A 220-attendance church in coastal Louisiana

A 220-attendance Baptist church in coastal Louisiana runs Breeze, Tithely, Clearstream, Mailchimp, Google Sheets, and Google Forms. Staff: 2 full-time, 3 part-time. Built for hurricane watches, flood roads, and outage weeks, not for a fair-weather suburban suite.

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 220-attendance Baptist church on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. Two full-time staff and three part-timers. Hurricane watches, flood roads, and multi-day outages are normal ministry conditions. Guests include locals, oil-field rotation workers, and families who shelter inland then return.

Why does this mix exist?

They kept Breeze as one login the office can run when the pastor is on welfare visits after a storm. Tithely covers gifts when the building is closed. Clearstream carries watches and cancels by text and voice because Facebook posts miss households without data after an outage. Mailchimp stays plain on the free tier. Sheets and Forms stay printable when the uplink dies. Evacuee tags keep temporary households from looking like permanent stewardship units.

How the week actually runs

When a watch is posted, Early cancel texts via Clearstream include the church callback number. Sunday cards enter Breeze when power holds; otherwise paper cards wait in a labeled drawer. Giving batches close when connectivity returns. Tuesday guest texts use Clearstream so they do not depend on a personal phone that dies after flood cleanup. After a storm, elders work the welfare Sheet before anyone posts a cheerful all-clear that skips the shut-ins. Oil-field rotation workers get a tag with expected weeks away so volunteer asks stay honest.

What breaks if you copy this blindly

Buying a heavy suite you cannot staff during outage weeks. Relying on Facebook as the only hurricane channel. Leaving relief volunteers with export rights after cleanup. Treating every evacuee household as a year-round member. Assuming every guest will install an app during an outage. Forcing image-heavy email that never loads on weak mobile data.

What they would change next

Train a second Breeze admin before June. Print large-type give cards and cancel scripts. Put background-check dates on kids tags before VBS. Name a backup Clearstream sender before hurricane season. Add a do-not-contact path for temporary evacuees who ask for space after they return home.

How should you use this page?

If your church lives with storm watches and outages, pick tools that survive offline Mondays and voice cancels. Keep human thank-yous. One people system and one cancel path people heed beats a cluttered mix. If your town never loses power for weather, you may need less Clearstream voice and more steady Mailchimp cadence instead.

Field note after a Facebook-only watch

A hurricane watch posted only to Facebook. Half the elders never saw it before roads flooded. Clearstream voice and a printed foyer script reached people who ignore email during outages. Storm care needs a channel that works when the grid is thin.

Field note after relief-week exports

A temporary relief volunteer kept full Breeze export rights for a month after cleanup. They now revoke relief admin the same week the shelter closes. Hospitality includes closing doors you no longer need.

Field note after an evacuee archive

Temporary shelter households stayed on usher asks for weeks. Evacuee tags now archive when the shelter closes.

Reality check before you renew

If two people cannot name the weekly job without a slide deck, wait (a church in coastal louisiana).

Size check for this church

Keep a paper cancel card in the foyer when the uplink fails.

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

Print-day confirmation

Confirm the vendor quote on print day, not from memory (a church in coastal louisiana).

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

An owned ordinary path beats an unowned impressive stack (a church in coastal louisiana).

Who owns admin

On a team sized like 2 full-time, 3 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):

• Breeze: $60/mo
• Tithely: Processing fees on this plan
• Clearstream: $29/mo
• Mailchimp: $0
• Google Sheets: $0
• Google Forms: $0

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: 2 full-time, 3 part-time. Region context: US Gulf 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 220-attendance church in coastal Louisiana 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 (Breeze, Tithely, Clearstream, Mailchimp, Google Sheets, Google Forms) 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 2 full-time, 3 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.