ChurchDesk Blog: Where churches go to grow and engage

Our CEO on how to build a great church management software

Written by Christian Steffensen | 07/12/15 01:00

At ChurchDesk we are often asked why we work so hard on building a workflow management software for churches. My answer as CEO is always: We work hard because we are on a mission to change something significantly.

In this article I will try to explain and share some of our thoughts on why the church needs to change. ChurchDesk is on a mission to change the church with great software. A software that provides a revolutionary way of managing the church's daily work among staff and volunteers and help them engaging their members. This requires a great work environment where ambitious people feel inspired to think big and work hard.

When I started the company I had two things I wanted to achieve: 

  1. I insisted on hiring young, talented people that were unfamiliar with the church, and
  2. we had to be very transparent and collaborative with our customers when it comes to product development

Why we also need young people that don't know the church

We are in this game to rethink and improve the way churches do their work. At ChurchDesk we are constantly trying to challenge the way things are done. After all, why treat the church differently than any other organization? The church also deserves great tools to do great work. We believe that this is best achieved by also bringing in people from the outside, people with a fresh and inspired mindset.  

Why we insist on being transparent with our customers

Since day one, we have invited our users to join our 'feature request community' which is public to everyone - potential customers but also competitors. It has been used widely among our users across countries. We are very impressed by the commitment from our users and we do our best to meet their expectations and include them in our product development. This is challenging, but also completely necessary. When talking to our customers, we experience  that this is something they value. Even though we might not be able to deliver on their entire wish we update our software on a very regular basis, doing the best we can! 

Most of the software previously used by churches, has never been updated and nobody has ever listened to their needs. We at ChurchDesk acknowledge and value the insight and experience coming from our churches and we deliver as much as possible on their feature requests.