A 420-attendance two-site church in Ohio

A 420-attendance two-site non-denominational church in Ohio runs Planning Center People, Services, Check-Ins, Giving, and Forms, plus Mailchimp, Clearstream, and Zapier. Staff: 5 full-time, 3 part-time. Software is about $149/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 420-attendance two-site non-denominational church in Ohio. Five full-time and three part-time staff. One people database. Two Sunday rooms. Campus tags are required or reports lie.

Why does this mix exist?

They refused two ChMS logins. Planning Center People, Services, Check-Ins, and Giving stay shared. Mailchimp segments by campus. Slack is staff-only so volunteer GroupMe threads do not become theology debates.

How the week actually runs

Each campus runs its own Services plan and Check-Ins rooms. Guest follow-up lists filter by campus tag before Monday texts go out. Giving uses one link with campus fund tags for restricted gifts. The executive pastor reviews export permissions quarterly. Saturday night, each campus host confirms the local Check-Ins rooms match that building’s classroom map. Monday texts only go to guests tagged with that campus. Shared musicians block both campuses in Services before the week starts so a 9am and 11am ask cannot land on the same person.

What breaks if you copy this blindly

Missing campus tags merge two congregations into one messy list. Shared worship leaders without blockouts double-book. Campus pastors exporting whole-church lists create privacy problems. One shared guest list with no campus filter. Letting the “central” admin cancel a local volunteer without telling the campus host. Measuring health by combined attendance while one site’s follow-up inbox sits unread.

What they would change next

A clearer first-time guest owner per campus on paper, not only in a software assignment. A quarterly dead-tag cleanup after the school-year calendar shifts. Fewer Slack channels. Print a one-page campus guest owner card for each foyer. Run a quarterly tag audit after every membership class so dead campus tags do not resurrect old sites.

How should you use this page?

Copy the single-database rule and campus tags before you buy a second suite. If you only have one site, keep the permission discipline and ignore Slack.

Field note after a quiet campus

One site’s combined attendance looked fine for a quarter. That campus’s guest texts were still sitting in a shared inbox nobody opened on Mondays. The fix was not another dashboard. It was a foyer card with one guest owner’s name and a Monday filter that only shows that campus’s tags. Combined numbers can hide an unread room.

Field note after a campus spreadsheet fork

The second site kept a shadow volunteer sheet that never synced to Planning Center. Easter week double-booked two greeters. They killed the shadow sheet and required one Services plan with campus tags. Multisite fails first on duplicate truth.

Field note after a campus thank-you lag

Campus B gifts got thank-yous a week later than Campus A because ownership was unclear. They named one Monday writer per campus with a shared no-amount script. Multisite care fails on unclear owners first.

Tuesday proof test

Ask finance how fees appear beside the subscription line. Hidden costs create Monday surprises.

Final gate

If elders cannot say the weekly job in one breath, wait thirty days.

Prefer one clear weekly owner over three half-owned tools.

Who owns admin

On a team sized like 5 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: $35/mo
• Planning Center Services: $0 (included)
• Planning Center Check-Ins: $0 (included)
• Planning Center Giving: $0 (included with People) plus processing
• Mailchimp: $45/mo
• Clearstream: $49/mo
• Planning Center Forms: $0 (included)
• Zapier: $20/mo

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: 400-1000. Staff shape: 5 full-time, 3 part-time. Region context: US Midwest. Copy the ownership pattern before you copy every logo.

Copy this if

Copy this mix when your church is near 400-1000 attendance (Non-denominational), 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 420-attendance two-site church in Ohio 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, Planning Center Services, Planning Center Check-Ins, Planning Center Giving, Mailchimp, Clearstream…) 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 5 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.