’t involved in that group.

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Worrell: That can be found on our Bellevue website [ www.bellevue. org/next-steps ]. We’re intentional in presenting that to our guests and new members who attend those classes that [ Coombs ] mentioned. It’s also available right there on our website, so anyone can take it. Swindoll: The more friction there is, the less people participate. By making things like a DISC assessment available online — as opposed to requiring that people come to a certain class at a certain time on a certain day — you’re facilitating the assessment in a way that reduces friction. It can be taken whenever someone has the time available. I think that that’s an important element to keep in mind: How easy are we making it for people to participate in an assessment, or to sign up and volunteer, or to give? We’ve seen incredible increases in giving happen just by making an app available and referencing that app on the church’s monitors when an offering is being taken. — Reporting by Joyce Guzowski

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THE PASTOR’S TOOLKIT Church Buses & Vans

Today’s growing churches are seven-day-a-week operations. Whether you are transporting large groups of congregants to conferences, youth sports activities or evening worship services, it is important to find the vehicles that suit your ministry — and your resources — best. In this first Church Executive “Pastor’s Toolkit,” we take a look at several of the options that are available today.

Creative Bus Sales

The Bus Center

Celebrating its 37th anniversary, Creative Bus Sales is the nation’s largest bus dealership, representing over 20 top manufacturers in multiple strategic locations across the country. With hundreds of units in stock, Creative offers new and used bus sales, online parts ordering, service, warranty, in-house financing, and alternative fuel conversions.

For more than 40 years, The Bus Center has helped thousands of churches find the right new and pre-owned buses for their transportation needs. To make your bus-buying experience as simple as possible, we created The Bus Center Guide To Buying A Church Bus. Visit our website and download your free copy today!

www.CreativeBusSales.com.

www.TheBusCenter.com

ChurchBus.com

Absolute Bus

Carpenter Bus Sales

ChurchBus.com is a Christian owned company, and a division of the largest dealer of buses in America (Midwest Transit Equipment). With a sales team representing 50+ years of pastoral experience, we understand the unique transportation needs of churches. We stock a large inventory of church equipped buses to allow for quick delivery.

Absolute Bus is proud to announce the availability of Ventura Coach, a newly designed and built shuttle bus by seasoned bus craftsman with the passengers in mind. The first feature you will notice is the over windshield passenger viewing glass and futuristic styling. Style and comfort with a panoramic view!

Carpenter Bus Sales has sold more buses to churches in the US than any other dealer. Their large, in-stock inventory, their volume pricing, and their free, industry-unique 5 Year/ 60,000 Miles Body and Chassis Warranty on new buses make them the best choice for your church’s transportation needs.

www.ChurchBus.com

www.AbsoluteBus.com

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www.CarpenterBus.com

May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

A critical church-state separation case in the making By the Church Executive editorial & leadership team

ast year, Church Executive published an interview with David Middlebrook on the Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley case, which the Supreme Court had just agreed to review. (“A Supreme Court case to watch: Trinity Lutheran Church vs. Pauley,” March 18, 2016) As Middlebrook explained at the time, this case had the potential to be hugely important in defining what can (and can’t) be done under the First Amendment with a government grant or subsidy program in which churches and religious institutions would like to participate. In a nutshell, Trinity Lutheran Church qualified in all respects for a Missouri state grant program to resurface its playground, but was denied the grant solely because it was a church — the Missouri state constitution says a church is not allowed to receive taxpayer dollars for any purpose. The federal court of appeals held that Missouri does not violate the First Amendment when it refuses to allow a church to participate in a grant program like this, even when the record is clear that the church would have qualified, except for its identity as a church. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case more than a year ago, and all of us have been waiting with bated breath for the case to be set for oral argument. It has been briefed and sitting off-docket for ages — apparently, the Court has been waiting for a 9th Justice to fill out its ranks and perhaps avoid a 4-4 split.

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

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Right after Justice Neil Gorsuch was confirmed and took his seat as the ninth Justice — and could participate in deciding the case (historically, a Justice won’t participate in the decision of a case without sitting for the oral argument) — the case was set for oral argument; it was heard on Wednesday, April 19, 2017. In a generally lackluster October Term, this case might well turn out to be a highlight, especially if — as some have said is likely — the new Justice is the deciding vote to break a 4-4 tie on the Court. The Middlebrook piece was prescient and pointed out that the case is potentially of huge importance to Church Executive readers if the Court’s post-Scalia majority takes a clear stand for (or against) the point that the First Amendment doesn’t allow state governmental action which is hostile toward churches. As explained, state action must be neutral toward religion and religious institutions; it can’t be supportive or contra-supportive. This is the provocative interplay, or pivot point, between the Establishment Clause prohibiting any “establishment” (or support) of religious activity and the Free Exercise Clause prohibiting any “interference with” (or hostility toward) the exercise of religious beliefs. The political backdrop inside the Beltway adds considerable spice to the point, along with the coincidence that Justice Gorsuch was a law clerk for another potential swing vote: Justice Anthony Kennedy. Watch this space We wanted to follow up on this case with Church Executive readers because of its potential importance for churches, church schools and other religious institutions, and we will likely do so after the Court’s decision. Further detail on the case and its background and issues is available on SCOTUSblog, starting with an excellent case summary by Amy Howe [www.scotusblog.com/2017/04/argument-preview-justplayground-dispute/ ].

To further complicate things — and perhaps even render the entire matter “moot,” meaning the Supreme Court would decline to decide the case “on its merits” — the newly elected governor of Missouri issued a press release in early April. Essentially, it stated that churches in Missouri would no longer be barred from participating in state grant programs like this. At the 11th hour, the Supreme Court asked the parties to the case to weigh in on whether or not the press release had made the case moot. The parties all told the Court that the case should proceed, and perhaps the Court will agree — a portion of the oral argument in April was taken up by questions from the Justices about whether or not the case has become moot. It could be that the Court will ultimately decide as much and not render a decision on the merits. To this end, Amy Howe has further insightful commentary to share [ www.scotusblog.com/2017/04/ argument-analysis-justices-leaning-toward-ruling-trinity-lutheranmerits/ ], including her thoughts on this new procedural wrinkle. It’s always risky to predict how the Supreme Court will come out on a given case, or to think that questions and comments from the Justices during oral argument accurately tip their hands. The best bet is for all of us to stay tuned. If the Court decides to punt on procedural grounds because the case has become moot, we might learn that soon. If it decides to rule on the merits, we might have to wait until late June to learn their decision to see how the Court split, and also to see if a majority of the Court has the stomach to draw a bright line on this important First Amendment issue. As churches do more and more to help their communities and fill the vacuum left by shrinking budgets for government social services, the case for requiring government grant and subsidy programs to be non-hostile toward churches seems unusually compelling — and perhaps the Court will come right out and say so.

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May / June 2017 • CHURCH EXECUTIVE

NEVER AGAIN: BEYOND INSURANCE

RISK FOR ANY RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION — OVERSEEING YOUTH By Crispin Ketelhut Montelione

The Internet is an off-site “location” that can be very conducive to ministry. Various types of access to the Internet that can be beneficial or harmful include: tablets, smart phones, “smartphone” watches, social media apps and gaming devices. The very nature of interaction over the Internet is that communication is outside of the sight and hearing of others. What children and adults access and post can be harmful to youth, and could affect their reputations, safety, and can even increase their risk of harm. As adults, we must ensure that our online behavior is above reproach; it must be as transparent as our behavior in person, with oversight and monitoring of all youth Internet activities, and installation of blocking and filtering software. Instead of using personal accounts, we must also ensure that employees / volunteers use church accounts to communicate with the youth during appropriate daytime hours, copying parents on all correspondence. Culture Culture affects safe environments in two main ways: 1) The collective organizational culture of an entity — where tradition within the entity becomes culturally acceptable and establishes the norm regardless of actual behavior. 2) An individual’s cultural identity — which determines that a particular behavior is appropriate or not. This can be impacted by personal values, family and ethnic traditions, country of origin, etc.

The largest risk for any church organization is overseeing youth. The main goal is to create a safe environment as the basis for any child’s encounter with God to be safe and open to receive Him; this is the responsibility of caring adults. This article outlines the issues and solutions surrounding the three greatest areas of risk to children — location, culture and human predilection — and ultimately identifies how every single person has a valuable role to play.

ome risks to children are more obvious than others. There’s increased risk within church environments, because of an assumption of trust and safety. We can drastically reduce risk to children in virtually any church environment as long as we’re vigilant and have specific “Access control” and “Monitoring programs” procedures. Location Off-site ministry locations pose special problems, because the ministry is conducted outside of the typical monitoring of others. Examples include personal homes, vehicles, parks, public locations, sport facilities, etc. It’s important to understand that Code of Conduct / Policy requirements still carry over to any location where ministry is conducted, including the Internet.

CHURCH EXECUTIVE • May / June 2017

The combination of these two types of culture gives individuals more or less access to children. This can negatively affect the safety of youth, even when the individual has good intentions, and the culture could condition a child to more easily accept questionable behavior by someone who has bad intentions. Multifaceted training provides a solution and makes it entirely possible to correct the cultural impact on safe environments. Safeenvironment training must have proactive and reactive elements, and engage the participant to learn tangible steps in prevention and response to problematic situations. Educating the location means learning and modeling appropriate behavior that is public, appropriate and non-sexual, and identifying potential warning signs of inappropriate relationships. Developing a culture for safe environments and modeling that behavior from the top down via leadership support helps individuals learn to compensate for their individual culture and the collective organizational culture. And, it reminds them to always remain conscious of known risks and their personal role in mitigating those risks. Human predilection Many elements are intrinsic to human nature that create human predilection to weaken or interfere with systems designed to protect youth, such as: feeling overwhelmed or burnt out, laziness, not wanting to suspect inappropriate behavior from people we love, denial, disbelief, and detrimental mentalities of “not my child” and it “couldn’t happen here.” We’ve learned so much, but consistently tend to make the same mistakes through human error. Consequently, individuals who know the right thing to do ignore it, and good people don’t act on an issue they could or should have followed through on. Appropriate, comprehensive and consistent safe-environment training — along with updated policies, vigilance and specific procedures — can eliminate the threats to children presented by the location, culture, and human predilection. Crispin Ketelhut Montelione is the Associate Director of the VIRTUS® Programs, a safe-environment program suite via NCS Risk Services, LLC. http://virtus.org.

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