A 160-attendance church in San Juan, Puerto Rico

A 160-attendance church in San Juan, Puerto Rico runs Breeze, Tithely, Clearstream, Mailchimp, Google Sheets, and Google Forms. Staff: 2 full-time, 2 part-time. Built for hurricane watches, outages, and bilingual follow-up, not for a mainland megachurch 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 160-attendance nondenominational church in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Two full-time staff and two part-timers. Spanish and English sit in the same foyer. Hurricane watches, flood roads, and multi-day outages are real ministry conditions. Guests include locals and mainland visitors who may stay a few Sundays.

Why does this mix exist?

They kept Breeze as one bilingual database instead of two tools that double-count families. Tithely covers online gifts when lobby cash dips after storms. Clearstream carries watches and cancels by text and voice on separate language lists because Facebook posts miss households without data after an outage. Mailchimp stays plain on the free tier with two audiences. Sheets and Forms stay printable when the uplink dies.

How the week actually runs

When a watch is posted, Clearstream goes out early on both language lists with a reply path to the church number. Sunday greeters ask language preference once and tag it the same day. Guest cards enter Breeze when power holds; otherwise paper cards wait in a labeled drawer. Giving batches close when power and uplink return, not on a rigid noon clock that ignores hurricane outages. Tuesday guest texts leave from the matching language list. After a storm, elders work the welfare Sheet before anyone posts a cheerful “iglesia está bien” blast.

What breaks if you copy this blindly

One English-only cancel stream. Separate databases per language. Relying on Facebook as the only hurricane channel. Assuming every guest will install an app during an outage. Leaving relief volunteers with export rights after cleanup week. Forcing image-heavy email that never loads on weak mobile data.

What they would change next

Train a second bilingual Breeze admin before June. Print bilingual 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 mainland visitors who ask for space after they fly home.

How should you use this page?

If your church lives with storm watches and two languages in one foyer, keep one people database, matched follow-up lists, and a cancel channel people answer when power is thin. Keep human thank-yous. If your town never loses power and is monolingual, you may need less Clearstream voice and more steady Mailchimp cadence instead.

Field note after a bilingual miss

A hurricane watch went out in English only. Spanish-speaking elders arrived to a locked lot during a flood watch. They now send Clearstream on both language lists after pastoral approval. Storm care is not optional translation.

Field note after an outage week

Power returned before the Facebook post did. Clearstream voice and a printed foyer note reached households first. The lesson was not “add more apps.” The lesson was “pick channels that work when the grid is down, and name a backup sender before June.”

Field note after a bilingual stop list

A do-not-contact request in Spanish sat unread in an English-only inbox. Stop requests now route to both language owners the same day.

Reality check before you renew

Pair every software receipt habit with a human thank-you habit. People still need a voice.

Final gate

Name who revokes visitor admin the Sunday short-term help leaves.

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.

Weekly heroics from ordinary staff are a stop sign for that seat on a church in san juan puerto rico.

Print-day confirmation

Confirm the vendor quote on print day, not from memory (a church in san juan puerto rico).

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

Knowledge capture

Put the last-checked date in the same paragraph as the Monday owner (a church in san juan puerto rico).

Copy only what a tired volunteer can finish after second service (a church in san juan puerto rico).

Do not improvise access

Keep the backup admin spare login labeled and locked before anyone leaves town (a church in san juan puerto rico).

Who owns admin

On a team sized like 2 full-time, 2 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 (free tier)
• 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, 2 part-time. Region context: US Puerto Rico. Copy the ownership pattern before you copy every logo.

Copy this if

Copy this mix when your church is near 150-400 attendance (Nondenominational), 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 160-attendance church in San Juan, Puerto Rico 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, 2 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.