A 360-attendance Black church in a Southern city

A 360-attendance Baptist church in a Southern city runs FellowshipOne, Pushpay, Text In Church, Mailchimp, Planning Center Services, Planning Center Check-Ins, and Jotform. Staff: 4 full-time, 6 part-time. Software is about $267/mo plus giving fees.

By Caleb Brooks · Published September 2026· Editorial standards · Conflict of interest

Field guide page: steps and costs from hands-on church-tech work, written under a pen name. Church names stay private. See how we write and verify.

What kind of church is this?

A 360-attendance Baptist Black church in a Southern city with two Sunday services. Four full-time and six part-time staff. Strong hospitality culture, active midweek prayer, and deacon care teams that need limited database views.

Why does this mix exist?

Membership history and care notes already lived in FellowshipOne, so migration risk beat a cheaper ChMS. Pushpay matched how many members already gave by phone. Text In Church handles prayer and guest texts. Planning Center Services and Check-Ins cover Sunday team complexity. Mailchimp and Jotform support communications and sensitive forms.

How the week actually runs

Deacons see filtered care views, not full exports. Guest thank-you texts leave Text In Church on Monday. Worship, media, and hospitality teams plan in Services. Kids labels print allergies. Benevolence forms in Jotform route only to pastoral staff. Deacons see filtered care views, not full exports. Guest thank-you texts leave Text In Church on Monday with a named sender. Worship, media, and hospitality run from one weekend plan so midweek choir changes do not silently drop Sunday greeters.

What breaks if you copy this blindly

Copying FellowshipOne without decades of records to protect. Giving every ministry leader export rights. Mixing benevolence intake into a public form tool without access limits. Copying FellowshipOne without the decades of records that justify it. Giving every ministry leader export rights. Mixing benevolence case notes into the general Slack.

What they would change next

A written export policy reviewed twice a year. Faster first-time guest handoff from hospitality to the Monday text owner. Fewer overlapping midweek announcement channels. Written export policy reviewed twice a year. Faster hospitality-to-Monday-text handoff with a single named owner per service.

How should you use this page?

If you are near 300–400 with heavy Sunday volunteer needs, compare check-in and texting first. Keep your membership system unless the records pain is worse than the bill. Keep funeral-week volunteer coverage on a paper backup roster; the office phone will not save a missing greeter team.

Field note after a funeral week

Midweek services and a funeral overloaded the usual Monday follow-up rhythm. The church kept Planning Center for weekends but used a shared call list for bereavement so no grief household depended on an automation. High-touch weeks need a named phone owner, not a prettier drip.

Field note after a midweek text storm

Three ministry leads sent overlapping GroupMe blasts the same Wednesday. Members muted the church threads. They named one midweek sender and moved schedule changes into Planning Center Services with a single Clearstream reminder. Volume is not the same as being heard.

Field note after a single-sender rule

Three midweek blasts trained members to mute everything. Naming one Clearstream sender and moving schedules into Services restored open rates. Volume is not the same as being heard.

What to verify this week

Ask finance how fees appear beside the subscription line (a black church in a southern city). Hidden costs create Monday surprises.

Ministry proof line

If two people cannot name the weekly job, wait before you renew.

Keep the public checklist honest: named tools, ordered steps, real cost, last-checked date.

No slides needed

Hold renewal until the weekly job is obvious without a deck (a black church in a southern city).

Keep named tools, ordered steps, real cost, and a last-checked date on every public page you copy.

Impressive tools without maintainers lose to ordinary faithfulness (a black church in a southern city).

If elders cannot say the weekly job in one breath, wait thirty days (a black church in a southern city).

Who owns admin

On a team sized like 4 full-time, 6 part-time, one named staff lead should hold master admin for the people database and any tool that can export households or send church-wide texts. Ministry directors get limited views for their rosters. Greeters and foyer volunteers should search and check in, not download the full list.

Write a backup admin before vacation weeks. Role changes get a five-minute access checklist the same week: remove logins, remove export rights, confirm the backup still works. Leftover volunteer IT access is how old Sheets and pastoral notes leak into personal inboxes.

If engineers or “techy” members help, they still need a staff owner. Unpaid IT without an owner becomes a single point of failure when that member moves.

What this stack costs

Software lines from this page (confirm the week you brief elders):

• FellowshipOne: $120/mo
• Pushpay: Processing fees on this plan
• Text In Church: $49/mo
• Mailchimp: $45/mo
• Planning Center Services: $14/mo
• Planning Center Check-Ins: $0 (included)
• Jotform: $39/mo

Add card processing fees beside any giving tool. December volume can dwarf the SaaS stickers. Put weekly admin hours beside each line on the board packet. A cheap tool with unpaid heroics is not cheap.

Attendance bracket on this page: 150-400. Staff shape: 4 full-time, 6 part-time. Region context: US South. Copy the ownership pattern before you copy every logo.

Copy this if

Copy this mix when your church is near 150-400 attendance (Baptist), you can staff the Monday jobs these tools assume, and you will name owners for guest follow-up, scheduling, and giving reconcile. Steal the weekly rhythm and the permission habits first. Steal the logo list second.

Good signs you are ready: cards leave the building with a named enterer, texts leave a church-owned number or watched inbox, and one person can explain each tool in one sentence.

What breaks first

What usually breaks first when churches copy A 360-attendance Black church in a Southern city without the staffing: guest cards sit until Wednesday, personal phones become the cancel channel again, dual databases appear “for transition,” or export rights stay with former volunteers. The tools (FellowshipOne, Pushpay, Text In Church, Mailchimp, Planning Center Services, Planning Center Check-Ins…) only work when the Monday owners are real.

Refuse a second people list. Refuse automations nobody watches. Refuse measuring success by open rates while replies sit unread. If your staff hours are thinner than 4 full-time, 6 part-time, shrink the stack before you expand it.

Board packet checklist

1. Name master admin and backup for the ChMS (church management system).
2. List monthly software fees and estimated processing fees on one page.
3. Write the weekly job each tool serves in one sentence.
4. Schedule a ninety-day pre-renewal review with actual hours beside each fee.
5. Confirm vendor quotes the same week elders vote.

Keep churchRef and slug stable when you link workflows to this stack. This page is a field pattern, not a mandate to buy everything at once.