You're Paying for a Platform Your Members Don't Open

It's one of the most common things we hear from preachers, and it usually comes out a little embarrassed. The congregation signed up for a member platform a while back.

Somebody spent a few evenings entering everybody. There was an announcement from the pulpit and maybe a handout in the foyer.

Six months later, the preacher logs in. A couple of the men who keep the records log in. Almost nobody else does.

This isn't about any one product. It happens on nearly every platform out there, including good ones. Most congregations decide their members just don't like technology, and that's rarely the whole story.

The explanation that's partly true

Some members won't use it. That's real, and it's fine.

There are saints who have never wanted an app for anything and aren't going to start with this one. Nobody needs to chase them.

But that group is usually smaller than it feels. The same members who "don't do technology" are texting their grandkids, watching sermons on YouTube, and reading the news on their phones every morning. They use the tools that give them something.

So why didn't this one?

Nobody owned it

Most rollouts go like this. The elders, deacons, and preacher agree it's a good idea, somebody sets it up, and it gets announced.

Then nobody in particular is responsible for it.

Nobody checks whether the directory is current or posts anything to the groups. Nobody notices the prayer list hasn't been updated since March. Members open it once or twice, find it stale, and quit.

A platform needs one person whose job it is to keep it going, at least for the first year. Usually not the preacher; he has enough.

A deacon would do, or a younger member, or a sister who already puts the bulletin together. Pick somebody by name and make sure they know it's their job.

It asked before it gave

Think about what most members met first: download this, create a password, confirm your email, fill out your profile.

That's four asks before they've gotten anything back.

The platforms that stick in a congregation almost always give first. A member gets a text that the class schedule changed, taps it, and it opens.

Someone shares photos from the gospel meeting, and people go looking for them. The directory has the new couple's phone number in it, and that's the only place to get it.

When there's something on the other side, people will put up with a login. When the login is the first thing they meet, a lot of them never get past it.

It solved the leaders' problems

The reasons a congregation signs up for a member platform are usually good ones: attendance tracking, contribution records, keeping the roll current, knowing who hasn't been there in a few weeks.

Those are real needs. They're also the leadership's needs.

A member opening the app on a Tuesday doesn't care about attendance tracking. They care whether Sister Ruth is home from the hospital yet, what time the singing starts Sunday night, and who's taking food to the family that just had a baby.

If the platform only does the first list well, members don't have a reason to open it. The leaders end up with good records and a membership that never logs in.

What switching won't fix

If y'all are in this spot, moving to a different platform probably won't fix it. We offer a member platform ourselves, and we'd still tell you that.

Every one of these causes moves with you. Put in a new product with nobody owning it, the same login-first rollout, and the same focus on the leaders' needs, and six months later y'all will be right back here. Only now it cost a migration to get there.

The fix is usually inside the platform y'all already have:

• Give it an owner. One person, named, for at least a year.
• Lead with something members want. Pick the one thing they'd actually miss, like the prayer list or the class schedule, and make the platform the only place it lives.
• Make the first touch useful. Send a link to something members need before anybody is asked to set up a profile.
• Check in at ninety days. Who's using it, what are they opening, and what's been sitting untouched?

Do that for a few months. If members still aren't using it, then it may be the platform, and that's a real conversation to have. Just find out which problem y'all have before paying to solve the wrong one.

Is it worth the effort?

For most congregations, yes. When members actually use it, people hear about needs sooner, and the ones who have started drifting get noticed before they're gone.

New members get connected in their first month instead of their first year. Most of that depends on whoever's keeping it current, more than on the software.