A 220-attendance church in a military town near a base

A 220-attendance nondenominational church near a military base runs Planning Center People, Services, and Check-Ins, Tithely, Clearstream, Mailchimp, and Google Forms. Staff: 2 full-time, 3 part-time. Software is about $57/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 220-attendance nondenominational church in a Southern military town. Two full-time and three part-time staff. The room includes active-duty families, spouses holding things together during deployments, retirees, and civilians who work on or near the base.

Why does this mix exist?

People records churn every 18–36 months. Planning Center tags and Services blockouts handle PCS and TDY better than a static spreadsheet. Clearstream keeps deployment prayer updates off personal phones. Tithely travels with families who give while stationed elsewhere for a season. Mailchimp and Google Forms cover arrival welcomes and meal trains.

How the week actually runs

New arrivals get a welcome sequence and a People tag with an expected orders window when known. Volunteer blockouts include drill weekends, field problems, and TDY dates, not only vacations. Deployment meal-train forms route to a care coordinator. Finance exports Tithely into QuickBooks Mondays. Shared Clearstream inboxes let a chaplain volunteer cover when staff are out. Pastoral care during deployments uses the church number, not a personal cell that changes hands at PCS.

What breaks if you copy this blindly

Leaving departed households active for years. Pastoral texts from personal phones during deployments. Treating temporary duty families as permanent members for stewardship goals. Treating TDY blockouts as optional.

What they would change next

Archive PCS households within two weeks of departure. A paper welcome card for gate visitors who will not scan QR codes. Quarterly permission review on People exports.

How should you use this page?

If your town turns over with orders, prioritize contact tags, shared inboxes, and volunteer blockouts before buying another app.

Field note after a PCS week

Three families left in ten days. Their kids still appeared on volunteer asks for a month because nobody archived the households. Now the office runs a two-week PCS archive checklist and moves care notes to a “moved away” tag instead of deleting history. Turnover is not a software failure. It is a Monday chore with a name beside it.

Field note after drill weekend

Half the greeter team vanished on a drill Saturday with no Services blockout. They now require drill and TDY dates in blockouts the same way they require vacation dates. Military calendars are ministry calendars. If the grid ignores them, Sunday morning invents resentment.

Field note after a gate visitor Sunday

Gate visitors arrived with paper visitor passes and no desire to install an app in the parking lot. QR-only welcome cards bounced. A paper card with a large URL and a language for temporary duty families fixed the first hello. Military towns need hospitality that works offline at the gate.

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):

• Planning Center People: $14/mo
• Tithely: Processing fees
• Clearstream: $29/mo
• Mailchimp: $0 (free tier)
• Planning Center Services: $14/mo
• Planning Center Check-Ins: $0 (included)
• 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 South. 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 220-attendance church in a military town near a base 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 (Planning Center People, Tithely, Clearstream, 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 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.