A 210-attendance mainline church in the Northeast

A 210-attendance mainline church in the Northeast runs Realm, Planning Center Check-Ins, Planning Center People, and 3 more. Staff: 2 full-time, 2 part-time. Compare this 150–400 attendance mix before you buy another subscription.

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 210-attendance mainline church in the Northeast. Two full-time and two part-time staff. Realm still holds membership and pledging. Sunday kids check-in and guest lists needed something clearer than a hallway binder.

Why does this mix exist?

They kept Realm for membership and pledging rather than force a painful migration. Planning Center People and Check-Ins sit beside Realm for kids tags and guest lists. Google Forms cover connection cards. Mailchimp sends the weekly parish note. A Sheet tracks Friday kids ratios.

How the week actually runs

Kids and parents enter Planning Center once with allergy and pickup fields that print on the tag. Check-in happens at classroom doors. Paper and digital connection cards enter Planning Center the same Sunday. Monday email and Tuesday text owners are named on the closing checklist. Twice a year someone reconciles Realm names to People. Kids and parents enter Planning Center once with allergy and pickup fields that print on the tag. Check-in happens at classroom doors. Twice a year the office runs a Jim/James name sync before directory print so ushers stop guessing.

What breaks if you copy this blindly

Lobby-only check-in lines that make parents skip tags. Leaving allergy notes in a binder. Ignoring “Jim” vs “James” mismatches between Realm and People. Lobby-only check-in lines that train parents to skip tags. Leaving allergy notes in a binder while labels print first names only. Ignoring nickname mismatches until a pickup incident.

What they would change next

Door check-in from week one. A calendar invite for the twice-yearly name sync. A backup card typist before the administrator’s vacation. Door check-in from week one. Calendar invite for the twice-yearly name sync. Backup card typist before the administrator’s study leave.

How should you use this page?

If your membership system is sticky, add check-in beside it instead of burning a year on migration. Put anything that matters in the room on the printed tag.

Field note after a parallel system year

They ran Realm for membership and a separate kids check-in “just for a season.” The season lasted fourteen months. Allergy notes lived in one place and household phones in another. The lasting fix was check-in beside Realm with one Friday owner who syncs names, not a full migration panic during Advent.

Field note after a committee email leak

A building-use thread included a pastoral care update “for context.” The family heard it from a neighbor. Crisis details moved back to pastoral-only notes, and the Google Group stayed logistics-only. Committees need channels with teeth.

Field note after an annual-meeting roll miss

They ran the annual meeting roster from a stale Sheet instead of Breeze. Two households were missing. They now export the roll the morning of the meeting from Breeze only. Paper memory is not membership.

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):

• Realm: $89/mo
• Planning Center Check-Ins: $14/mo
• Planning Center People: $0 (same subscription)
• Mailchimp: $0 (free tier)
• Realm Giving: processing fees only
• Google Sheets: $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 Northeast. Copy the ownership pattern before you copy every logo.

Copy this if

Copy this mix when your church is near 150-400 attendance (Mainline Protestant), 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 210-attendance mainline church in the Northeast 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 (Realm, Planning Center Check-Ins, Planning Center People, Mailchimp, Realm Giving, Google Sheets) 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.