We often hear that poor information flow and slow communication means that it is hard to do work in the church. It may be that the office is closed or that you are not near a computer. That makes it hard hard to see if a room is available or to send a group message! It basically puts a limit both activity and motivation when you cannot access the tools required to make your church work fun and easy.
Church life and the various activities are the joint effort of the clergy, staff, parochial councils and volunteers. It is collaboration between people who works more effectively when communication is strong and when change can quickly and accurately be conveyed. However, this is easier said than done and in the past it has been difficult to make the necessary knowledge available from a lack of great tools. The standard communication loop is most often lacking transparency and kept among a few people; a practice that seldom works to grow engagement. Communication not only fails, it is often time consuming and it only takes one person to miss a key update, to affect the whole operation. Why not give the best conditions to those who participate, take the initiative and contribute to the church?
The church can create better conditions for clergy, staff and volunteers and have a high level of information that can adapt to change and update those involved. The church has to support staff better, by providing relevant information and be trusted to access the information they need. Church activity is not limited to the opening and closing times, shown on the church notice board. Updates or changes need to happen real time and all the time. Therefore, we have just launched our app for smartphones that gives everyone the opportunity to e.g. work with the church calendar and to send messages to groups. The priest can now reserve a room instantly and the PCC can carry on a group discussion in between their meetings.
ChurchDesk for iPhone and Android has been built to include many of the great functions from our web platform. We know that the vast majority of our users do not sit at the computer or find they work at odd times. Therefore, support for a more flexible approach to doing work is necessary. We are constantly developing the app and so far our app includes the following tasks: