In a lot of small churches, the membership list lives in a spreadsheet on one person’s laptop. The volunteer schedule is a group text. Who visited last month, and whether anyone called them, is in the pastor’s memory, if it’s anywhere. Nobody chose that system. It grew up one workaround at a time, and it holds together as long as the people carrying it stay healthy, stay put and don’t get too busy.
Software built for large churches doesn’t fix that. It costs too much and assumes a staff that a congregation of eighty doesn’t have. So I was glad when a friend of mine started building something for the rest of us. It’s called Gather, and it’s church management software designed for small churches. I should say up front that it’s a friend’s project, so I’m not a neutral reviewer. I’m recommending it anyway, because I think it addresses a real problem.
What it does
Gather keeps a church’s people and its work in one place:
- a member directory organized by households and groups, with birthdays, anniversaries and notes
- one calendar for services, classes, group meetings and events
- service planning, with run sheets, a song library and setlists
- volunteer scheduling with reminders, where volunteers confirm or decline their own assignments
- attendance records and QR-code check-in
- giving records by fund, with annual giving statements
- email and text messages to the whole church, a group or a filtered list
- a follow-up process for visitors and a pastoral care board for prayer requests, follow-ups and benevolence needs
Church members get a free app for iPhone and Android. They can check in, see when they’re scheduled to serve, sign up for an open spot, keep their household’s information current and get announcements. Online giving through Stripe is listed as coming soon, and so is a fuller finance module.
What it costs
Every plan has the same features. The price depends on how many people you’re keeping track of. As I write this, Gather costs $10 a month for up to 100 people, $30 a month for up to 500, and $60 a month for larger churches and networks, with a discount for paying annually. There’s a 14-day free trial. It asks for a card when you sign up, so cancel before day 14 if it isn’t for you. The pricing page has the current numbers.
Why I care about this
Software can’t revitalize a church. God gives that kind of life, and a congregation that doesn’t love its neighbors won’t start because it bought a better database. But a lot of what goes wrong in a struggling church comes down to things nobody noticed in time. A first-time guest never hears from anyone. A faithful volunteer gets asked again and again until she quietly burns out. A family drifts away, and months go by before anyone realizes they haven’t been there.
In Reassigned, I wrote that stewardship “notices who is always asked.” It also notices who hasn’t been seen lately, and who visited once and never came back. Gather’s dashboard is built around those questions: which visitors still need a follow-up, which members seem to be drifting, where the volunteer schedule has holes. A tool can’t care about people for you, but it can keep a busy pastor or a willing volunteer from losing track of them.
The people behind Gather describe their aim as “tools that make the local church more effective at caring for people.” That’s the right goal. If your church is still running on spreadsheets and group texts, take a look at Gather.