Comments on: CircleBuilder : just the facts mam.

By: Steve Scruggs

Steve Scruggs — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:34:55 +0000

There is another solution that has the same functionality as CircleBuilder.com and lots more. That product is called ChurchPortalz. Their website is www.churchportalz.com.

Their platform is built on SharePoint and has all the functionality, including features such as discussion forums (up to each individual church whether to “turn on”), wikis, blogs, profiles, surveys, project management, task management, content management, document management, etc…

SharePoint is a technology that is taking the business world by storm by enabling information workers to collaborate more effectively, even if they are on opposite sides of the world.

ChurchPortalz is built on the SharePoint platform.

By: Howard Brown - CEO of CircleBuilder.com

Howard Brown - CEO of CircleBuilder.com — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:11:16 +0000

Church management systems like Church Community Builder and others. Recently we have seen progress for integrated church member management with a web / social media front end. I applaud the improvements and we are trackiing the adoption. CircleBuild can be for many a mini-membership system for a church without walls or a church plant. We do have data integration plans to take the CircleBuilder data and port it to any church member managment system in coming releases of our softeware.
Right now we do this via a .csv export

Lastly, most church member management systems are expensive. CircleBuilder has both a free and coming in Q-1 of 2009 a paid tiered subsciption service from $125 - 1,000 a month.

By: Howard Brown - CEO of CircleBuilder.com

Howard Brown - CEO of CircleBuilder.com — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:05:53 +0000

Closed networks vs wide open social netoworks like FaceBook and others. The verdict is still out on the staying power of FaceBook. MySpace has lost its luster for many already. The dormancy rate on many social network sites is not widely reported but I have a Friendster, Myspace, Bebo and other accounts I do not bother with checking are a left collecting dust.

FaceBook may grow or disappear over time. Eventually flash crowds disappear over time or find the “next-new” thing but the Church has survived for 1000’s of years and will continue. Some churches are in a state of fantastic growth and other need to adopt more modern day “touch points” to be able to serve their members in a more concierge type way.

By: Howard Brown - CEO of CircleBuilder.com

Howard Brown - CEO of CircleBuilder.com — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:57:54 +0000

People need to “share their stories of glory as well as woe” as many pastors have has told us. Some of the stories are about the glory of God and those associated events , blogs, video’s can be made public.

Private stories / conversations about addiction, gambling, counseling, abuse need to be kept confidential and private both online and offline.

We working on a social media sharing widget to share with rules, filters and moderation any CircleBuilder content (events, blogs, devotionals, prayers, sermons, classes audio, video). Conversely, we will be able to bring in external content from Facebook and other websites but it will be reviewed, potentially amended or edited for appropriateness, then sent on for further approval or published to live pages. Unsavory content will be deleted with or with out return comments.

By: Mark Illingworth

Mark Illingworth — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:32:50 +0000

CCB is also a closed environment and I think that this is one of the reasons why I haven’t even bothered trying to implement the social networking side of it. Those that might have used such a thing in the past are engaged with Facebook and its connections out into the ether-verse.

What CCB does provide is an online Church Management System which 6 months ago at least there was veritable few. It provides the ability for group leaders to record membership, attendance etc It provides secure child checkin facilities, financial management stuff etc and all of this from a secure website so no one computer or person in the church has “the data”.

By: Mark Brown

Mark Brown — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:01:38 +0000

Great point Tim. I will invite Brent to respond.

One immediate thought of how they could ‘open up’ is the just released Facebook Connect which enables websites to leverage facebook. Facebook state:

” * Seamlessly “connect” their Facebook account and information with your site
* Connect and find their friends who also use your site
* Share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook

For more on this see: http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php

By: Tim Bulkeley

Tim Bulkeley — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:13:21 +0000

Mark, I’m puzzled, the guy says his tool helps churches (among other things) to “promote, and recruit” yet unlike the existing popular social networking tools like Facebook it does this in a closed environment. How does that work? We “talk” to each other behind closed doors, and somehow the world says: “Golly what attractive doors! Please let me in to see what’s inside…”

Why not use either a blog or Facebook and let people see “inside” - or are we so ashamed of church we’d prefer to hide it away?

By: Mark Brown

Mark Brown — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:42:36 +0000

Thanks for the tip Mark. How have you found CCB?

By: Mark Illingworth

Mark Illingworth — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:25:22 +0000

Circle Builder is similar to CCB - www.churchcommunitybuilder.com which we are currently using. While CCB is seeking to do the whole networking thing as well, it is also a fully functional church management system (ChMS) which Circle Builder doesn’t seem to be. Its worth checking out.