A 1,400-attendance, two-campus Southern Baptist church in the NC suburbs

A 1,400-attendance, two-campus Southern Baptist church runs seven Planning Center products plus Church Center for $550–700/month. Registrations is the tier that swings. FlockConnect is $9/month flat for deacon care notes synced to Planning Center People.

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 1,400-attendance Southern Baptist church with two campuses in the North Carolina suburbs. Fourteen full-time and ten part-time staff. The second campus meets in a rented high school, which is why phone-first scheduling and check-in mattered when they left an older installed system. Forty deacons carry family ministry. VBS in June is the biggest week of the year.

Two campuses mean duplicate welcomes and duplicate profiles unless ownership is boring and clear.

Why does this mix exist?

Almost everything runs on Planning Center: People, Services, Check-Ins, Groups, Registrations, Calendar, and Giving, with Church Center as the member app. Somewhere between $550 and $700 a month depending on how the Registrations tier is set. Volunteers at the rented high school needed to schedule and check in from their phones. The old installed system could not.

Southern Baptist specifics live inside the stack rather than around it. Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong are their own funds in Giving so remittances match the envelopes. Cooperative Program is figured off undesignated receipts. The year-end Annual Church Profile comes out of Check-Ins and People reports. The ACP used to take the administrator two days. Now it is an afternoon.

The one non-Planning-Center tool is FlockConnect for deacon care, chosen for a flat $9/mo with no per-user fee, which matters with forty deacons. Notes are private by default and sync both ways with People.

Who owns admin

The church administrator holds master admin across Planning Center products and keeps Registrations tier changes on the calendar. Each campus has one named owner for guest follow-up workflows in People. Campus pastors read shared deacon care notes. Deacons do not get wide People admin. Ministry leaders get limited views. Greeters and registration volunteers get entry rights, not export rights.

The administrator wants one guest follow-up owner across both campuses eventually. Today it is one named owner per campus, which already beat the year of duplicate welcomes.

What this costs monthly

Planning Center: about $550–700/month across seven products. People is free. Registrations swings with VBS. FlockConnect Starter: $9/month flat. Giving fees: 2.15% + 30¢ on cards, 30¢ flat on ACH (they push ACH hard). Confirm tiers the week you brief finance committee, especially if you forget to drop Registrations after summer.

How the week actually runs

Sunday: connect cards through Church Center or paper entered by Monday. Guest workflows fire with a campus pastor email due Tuesday and a deacon call due Friday. Services schedules weekend teams at both campuses. Check-Ins runs kids ministry and feeds later ACP headcounts. Deacon visits log as private FlockConnect notes shared pastor-only. Tuesday staff meeting reviews care gaps. In VBS season, Registrations stays on the summer tier until the August downgrade date.

Copy this if

Copy this if you are multi-campus (or about to be), already deep in Planning Center, need deacon care notes that are not a shared spreadsheet, and you remitting Southern Baptist offerings that must match envelope funds. Copy the seasonal Registrations habit even if your VBS is smaller. Copy the one-named-owner rule for guest follow-up before you add another campus.

What breaks first

Separate guest workflows per campus (they already embarrassed themselves once). Registrations left on the June tier into fall. Duplicate family profiles after grandma and mom both register kids. Deacon care returned to a shared sheet “for convenience.” Every ministry leader granted People admin. Card giving default with no ACH teaching at their volume.

What they would change next

One cross-campus guest follow-up owner. August duplicate cleanup as a standing ritual. Written medical sharing rule rehearsed at every deacon installation. Keep reading contracts before auto-renew.

Field note after two welcome emails

A family visited both campuses in one month and got two pastor emails in one week. Gracious reply. Staff still winced. One database and one named owner per campus became non-negotiable the same afternoon.

Field note after June pricing into October

Nobody dropped the Registrations tier after VBS. Four months of summer pricing followed. Now upgrade and downgrade are paired calendar events created on the same day.

Local reality check

A 1,400-attendance, two-campus Southern Baptist church in the NC suburbs still has to finish ordinary Sundays with the people they have. If a tool in this mix demands a role you will not fund, cut that tool or fund the role before go-live. Faithfulness here is a kept promise to guests, volunteers, and givers, not a complete feature matrix.

When you adapt this page, keep the lastVerified habit. Re-check pricing and admin names when staff changes. A stack page older than your last admin handoff is a rumor until someone verifies it again.