In this whiteboard session, Rodney provides the initial steps of using the Moses Method to choose the best software for your church.
Video Transcription:
Hi. Welcome to an Elexio Whiteboard. In today’s Whiteboard, we’re talking about the Moses Method. It’s a method for making a software selection and more specifically, making a software selection for your church. A church makes many big decisions, and the process of going about picking a new software product can be challenging. There’s a lot of different types of software that churches use. You’ve got somebody that provides your website, check-in software. You may have different vendors for giving software. And the one that is probably the biggest challenge to go about replacing is your church management software, or sometimes called your church database.
The Moses Method is really designed to be a way to manage that process, and the reason it’s called the Moses Method is that it comes from Numbers 13. It’s a story most of us know, the story of when Moses sends a group of scouts or spies into the Promised Land, the land of Canaan, to take a look and see what they’re up against. Well, I use Numbers 13 as just a guide for making and managing this process of selecting new software.
In today’s Whiteboard, we’ll look at the first two phases. It’s really a four-phase method for managing this. We’ll look at these first two phases, and then in a follow-up Whiteboard, we’ll get into the second half. It’s a logical break because these first two really will take place before you ever talk to a potential new vendor. These are things you can do to prepare and really be ready, to have a successful search and ultimately implementation of a new church database.
Okay, let’s jump right in. Phase one of the Moses Method is Clarity, seeking what I would call “Moses-level clarity”. Now, setting high goals can sometimes be disappointing if you don’t feel like there’s any way you’ll get to them, and this may be one of those. Getting the kind of clarity that Moses had about leading the Israelites probably isn’t realistic. But if you set it as your goal to have definite clarity about whether or not your church is going to purchase new software, can really help you get through the whole process.
So a couple of suggestions on arriving at near Moses-level clarity. You probably won’t get the same kind of communication that Moses got. You’re probably not going to just hear from God to say, “You absolutely need to purchase new church management software.” But what you can do is be prayerful about the challenges your church is having and pray specific technology prayers. If you are struggling with growth, if giving is trailing off, if your children’s ministry is struggling with capturing attendance and managing security and name tags and things of that nature, if your website’s all wrong, whatever it happens to be, those things can be indicators of where technology could play a part in improving your ministry. I don’t mean to suggest that software will solve and be the only part of solving those problems, but they can be clues to a place where a new technology could make an impact.
So again, we’re calling this clarity. And not just any kind of clarity; it’s Moses clarity, really focusing in. And if you can arrive at Moses-level clarity by whatever method that is, it will really help you throughout this entire process. Okay, that’s phase one of the Moses Method for selecting new church management software.
The next one I refer to as 12/4, and really, it’s specifically 12/4 buy-in. If you read in Numbers 13, Moses selects one representative from each tribe, and those become the scouts or the spies that go into the land of Canaan. Now, there’s probably a lot of reasons why he picked 12. It’s logical. There were 12 tribes. But I would certainly think that it had to being going through Moses’ mind that he wanted buy-in. To borrow a common term, a modern day term, he wanted buy-in from all of the tribes, on this move into the Promised Land. And so by selecting 12, he got buy-in.
Well, we know if you read the story, he’s got some challenges on getting buy-in, so I don’t mean to suggest that just what I’m getting ready to talk about, is the only way you’ll get buy-in on making a new software selection. What I do suggest is that you pick a representative group, and that becomes your scout group. So think of them as scouts. You want to pull from a variety of ministry areas. Now, it’s probably not a good idea to pick 12 people to be the scouts because what the scouts will do is they will visit websites for your vendors. They’ll talk to the salespeople from these different software companies. They will participate in, and this is what they’ll spend most of their time doing, they’ll participate in product demonstrations.
Twelve people is too many to do that. I recommend three to six people. Now, you may be doing the math and thinking, “Well, three to six people won’t give me full 12/4-level buy-in across all my ministry areas,” and you’re absolutely right. So what you’ll have to do is get your scouts, whatever it is, three to six people, get those scouts, and you really do need to assign ministry areas for them to represent, and for them to properly represent an area that maybe they don’t work in.
Let’s say you pick one of your scouts to be somebody who currently does contribution data entry for you, and that’s their main task—things related to finance. But you’re going to task that person to also represent the views of, let’s say, the missions team. What do they need in a new church management software? The process of that person, who is a scout representing areas that isn’t their expertise, will cause them to have to go talk to those people and figure out, “What do you need?” And you get a side benefit from this, is that it becomes a team-building effort, that really multiplies this idea of 12/4 buy-in because people have empathy for others and they see that this isn’t just a decision about my needs. I have to look at everybody.
So, super important to following the Moses Method for selecting and having a successful software selection is getting 12/4-level buy-in. So quick review. You as a leader, or whoever it is, some group of people have to get clarity on “Are we going to do this or not?” “Is software the answer or part of the answer?” And then next, move into this idea of, “Okay, we’re going to get a group of scouts together, and they’re going to do most of the leg work.” Ultimately, we all have to do it. They’ll do the initial, but they’ve got to have a multi-phased focus.
One of the biggest mistakes you could make is gathering maybe your admin users together. Maybe they are the biggest users of your current software, and you task them to go out and find new software. If they’re just thinking about things from an administrative standpoint, you could sacrifice a successful purchase process.
Okay, that’s the first half of the Moses Method for buying new software. In our next Whiteboard, we’ll take a look at the next two phases. These take place, when you’re actually doing the search. You’re watching videos, you’re talking to references, all of those different factors that go into making a successful purchase. So we’ll look at these things in our next Elexio Whiteboard. Thanks for watching.