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Strategic Planning for Ministry: 4 Hidden Ways Technology Impacts Your Ministry
In our latest webinar, we explore why strategic planning is vitally important for stewardship and ministry effectiveness, AND how your IT budget and technology equipment impacts your ministry in ways you might not know. While your church’s budgetary process is a key piece of strategizing for technology, it is about so much more than that.…
Staying Ahead of the Curve: Strategic Planning for Ministry
“In ministry, time spent in strategic technology planning and preparation is never time wasted.” Increasingly, churches are investing in technology to support and enable a wide variety of ministry functions. Certainly, this was true before the imposition of quarantines and shelter orders during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the meeting restrictions and rules put in…
Enable Webinar | Pastor Panel: Ministry Strategies for 2020
We asked a group of pastors and thought leaders from some of our church clients to talk through their ministry approach for the rest of this year, during this time of uncertainty and transition. Our panelists offer honest insights and their willingness to share their thoughts (and even uncertainties) as we all navigate ministry changes…
Return-To-Site: The Technology Checklist
Various local, state, and federal governments are beginning to release plans for reopening workplaces, churches, and other public spaces. Different government entities are recommending different timetables, strategies and plans, so people everywhere are considering the steps that they must take to be prepared to “re-enter” daily life in their specific context. As church doors begin…
Enable’s Top Work-From-Home Tips: Parents Edition
While some of us have hit our stride after a few weeks of working from home, others are still struggling to adjust to the new routine. Having small children at home can make this adjustment much more difficult – while we all love our kids, little ones are the best/worst distractions. We asked the parents…
A Guide to Security and Privacy In Strange Times
During these unprecedented times of “social distancing,” “shelter-in-place,” and “stay-at-home” orders, everyone is having to learn or experiment with new technology and work habits. For many people, this will mark their first exposure to remote work and virtual settings. With these new realities comes a need to not only remember a few fundamental security tips,…
How to Host a Virtual All-Staff Meeting on Teams
Virtual meetings offer tons of benefits for meeting together in situations that prevent in-person interaction, and as a company with multiple offices and locations, Enable has been using this option for years! Depending on the size of your staff, an all-staff in-person meeting might sound like an ordeal to organize, but using a virtual option…
Online Giving Tips From the Pros
We “sat down” last Friday with two experts in the online processing space to discuss the current giving environment. During our conversation we asked them to provide any recommendations they felt were especially important for churches that wanted to be more successful with their online giving efforts right now. Our interviewees have many years of…
Crucial Giving Considerations in the Midst of Crisis
Over the past couple of weeks as we have talked with the many churches we serve, two primary questions have dominated our conversations. First, how can our staff and volunteers utilize technology to communicate, work, serve and minister effectively given the restrictions on our ability to be physically present? In additions to assisting individual churches…
Serving in the Midst of the Storm
We are so excited to see the many churches who have stepped up in the last few weeks to transition to online services and a staff that works from home. You have continued the core functions of the church, including worship, teaching, prayer, and encouragement. You have let people know that the church can adapt and will…
Enable’s Top Work-From-Home Tips
Are you new to working from home? Here are our top tips from Enable’s Work-From-Home pros. 1. Optimize Your Work Setting Create a dedicated work space. Defining the lines between your work space at home and your living space at home does wonders for helping you feel balanced and energized. It doesn’t have to…
Enable COVID-19 Resources: Quick Links
This is a one-stop-shop resource for all of the content we have written and compiled for you pertaining to COVID-19 and its effects on our work lives. Our goal is to provide a central location for best practices and tools to help you work remotely, collaborate with staff, leadership, members, and guests, and to help…
Enable Webinar | Microsoft Teams Live Q&A
Microsoft Teams is a platform that Enable and our clients have found invaluable to a functioning work environment for remote collaboration. The recent situation surrounding the spread of COVID-19 and the associated impacts to working environments means that church teams need resources to communicate with one another remotely. Teams can help you and your coworkers…
Tips for Hosting Virtual Small Groups and Other Volunteer-Led Remote Meetings
When meeting in person just isn’t feasible, video and audio conferencing can provide an alternative way for groups to still meet live! Virtual meetings are much better than not meeting at all, and today’s technology provides options that can feel incredibly similar to being together in the flesh. We hope some of the suggestions below…
Plan B Hospitality: When Traditional Methods Won’t Work
Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. As you well know, many traditional practices are roadblocked right now to protect public health. We are all working from contingency plans and many churches have had to shut their doors for services. So how do you provide hospitality, connection, and care for people when traditional methods won’t work? At Enable Ministry Partners we are working with churches all over the country as they make these…
Microsoft Teams: A Quick-Start Guide
Microsoft Teams is a platform that Enable and our clients find invaluable to a functioning flexible collaborative working environment. We created this guide to explain the features of Teams and to help as many churches as possible know about and be able to use this resource, especially at a time when the ability to work remotely…
A Roadmap for Implementing IT Security in Your Church: Part 2
Cybercrime and the threats and risks associated with various types IT security breaches are a real and growing trend. And while churches are a chosen target of this trend, too many churches are simply not prepared to protect themselves against cyberattacks. The bottom line is that IT security is one of the most important considerations for any…
A Roadmap for Implementing IT Security in Your Church: Part 1
Today, IT security and cybercrime are topics that relentlessly demand the attention of anyone charged with the leadership of a church, ministry, school, business, or any other type of organization. The threats and risks associated with cyberattacks are real and growing. It should no longer surprise anyone in church leadership that churches are a chosen target of…
Begin With the End in Mind
Data Analytics Series | Part 2 In Stephen Covey’s book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he identifies Habit 2 as “begin with the end in mind.” This concept is directly applicable to the topic of analytics. Our world is awash in data. Data, in and of itself, can be more confusing than helpful if you…
Enable Webinar | You Ask, We Answer
In our new webinar series, You Ask, We Answer, one of our Senior Engineers and Strategy Consultants tackle the most common church IT and strategy questions our clients run into every day in an interactive Q&A session. In this month’s webinar, they cover everything from managing IT, to the Cloud, to choosing the right vendor,…
An Introduction to Analytics: What’s the Big Deal?
Data Analytics Series | Part 1 If you’ve recently walked through an airport, flipped through a business magazine, viewed any commercials on tv, or paid attention to almost any news source, you have likely heard terms such as “Big Data,” “data analytics,” “business intelligence” and “artificial intelligence.” For many, these terms are more mysterious than…
Everything You Need to Know About Mobile Device Security
It is no secret that we live in an increasingly “mobile” world. Our expectations for the availability of connectivity and robust computing power continue to extend to more types of devices, in ever smaller forms that travel with us wherever we go. And we expect all of them to connect seamlessly with all the other…
The Do’s and Don’ts of Church IT Security | Enable Webinar Series
Why should you care about cybersecurity? Because your church’s network, environment, data, and the people behind all of that are important! Securing these things shouldn’t be an afterthought. In this webinar, Do’s and Dont’s of Church Security, we talk about the most common cybersecurity threats all organizations face today, including social engineering, passwords, email & download…
Dark Web Research: Is Your Personal Data Safe?
These days it seems we can’t go even one week without hearing about another data breach or leak of our personal information. And all too often, these data dumps include very personal information as well as our email addresses, usernames, and even our passwords. But how do IT security researchers find out about these breaches and recapture the data that has been stolen? They…
Content & DNS Filtering: A Preventative Approach
While not always understood as such, content filtering is a critical security component of technology environments in churches, ministries, schools, and almost every other organization as well. While your church has probably implemented some content filtering by now, you may not understand the breadth of security benefits it can provide. What is Content Filtering,…
VPN: Secure Access Anytime Anywhere
What do you do when you have work to do and can’t make it into the church office? How do you gain access to the church files or systems you need to use so that you can do your job from home or other locations outside the church? These are very common questions posed by…
Technology Checklist for a Busy Sunday | Enable Webinar Series
Check out our latest webinar: Technology Checklist for a Busy Sunday. There are a few times every year when attendance at church spikes dramatically, and the Christmas season is one of those. The influx of guests creates opportunities to connect with and minister to people who are not usually in church, but it may also…
Secure Wi-Fi for Churches: A Necessity, Not A Luxury
The Expectation: Robust, “All-the-time” Internet Access Today, people have an expectation of always-on connectivity and anytime access to Internet resources for information, banking, shopping, research, entertainment, social interaction, reading, communicating and so much more. They can get angry and frustrated when they cannot get online—even when flying in an airplane or traveling in fairly remote…
Office 365: The Extras | Enable Webinar Series
Check out the fourth and final installment of our Office 365 Webinar Series, a look at some of the “extra” tools included in O365. We want to help churches understand these applications, so that you can maximize the resources available! By getting the most out of these features, you can improve your work flow and ultimately…
How do I Create an IT Budget for my Church?
Technology as a Ministry Enabler Today, technology assumes a prominent place in the work of ministry. Education, communication, collaboration, evangelism, discipleship, training, operations, financial management, events, human resource management, compliance, and many other areas are all supported by technology. A myriad of hardware, software, technology processes, equipment, applications, and other options exist to help church…
Does My Church Need Cyber Liability Insurance?
An All-Too Common Scenario At this point in 2019, the scenario is becoming all too familiar. Cybercriminals use social engineering to bypass technology safeguards and security protection to infiltrate email systems, bank accounts, credit card accounts, member databases, and other areas containing sensitive data. The criminals then utilize the data to steal money and identities, create…
SIEM: Powerful Tools to Deal with Dangerous Cyberthreats
Throughout the series of articles that we have been posting on the blog in 2019, we have referred to the increasing intensity, frequency, and sophistication of the cybersecurity threats that churches are battling. Given the type of personal data maintained by churches, whether in their church management system (ChMS) or other data sources, churches are…
Patching: An Easy Way to Increase the Security of your Church Technology
A Consistent Patching Process is Vital to the Security of your Church Technology Network Humans are fantastic examples of God’s creativity and design. As evidence of this fact, humans are capable of creating magnificent, complicated masterpieces like beautiful works of art or…computer software. Yep, computer software. You may never have considered computer software in the…
Disk Encryption: Preventing Unauthorized Access to your Data
In other posts covering the security of your church’s information technology infrastructure, we have covered topics such as multi-factor authentication, UTM firewalls, email security practices, password management, security training, and the implementation of documented security policies. Even if all of these policies are observed conscientiously, there are still opportunities for cybercriminals to wreak havoc on…
Office 365: Collaboration | Enable Webinar Series
Check out the third installment of our Office 365 Webinar Series, a focus on the collaboration tools included in O365. We want to help churches understand the in’s and out’s of these applications, so that you can maximize the resources that are included in the Office 365 E1 (and above) package, which is available at no…
UTM Firewall: What is it and How Does it Work?
It is not news to most church staff (or almost anyone else in the developed world) that the instance and potential impact of cyber-attacks is expanding at an exponential level. Not only are churches not immune from this trend, but, with increasing regularity, they are a chosen target of this trend. This heightened cyber threat environment presents…
Ministry Spotlight: Brentwood Baptist Church Medical Dental Unit
Meeting people’s pressing physical needs is a practical and impactful avenue for sharing the gospel – it’s precisely what Jesus did! Throughout the Gospels, we read account after account of Jesus healing a physical problem and then sharing the deeper spiritual healing that He also offers. Jesus actively sought out people and was committed to…
Beyond Backup: Ministry Continuity
The discussion of technology security goes beyond cybercrime and hacking. It also must focus on the backup of important technology data and assets. The importance of data backup is not a new idea. Churches and other organizations have long recognized the importance of backing up their critical data. Your important church data resides in several…
Ministry Spotlight: For Every Alaskan
Alaska is a place of irony. It is easily one of the most beautiful spots in the world, boasting stunning scenery and teeming with wildlife. At the same time, it is a place filled with brokenness and pain. The levels of drug abuse, rape, depression, and suicide are alarmingly high among the population of Alaska.…
Email Security: The Keys to the Kingdom
You may be familiar with some version of an all too common nightmare email story. A trusted manager receives an urgent email requesting immediate action. Their superior is traveling, does not have cell service, and is unable to connect to the financial accounts or systems. An important payment to a partner, missionary, or vendor is…
Enforced Security Policies: Not Just Rules for Rules’ Sake
I’m sure everyone can find traffic laws to be frustrating at times. What if you knew that there were no consequences for speeding or running a stop sign? Most of us would probably do it when we thought we could safely. However, that would very likely result in many wrecks, injuries, and worse! If there…
The Ultimate Guide to Microsoft OneNote
OneNote is a digital notebook that automatically saves and syncs your notes as you work. You can organize your content into different notebooks that you can then divide into sections and pages. OneNote allows you to revise your notes with type, highlighting, or ink annotations. With easy navigation and search, you can always find your notes…
Employee Security Training: Your Most Powerful Tool in the Cybersecurity Fight
Imagine that you have installed the most expensive, state-of-the-art security system available to protect your home. A technology marvel, it combines heat sensors, motion detection, hair-trigger alarms, sophisticated locks, intrusion barriers—the whole works. It is a system capable of frustrating and bewildering the most seasoned criminal. But such a system can actually be defeated quite…
The IT Security Assessment: A Critical Check-Up for your Church
IT Security Assessments: Why? Most states require yearly safety inspections for vehicles to ensure that they are safe for operation. When driving a compromised car, you pose a potential danger to not only yourself but also to those who share the road with you. Safety inspections often uncover issues of which the driver is completely…
Office 365: Productivity | Enable Webinar Series
Check out the second installment of our Office 365 Webinar Series, a focus on the productivity tools included in O365. We want to help churches understand the in’s and out’s of these applications, so that you can maximize the resources that are included in the Office 365 E1 (and above) package, which is available at no…
Ministry Spotlight: Irving Bible Church
Meeting Kids Where They Are: Utilizing Technology in your Children’s Ministry Tess Nordick works in children’s ministry at Irving Bible Church in Irving, Texas. Before joining the church staff, Tess worked at IBM for ten years. Technology innovation has always been a big part of her world. One of Tess’s strongest ministry passions is pursuing…
Why Children’s Check-in Matters
Children’s Check-in Matters to your Ministry (Yes, Yours!) Whether you are children’s ministry leader or not, if you work in a church that serves people with kids, then your church’s child check-in process has a tangible impact on your ministry. A well-developed children’s check-in process is critical to just about every ministry at your church, whether it’s Bible study, community groups, preschool…
Kid Min Tech Trends 2019
Check out the top eight technology trends we’ve seen in Children’s Ministry this year, and how you can implement them in your own church!
11 Vital Cybersecurity Tips for Churches
Cybersecurity rightfully occupies a spot at the forefront of the news today and is a topic of great concern for leadership in churches, ministries, businesses, and organizations of every kind. The concept can be overwhelming to many, and unfortunately, too many churches do not have a comprehensive strategy in place to prevent attacks from those…
Ministry Spotlight: Special Saturday
Special Saturday is an incredible ministry hosted at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, TN. It is a respite program for special needs families. Once a month, parents of children with special needs can come and drop their children off for a morning full of music, crafts, snacks, dancing, Bible lessons, and games. The parents get…
Self Care: A Word from Pastor Gary Lindsay
April has gone, May is here, and as churches are coming out of the busy Easter season and looking ahead to all that summer brings it is important for staff members to remember to take care of themselves, too! It is easy to get caught up in all of the planning, preparation, and craziness that…
Office 365: An Overview | Enable Webinar Series
Did you know that O365 includes over 16 world-class productivity tools in its E1 license which is available to churches at no monthly cost? O365 has tons of tools to help you collaborate with your team, track the progress of projects, keep you on track, set appointments, gather information, and so much more: OneDrive, Teams, Stream,…
Technology Checklist for a Busy Sunday
There are a few times every year when attendance at church spikes dramatically. Easter Sunday and Christmas always see more faces than normal. Other times, the church may be sponsoring a conference or hosting a large event. The common experience during all of these times is a large, episodic influx of visitors. This influx creates…
Ministry Spotlight: Cross Timbers Church
Monday, February 11, 2019 was a low point for Marcie. Overwhelmed and exhausted by a situation that seemed way too big for her, she called Tanya and, in her desperation, confessed, “I just want to run away; I can’t handle it. I don’t know what to do.” Marcie’s call was not merely the product of…
OneDrive for Your Church: Why You Need It
Gone are the days of having to go into the office to fetch a file or email. The Cloud is taking over the world, and quickly. This accessibility brings some major benefits for organizations using it, and churches are no exception! At Enable, we’re huge fans of all things Microsoft/Office 365 and the feature we…
Always Be Improving: Lessons Learned from a Children’s Ministry Hallway
“I’ll try not to lose you in the brick hallway,” I said to a new family, smiling as I walked them toward the church nursery to drop off their children for the first time. I said this to all the new families I showed around on their first day as part of my responsibilities as…
Are You Missing This Key Piece to Your Technology Puzzle?
We talk to churches every day who have invested money, time, and effort into implementing new technology as a tool for ministry, but are disappointed in the results. Through the constant bombardment of news and information regarding ever-changing technologies, they try to pick and choose solutions wisely. They employ these technologies to avoid headaches, but…
This Just In: Technology is Not THE Answer
At their core level, church management software systems, (as well as computers, streaming media, ministry models, buildings, small group and discipleship programs, etc.) are simply tools. As we come to the close of our blog series on church management software, we remind ourselves of how powerful these tools can be, but at the same time, we…
Ministry Spotlight: SchoolWorks
Carlos: A Life is Changed Carlos was in kindergarten. By all appearances, he was a quiet little boy with his whole future ahead of him. But given his actual situation, the statistics predicted that he was very likely to fall through the cracks and miss out on the educational and economic opportunities that our country…
Wi-Fi: Solving the Real Problem
Remember the days when it would take a 10-pound laptop and a 50-foot network cable to access the Internet in any room other than where the cable modem was? Those days are long-gone, and we have Wi-Fi (and some other new technology) to thank for that! Wi-Fi is everywhere now and is in fact a…
Microsoft Licensing for Non-Profits: A Guide
Microsoft Windows Licensing can be very expensive and tricky to navigate for organizations, but it is a vital piece of the technology infrastructure. The good news: there are discounted options for non-profit organizations and churches. The bad news: the structure of these discounts is fairly complicated. In this post we will break down servers, licenses,…
ChMS Champion: The Most Powerful Move You Can Make
The most significant step a church can take to ensure that it enjoys the maximum value and utility from its Church Management Software investment is to provide resources for a designated “ChMS Champion.” Nothing will increase the likelihood of success with ChMS software more than this one move, but some key concepts must be observed…
Why You Need A Password Manager
How many times have you seen the “incorrect password” message when trying to log into one of your frequented (or not frequented) sites? Surely by now you’ve heard how dangerous it is to use the same password for every account you have. It’s time to ditch the Word/Excel document or sticky note with your password…
ChMS Integrations
In our last post, we discussed the necessity for making your ChMS the “Single Source of Truth” for the people and activity data in your church. Once churches implement the necessary information processes and gain the staff commitment to the single source of truth concept, they have gone a long way in ensuring that the…
Ministry Spotlight: Ben Ellis
September was a month of powerful and emotional remembrance. On a national level, we honored those who lost their lives in the tragedy of 9/11. In the community of Brentwood, Tennessee, Enable’s home, we also remembered the life and legacy of our friend, Ben Ellis. Ben left us in September 2016 but lives powerfully still…
Single Source of Truth: Your ChMS
In our experience consulting with churches who are looking for new church management software, there is one “main thing” that triggers most churches’ search in the first place. People don’t trust their data. The reason they don’t trust their data is that many times, the information doesn’t add up. In some cases, they don’t have…
Why We Recommend Ruckus Wireless
The need for and expectations of wireless networks is ever-growing, and it can be overwhelming when deciding what wireless network equipment to install in your organization. There are countless products available from many different vendors, all offering similar features and advertising that they are the best solution for all of your wireless needs. Often times, your decision will come down to what solutions you know others…
ChMS Optimization: If We Cannot Change Our Software, What Can We Do?
“We don’t like our church management system at all. It is confusing, we cannot get the specific reporting that we need, and it simply won’t do a lot of the ministry functions that we require.” Since 2001, when Enable Ministry Partners began working with churches, we have heard complaints just like this one hundreds of…
Are You Making These 3 Mistakes with your Church Management Software?
While talking with our clients over the years, they have described three main mistakes they have made with their Church Management Software. For some, these mistakes have led to a great deal of frustration, multiple software changes, and the waste of a lot of time and money. These issues may be very familiar to…
Where to Start: Your Church’s Unique Strategy
The very first step in making the best software decision for your church has absolutely nothing to do with software. At their core level, church management software systems are simply information tools. As tools, they are helpful only to the degree that they help a church accomplish the ministry objectives that reflect the church’s specific…
Which Church Management Software is Best? Finally, an Answer (Sort of…)
“Of all the available options, which church management software is best?” This is a question that we receive at Enable seemingly every day. It is a question posed regularly in online church technology and executive pastor groups as well. Typically, it is asked by church leaders who have come to a point where they believe…
Multi-Factor Authentication: A Must-Have for your Organization!
Multi-factor authentication (“MFA”) has emerged as an important tool to provide an additional level of verification beyond user passwords to protect information systems and user data. The goal of MFA is to verify identity and to make sure that the person logging into an account really is the person they are claiming to be. …
Ministry Spotlight: ChangePoint Alaska
When caring people are willing to enter unselfishly into dark, ugly situations to help those who cannot help themselves, lives are changed, horrible circumstances are reversed, and “impossible” situations are transformed. The members of ChangePoint Alaska and the surrounding community witness these types of life changing turnarounds on a regular basis. ChangePoint Alaska describes…
10 Keys to Church Management Software Success
Although church management software often seems to promise that it is the answer to all problems related to ministry operations, many churches are less than satisfied with how it operates in their environment. What is your experience? Are you getting the most out of your church management software? Is it helping to accomplish the unique ministry…
Ministry Spotlight: Second Baptist Church – Houston Strong
When Hurricane Harvey made landfall over the Texas Gulf Coast in late August of 2017, people feared the worst, and those fears were undoubtedly confirmed. Harvey was a record-setting category four hurricane – the first of its kind to make landfall in Texas since 1961. One of the hardest hit areas was the city of…
When Does a Church Need to Think About Data Compliance?
Usually, when technology people talk about data compliance, they are referring to policies related to HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI, and other legal and regulatory requirements. These laws list certain requirements for organizations to ensure the security of data with encryption, backup procedures, business continuity plans and data retention plans. One may think that because a church…
Ministry Spotlight: Irving Bible Church
Irving Bible Church is a large church in the Dallas area, dedicated to spiritual growth and community service through its various ministry initiatives, both inside and outside the walls of the church. When Enable Ministry Partners first connected with IBC in 2008, IBC was dealing with some significant technology issues that were hampering its ministry…
Ministry Spotlight: Brentwood Baptist Church
Brentwood Baptist Church, located in the the greater Nashville area, is one of the largest and fastest growing churches in the country. With over 9,000 members, and having grown from just one campus a few years ago to five currently, Brentwood Baptist faces many of the same challenges smaller churches and churches of a similar…
