Nowadays, many spheres of our work and life have a tendency for digitalization. And the church should not be left out from this process. A good pastor will set an example to their congregation using convenient digital tools. The right employment of different software will make the administrative work easier and the sermon more interesting. In this article, we will review 5 tools that will be helpful for priests and churches. We’ll go from the most simple ones to more complicated ones, and describe the ways that they might be useful to you. 

Email

Typically, most churches use their pastors’ personal email address as the church’s address. This may be convenient in the very beginning, when your congregation is small. But as it continues to grow, it’s better and more professional to have a custom church email address. An official address will add authority and give a better first impression to future church members. You can use it in your social media or leaflets, and it also gives some clue to the people that you are on friendly foot with technical issues. 

External Communications

What to do when you need to send a newsletter or some invitation to your congregation? Or send an event notification only to a certain group of members? The best way to do this is to make a mail-out and send targeted emails. There are special services that let you create regular email campaigns. They offer special templates where you can write your message and insert images. After that, you can schedule the sending for the exact date and time. 

Internal Communication and Task Management

Email works well when you need to send low-priority messages. But what if you need to notify your members about a meeting reschedule or about a significant deadline? It’s known that one is more likely to see a text message or SMS on their phone rather than e-mail. For this purpose, you can use an application, where you upload cell phone numbers and send a set amount of messages per month. 

If your church is big enough, you probably have committees responsible for different  spheres of church life. Of course, you can use e-mails and messages to be in touch, but there are more useful tools to do this. They include apps for instant messaging or project management, or even apps for virtual meetings. 

Presentation Software

Church presentation software may not be the top priority when it comes to useful tools. But it sure will spice up not only your service, but the way you present different projects (for example, projects for fundraising or church trips). With it, you can make an interesting video about your church community and its life. All you have to do is to gather the materials – pictures and videos. After that, just upload it to the software, and since many programs have built-in templates they will do everything for you. You can also use church presentation software to make a presentation that will serve as a visual aid during the service – create a slideshow entirely from pictures and accompany it with music. 

Management Software

And the last on our list is the most complicated software, nevertheless the most time-consuming when it comes to church administration. Church management software (CMS) is a set of tools that will help you manage and automate church processes and operations on a daily basis. Usually, the CMS consists of several tools that cover different tasks. The most common tools are: membership management, track of attendance, tools for collecting donations, tools for financial accounting and website building, etc. There are many programs, and they vary in their complexity, number of tools, trial periods, subscriptions and so on. 

So, this was a list of most common and basic tools that may help you run your church more effectively and will be no time-consuming. The list doesn’t cover all the tools that are on the market, but we think that the above-mentioned tools are a great way to start. Once you start using some of them, you’ll get accustomed and then can try more sophisticated tools.