A 160-attendance church in a Mountain West resort town

A 160-attendance evangelical church in a Mountain West resort town runs Breeze, Pushpay, Planning Center for events, Mailchimp, GroupMe, Google Sheets, and Google Forms. Staff: 1 full-time, 2 part-time. Software is about $84/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 160-attendance evangelical church in a Mountain West resort town. One full-time and two part-time staff. Ski weekends and summer festivals swell the room. Shoulder seasons feel small and local again.

Why does this mix exist?

Breeze keeps a stable member core without forcing every tourist into the membership roll. Pushpay catches second-home givers. Planning Center publishes events when midweek life pauses. Mailchimp shortens when bandwidth drops. A Google Sheet absorbs festival weekend volunteers without a second paid scheduler.

How the week actually runs

Greeters tag year-round vs seasonal visitors the same day. The volunteer grid runs six weeks out with festival backups on the bottom rows. Email stays weekly in shoulder months and becomes a short weekend note in peak season. Groups pause on the public calendar instead of ghosting visitors with dead events. Greeters tag year-round vs seasonal visitors before the guest leaves the lobby. The volunteer grid runs six weeks out with festival and powder-weekend backups named, not hoped for. Midweek events that pause in shoulder season are unpublished so the app does not advertise empty rooms.

What breaks if you copy this blindly

Adding every powder-weekend guest as a member. Keeping midweek events listed when leaders are out of town. Letting GroupMe become pastoral counseling. Adding every ski-weekend guest as a member. Leaving midweek events live when leaders are out of town. Letting GroupMe become the only cancel channel for locals without smartphones.

What they would change next

A clearer first-visit follow-up for seasonal guests who return three winters in a row. One printed give URL card for older second-home households. A May and October tag cleanup. Write a three-winter returner follow-up path for seasonal guests. Keep one printed give URL card at the welcome desk for guests who will not install the app.

How should you use this page?

If holiday weekends double your room, protect the year-round roster and volunteer backups before you buy another engagement product.

Field note after ski week

Peak tourist Sundays filled the room and emptied the volunteer grid. They now lock winter blockouts in Services by October and keep a year-round “local core” tag for care lists. Resort crowds are not the same as a stable membership base, and the spreadsheet has to say so out loud.

Field note after ski-week ghosting

Three hospitality leads vanished during peak powder week with no Services blockout. Guests met empty greeter posts. They now require ski-season travel dates in blockouts the same way they require vacation. Resort calendars are ministry calendars.

Field note after a second-home giving spike

December online gifts spiked when second-home owners arrived, then January looked like a crisis. Finance tagged seasonal gifts so elders would not treat a ski-week month as the new normal.

Small-church proof gate

Write the Monday owner and vacation backup on the invoice folder before you renew.

Size check for this church

Put processing fees and SaaS on the same elder page before the vote.

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

Transparent fees

One elder page: subscription plus processing fees, nothing hidden (a mountain west resort town church).

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

Nobody-maintains stacks lose to quiet ordinary faithfulness (a mountain west resort town church).

Thank-you discipline

Practice the guest text from the parking lot on cellular, not only office Wi-Fi.

Copy only what a tired volunteer can finish after second service (a mountain west resort town church).

Path proof

Prove the cancel path on a spare phone before you need it in a storm (a mountain west resort town church).

Who owns admin

On a team sized like 1 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: $50/mo
• Pushpay: Processing fees
• Church Center / Planning Center: $14/mo
• Mailchimp: $20/mo
• GroupMe: $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: 1 full-time, 2 part-time. Region context: US Mountain West. Copy the ownership pattern before you copy every logo.

Copy this if

Copy this mix when your church is near 150-400 attendance (Evangelical), 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 a Mountain West resort town 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, Pushpay, Church Center / Planning Center, Mailchimp, GroupMe, 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 1 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.