If there is one thing that I’m surprised about as we continue to serve churches, it’s the number of folks that are unhappy with their current technology. Countless times I’ve spoken with customers and church leaders who have a laundry list of complaints with their current “IT” situation.

Many times it’s just about one particular piece of outdated membership management software. Other times it’s simply the challenge that comes with having too many tools adopted. On top of all this is the pressure to get involved in social media and enhance communication among their members.

So what is the silver bullet? What would the perfect church technology tool look like? Is it even possible?

Here are just 5 things that I think churches are looking for in technology:

1. SIMPLE. Simple membership management for example. Less features.
2. Private communication tools; NOT private social networking tools.
3. Technology that enhances real relationships somehow.
4. Tools that empower ministry and group leaders to get organized.
5. Reporting on member activity.

Do you agree? Please add more in the comments!

One of the more pesky navigation issues in MemberHub has been that users were required to go back to their Dashboard to switch into another group’s hub. This is cumbersome and for some of our power users has become rather slow too (we’re going to speed up the load time for the Dashboard). It’s been recommended multiple times to allow a user to simply switch the context of which group they’re in.

So we added a simple drop-down list in the Hub Navigation where you can easily switch between hubs. The hubs are even grouped by Organization like on Your Dashboard.

We hope this saves you some time!

I love well-designed software; that abides in usability standards and generally helps users. Or perhaps I should say that I can’t stand poorly designed, unusable software. You know the software I’m talking about. The one where you do the same action every time you use it, but it takes you 5 minutes to find it each time (and you always swear you’ll write it down so next time you don’t have to remember). There is so much software that is all about features. Basically the product and everything about it is just a list of things the software can do. 

This seems to be especially prevalent in church management software. Some of the older systems are so big and full of features (that you rarely ever use or need) and your church is forced to pay for training because no one can figure out how to use it! The worst part about it is that many people think software and computers in general are just tough and time consuming. Many people just deal with unsatisfactory software and even computers because they don’t know better software exists. 

MemberHub is easy-to-use. It’s the simple and affordable alternative. We want to take the 37 Signals approach to software…less is more. We have strived to make MemberHub a beautiful application that’s not only easy to use, but enjoyable. We know we have more features to add, but you can always count on MemberHub to be simple, well designed and just what you need. 

Feel free to drop us a line and tell us what you’d like to see soon in MemberHub. 

By the way, you know software is well designed if you don’t find yourself getting frustrated when you use it. You shouldn’t have to think to use software. Just like you don’t think when you pick up a shovel to dig a hole. The tool is made to dig holes.