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</td> <td width="1" valign="top" bgcolor="#BBD6F2"><img src="../images/master/subnav_right.gif" width="1" height="39"></td> <td valign="top"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="21" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="margin-top: 5px;"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td>  <h1>Church Software - Christian Computing Cover Story</h1> <p> This interview/article on the capabilities of ConnectionPower church software does a good job capturing the philosophy, history and heart behind our ministry. We are not just church management software but consider ourselves and distinctive approach better named church ministry software. Our tenacious focus on church software design, that has a bottom line impact on church growth, is unique. All of our ministry systems from interactive church websites, to connection systems, to our state of the art church kiosk check-in/check-out systems to our powerful calendar and event registration systems are designed with this principle in mind. </p> <img src="images/CCMCoverStory.jpg" alt="Church Computing Cover Story - Church Software"> <p> <strong>Over the last year, I have received emails with comments and questions from readers of Christian Computing Magazine about ConnectionPower. com. Many wanted me to know about this new Church Management Software (CMS) offering and I quickly noticed that all of the comments I had received were very positive. I had also started receiving an e-newsletter called PowerGrowth that was distributed by ConnectionPower, which intrigued me even more!</strong> </p> <p> Recently, I had the opportunity to contact Allen Ratta, CEO of ConnectionPower.com. Allen is not just a CEO of a rapidly growing company but has been a successful pastor, author, seminar presenter, conference speaker and writes the newsletter on church growth, called PowerGrowth that I mentioned above. PowerGrowth has a distribution of over 70,000 church leaders and pastors. If you are in the market for a new CMS service, I think you should include them in your list of prospects. Here are some of the questions and answers from my interview. </p> <p> <strong>Steve:</strong> I have been seeing emails and comments about ConnectionPower for a couple of years now. How long has ConnectionPower been around and how has sales growth been going? </p> <p><strong>Allen:</strong> ConnectionPower burst on the scene of Church Management Software offerings five years ago and has rapidly grown into the web-based CMS with the largest customer base. We have outpaced every competitor in our market space. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> Allen, what do you believe are the key reasons behind this phenomenal growth? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> I believe one strong contributing factor is my experience as a successful pastor for 20 years. I have discovered that this background gives me a totally different perspective to church software design that is truly unique to the industry. When pastors hear our message and take the time to understand what our applications do, it really resonates with them. It has been my experience that it takes an experienced pastor to understand the realities and challenges that a pastor faces today. I started with 17 congregants and had the privilege of leading a church through many years of rapid growth as we acquired land and built out our 20 acre campus. I am familiar with most of the stages of church growth and the resultant challenges. I am also intimately acquainted with the frustrations that every pastor faces in the desire to advance their ministry. </p> <p><strong>Steve:</strong> Are there any other distinguishing factors that you believe have led to ConnectionPower’s growth in the church marketplace? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> Our unique roots in the church growth movement have given ConnectionPower a singular ability to serve the church. Early in my pastoral ministry I developed paper-based systems that made a significant impact on a church’s ability to connect visitors, and integrate them into the core of the church. We call these a church’s “Velcro Factor” and “Gravity Field,” respectively. These systems were adopted nationally by my denomination, which led to a nationwide ministry while concurrently pastoring my own church. I have had the unique privilege to work with thousands of churches over the past 20 years with the mission of helping them to connect people to the body of Christ. We have learned that the same principles that effectively connect people to the church in the US also work in Australia, Great Britain and around the world. Along the way our ministry systems matured and finally grew into the powerful web applications that they are today. We bring an unparalleled knowledge-base of lessons learned and best practices in how to successfully connect people into the church. This is the mission of our ministry at ConnectionPower. These principles have been incorporated into the design of our ConnectionPower web-based applications. Put simply, we are different because we actually help churches to grow. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> With your pastoral background how is it you were able to develop all of the many CMS applications ConnectionPower.com offers? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> We have learned that the data management aspects of church management systems are the easy part to build. Customers tell you exactly the kinds of management tools and reports they need to run their ministries. We are very responsive to these requests and like to brag that we have the best research department in the world—our churches! We have a brilliant team of software designers that are constantly adding features and expanding our systems’ management capabilities. By the way, we never charge for these upgrades. The far more difficult part is to have and understand the soft skill sets of what it takes to run a successful ministry and to grow a church and then to incorporate those realities into software design. This is where ConnectionPower stands alone in its capabilities. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> I think one of the reasons Christian Computing has lasted these last 20 years is because I served as a pastor for many years before I became a publisher. How has your breadth of understanding of church ministry and how it successfully works, specifically impacted the way you design software? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> Wow, where would I begin? There are so many ways that this is the case. Let me give you one example. We have a slogan at ConnectionPower that crystallizes a key truth about church ministry. It goes like this, “Information has a very short useful shelf life.” We see churches caught in the rut of doing the same things the same way year after year with the same results. They keep pulling endless reports in an effort to manage their ministry. These report-driven churches are trapped in a passive mindset about the capabilities of church ministry software. They are thinking database and not ministry. Let me explain what I mean. By the time most of these reports are run the colloquial “horse has done left the barn.” Technology today can empower a church to instantly respond to the needs of visitors and members if information is pushed from the system in front of the right eyes so that it cannot be ignored. Proactive email alerts and postings to the right ministry dashboards can make the difference between failure and success in providing adequate care for people. ConnectionPower is unique in this approach. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> Are there any other lessons you bring to the design table from your pastoral experience? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> If I have learned anything from pastoral ministry it is that, left alone, ministry processes steadily deteriorate and devolve. Pastors are shocked to discover just how much ministry they thought was being done is never being done. Churches need bombproof routines that hold staff and volunteers accountable to a God honoring level of service. We do this in a great many ways at ConnectionPower. For example, we create tools so that each ministry leader can see the morale level of the volunteers under their area of ministry and an executive can see them ministry by ministry in the church. Volunteer care is a critical element of success for the church that would enjoy high congregational morale and increasing ministry capacity. So is the quick identification and on-boarding of new leaders. We find at ConnectionPower that we are thinking about things and working on solutions, that to our knowledge, no one else is thinking about. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> This is fascinating. Does incorporating ministry processes into your management software limit its flexibility for a church that wants to do church a different way? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> Not at all. Contrary to some misconceptions, ConnectionPower provides great flexibility for a church to utilize whatever processes they want. It has been our experience that when a church really understands what our solutions do and how they do it that they heartily embrace many of the unparalleled ministry capabilities that our solutions offer. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> Can you briefly define the specific products that ConnectionPower offers and describe what they do? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> We have four products that can operate alone but work seamlessly together with powerful synergies. PowerVisitor is a world class contact management system that mobilizes and empowers congregants to connect visitors to the church from the comfort of their home or anywhere they have an Internet connection. Our copyrighted training materials have been honed over the last 20 years to equip volunteers to be a part of a highly effective connection team. PowerMember is a full featured CMS for church management complete with state of the art Kiosk check-in and check-out systems with photo verifications for authorized child pickup. It incorporates a powerful newcomer care ministry component that significantly increases a church’s Gravity Field. PowerWeb provides website hosting and professional website templates that pull data dynamically from a church’s hosted database and can be maintained by totally non-technical staff. Or data can be snapped into a church’s existing website via iframes. Our soon to be released API will give ultimate flexibility to create custom web applications for churches with technical staff. PowerWeb also includes an integrated web calendar where people can register for events and pay for them online. PowerGiving is a powerful contributions module with check scanning software that provides full GAAP compliant functionality. It utilizes unique revenue generating strategies and supports online recurrent giving with three different merchant account vendors. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> Is ConnectionPower targeted to more small, midsize or larger churches? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> We have many churches in every size category. We also do not limit or dumb down our ministry applications for smaller churches. Small churches get the same exact ministry functionality as our very large churches. We have some of the largest churches in America using our solutions and more very large churches are joining all the time. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> How do you structure your pricing? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> We price subscriptions based a church’s weekend worship attendance as we feel this is the way to gauge a church’s fiscal strength and we want every church to be able to afford our solutions. We also offer a steep discount to church planters so they can hit the ground running with all the systems they need to grow. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> Some CMS providers base their pricing on the amount of “seats” they allow users to access the applications. How do you handle this? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> Limiting seats makes no sense whatsoever. It restricts and negates the very power of a web based application. Web based applications allow a tremendous decentralization of ministry management and participation and remove the bottleneck of the centralized church office. They empower a culture of ministry participation instead of spectatorship. With ConnectionPower a church can have as many concurrent users online as they want. We know this approach is the one that best serves the church. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> How would a church that is interested check out ConnectionPower? </p><p><strong>Allen:</strong> They can <a href="http://www.connectionpower.com/info/desktop_demo.php" rel="nofollow">request a demo</a> at www.connectionpower.com and one of our ministry team will promptly set a time to give them or a group, a complete demonstration of our ministry management capabilities. We often demo to groups of decision makers in a church by utilizing a video projector and a speaker phone. Our ministry associate locks the church’s computer onto their desktop and opens up the applications in an interactive demonstration with a church’s ministry team. </p><p><strong>Steve:</strong> Allen, I want to thank you for your time today. 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