The summer is now almost over, and we’ve made lots of exciting announcements over the last few months, which you can read more about here. I’d also like to share some thoughts with all you who have joined us on our journey.
You could almost say that this journey has taken us from being a small entrepreneur to being a professional, trusted partner to the church. We’re so pleased to being working closely with all of you, continually supporting and strengthening your work and ministries. I can guarantee that this is only the beginning! :-)
A year and half ago we had the privilege of receiving investment from an internationally renowned investor to develop the tools of the future for the church. We did this in order to begin a new chapter with our customers. Whereas ChurchDesk used to help primarily with coordination and planning, we’ve since invested in and developed tools to support the Church in reaching out to new people in new ways. It’s all about helping the Church to strengthen its membership, and about supporting the life and growth of the Church. More and more when we speak with church councils and employees there’s great interest in strengthening the Church’s relationship with its members and wider communities; we think this is going to be the most important priority in the coming years. The Church, therefore, will have to be equipped with better tools for this mission, and we’ve been working specifically on this. Many of you have discovered that our new features and improvements are focused on the outreach of the church, and we’re pleased to see the results already.
Essential to looking after the Church’s members is having the right information, and here the Church has a big challenge. Many churches have not had the contact information to look after their members in the way they want and need to. We’ve made this possible with a tool we call People, and the results have been impressive. ChurchDesk churches sent over 500,000 messages in the last year. There are now lots of people who are hearing from their church, perhaps for the first time with specific information relevant to them, and we think that’s fantastic.
The good news doesn’t stop there. In the spring we launched a brand new and really easy-to-use application called Forms, which is completely integrated with People. Your members can now look forward to being invited to events and receiving relevant and personal information from their priest, for example. In other words, we’ve created the framework for working specifically on looking after your members in an easy way - to the benefit of thousands of people every day.
The next chapter is to offer better opportunities for sharing experiences of development and looking after members within the church. We recently launched a collection of guides and videos that are our first steps on this road. In October, we’ll be in London with our User Groups (more on that soon), and I’m looking forward to meeting you to present our latest initiatives and to share our future priorities. At the same time, we’re going to launch an online community for church people in the UK, which we can’t wait to see flourish.
With best wishes,
Christian
Founder of ChurchDesk