
Ask HN: Any Christian software engineers here? - timmorgan
I have a passion for the Church, and the tools it uses. And I think they all, for the most part, suck. I have half a mind to make something better, specifically a sort of Church Management System.<p>I'm wondering if I can find any kinship here on HN, the best hacker/engineer community I've ever found. Though I have a feeling the community here is largely non-religious, or at least hesitant to express it openly.<p>Is HN a good place to find people like me, or is there somewhere else I should look?<p>[edit] I'm not looking for a co-founder -- just someone to maybe bounce ideas off of.
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jackpirate
I too have considered how church specific software could be made better.

My old church uses a program called The City (<http://www.onthecity.org/>) to
create a social presence for themselves. This was a nondenominational church
in Southern California that had ~1000 people/week split into 3 services.

In general, I think the implementation of this idea was awful. Younger people
are already on facebook/twitter/etc and don't need another account to
maintain. Older people have a hard time getting on it and using it, although I
think it does help older members of the church keep in touch with each other.
This church has had a hard time getting people to sign up and use it regularly
despite the pastor mentioning it every week for months in the service and
bringing in outside tech support people to train the congregation.

I see two major problems with church software. First, drawing the line at what
exactly is a church. I know many Baptist congregations that would be offended
at the thought of using the same software as an Episcopalian parish, nevermind
Catholic/Jewish/Muslim/New Age Hippie. The needs of a small Baptist
congregation and a small Catholic one are going to be much more similar,
however, than a small Baptist church and a mega church.

The second problem is how to handle accepting money. It feels wrong to develop
church software with a profit motive, rather than a make the church more
Christ-like motive. (I've always wondered about the companies that make the
Eucharist crackers and all the other church paraphernalia.) I think the best
solution would be to offer the software at-cost (whatever that means for
software... hosting fees maybe?) to churches, and then have a recommended
donation above that amount.

One of the biggest problems I have with the tech-culture of the church is the
lack of open source. I think that OSS nearly perfectly aligns with Jesus's
ideals, and it is frustrating when religious people don't see that. A service
that brought Linux awareness to more churches would be amazing.

I'd love to chat more about this issue. What type of church do you attend? Are
you ordained or have you been employed at churches?

~~~
timmorgan
Thanks for the thoughts!

My wife and I have volunteered in a local ~800/week church for close to ten
years, managing the technology there. We've worked hard to introduce OSS in as
many places as possible. Our network servers are mostly Linux, and I even
wrote a SaaS (also OSS) similar to The City called OneBody
(<http://beonebody.com>).

So I agree with your thoughts on OSS.

Unfortunately, OneBody suffers from many of the same problems as you describe
of The City, only worse since I have no marketing budget, and I'm about the
only guy doing the coding.

I think I might like to build a new solution for churches, possibly OSS, that
integrates with social media, but is designed for use by minsters and leaders
-- not another private social network, which I have decided will forever be a
hard sell.

I'd like to follow you on Twitter or get your email address if possible.

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jackpirate
Something that integrates with social networks rather than replaces them could
work. Maybe an automated way to setup a Facebook group, G+ Circles, twitter
feed, etc. Sort of like a super-blog for churches to make sure everyone gets
announcements in a format that's convenient for them.

I've noticed that lots of pastors create a blog, post actively for a few
months, and then never post again. 5 years later and there's still a huge link
to the defunct blog on the church's website.

My email's jackpirate@gmail

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timmorgan
I started a new blog at <http://church.io> where I hope to eventually flesh
out some of my ideas about church software.

Thanks so much for your thoughts.

I agree about pastors blogs as well -- I've seen the same phenomenon.

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dahjelle
I actually work for a church management software provider, Icon Systems
(<http://iconcmo.com>). I think our aim is rather different than yours,
though: we intentionally aim at management tools, where I get the feeling you
are aiming more at engagement tools for ministry. Is that a fair statement?

If so, you might take a look at the Table Project
(<http://tableproject.org/>). I think there might be some parallels between
your thoughts and theirs—plus, it is a free product, to boot!

~~~
timmorgan
David, you've nailed it.

I guess the problem is that ChMSs are notoriously bad with interoperability in
my experience and want to keep the data within their black box. A separate
engagement tool would be fairly impotent if it was separate and had no way of
accessing the membership database.

Viable solutions for churches tend to be afterthought bolt-on modules for
their existing ChMS, which is a shame.

My dream would be for ChMS vendors to agree on a standard API for exchanging
member information. But I'm afraid hell might freeze over before I see
something like that.

Out of necessity, a good church engagement tool may have to be also a ChMS as
well.

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zafka
Does it matter? While I would bet that of the few thousand registered here, at
least a few consider themselves "Christians", what you need is someone who is
interested in building a system that you have envisioned. Good luck in your
search though. If you can get your whole mind into the project I think you
will be half way there.

~~~
timmorgan
Agreed, it doesn't take a religious person to build software to spec, but I
guess I'm looking for more than that -- someone who is entrepreneurial, a
hacker, and has a similar heart for the Church.

This isn't an appeal for a co-founder -- more of pure curiosity than anything.

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ropman76
I work as a software engineer and am a part time pastor. Yeah I would agree
most church software is not that great (I use Easy worship instead of
PowerPoint and that totally rocks). First because a lot of what the church
does has echo's in business software. Office managers use MS office and off
the shelf accounting software. I know pastors use facebook to connect with
others (or should be but that is a different post). The church software that I
have seen was either too expensive for the churches I was serving at or was
not a felt need for us to go out and purchase. I have thought long and hard
about church software and I see needs, but most of those needs are being met
by off the shelf software that helps with the need to manage or the need to
connect.

~~~
timmorgan
I guess I'm talking more specifically about church management software. As for
using off-the-shelf solutions, I would expect CRM software to maybe come the
closest, but it really does seem like a niche that needs special software, if
only for the reason that no minister wants to feel like the software they're
using cheapens the Gospel by treating it as a sell-able good.

Maybe it's just a problem of terminology. Regardless, I still think there's a
need not currently served by off-the-shelf CRM or specialized Church
Management Solutions. Ministers need help with engagement and communication,
especially with the explosion of social media, which no current church
software is equipped to integrate with.

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darinpantley
What would a 'Church Management System' do? Have you been to
<http://www.monkdevelopment.com> ?

A large number of HN users are based in Silicon Valley and the surrounding
area, which is well known for being largely non-religious. That said, I am a
software engineer who is a Christian and spent last summer in the Bay Area, so
don't let statistics discourage you. I met plenty of other Christian software
engineers while I was out there. Most of them have full-time jobs at well-
known tech companies. I don't know if any of them use HN.

Depending on how many software engineers are in your area, it may be more
efficient to ask people at church if they are entrepreneurial software
engineers than to ask HN users if they are Christians.

~~~
timmorgan
Church Management System (ChMS) refers to a database system to track
member/visitor information, donations, volunteer efforts, etc.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_management_software#Chur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_management_software#Church_management_software)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
What research have you done so far on the current offerings? Do you have a
list - presumably there are some on Freshmeat/github/Sourceforge/...
somewhere.

Some quick leads:

* [http://www.churchaccountingsoftwareguide.com/church-manageme...](http://www.churchaccountingsoftwareguide.com/church-management-software/) mentions ChurchTrac, ChurchDB and several others including a couple of user comments.

* <http://www.churchcommunitymatters.com/category/chms/> blog posts about "Church Community Builder" the author might be a useful contact; [http://www.churchcommunitymatters.com/questions-to-ask-when-...](http://www.churchcommunitymatters.com/questions-to-ask-when-evaluating-a-chms/) looks particularly pertinent

* [http://www.ccmag.com/page/index.php?pageid=16&articleid=...](http://www.ccmag.com/page/index.php?pageid=16&articleid=363) is a review of ChMS from late 2010.

* <http://www.churchdb.org/> "Church Info" a ChMS

* <http://www.capterra.com/church-management-software> directory listing of about 80 (?) different systems with star ratings, reviews and a filtering system

* [http://www.christianitytoday.com/cbg/officequip/chmangsoftwa...](http://www.christianitytoday.com/cbg/officequip/chmangsoftware/) CT section on ChMS

HTH. Grace and Peace.

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martin1b
Interesting idea. There are some guys in our diocese that run a company called
Solutio. More web based stuff but really nice.

We use ParishSoft as a church management system for our church. Even thought
it's MSAccess based, it's better than I would have expected. Also, since many
churches are on a tight budget, including us, it works well for that. Could
get some ideas there.

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staunch
IIRC patio11 is Catholic. Not going to find someone better to bounce this idea
off of. If he doesn't respond here you could try sending an email.

<http://www.kalzumeus.com/about/>

