Introducing Simple Church Tools
Today, I’m proud to be launching Simple Church Tools. Simple Church Tools is a growing suite of software designed for churches. Right now, we only have one tool — Prayer, but we have two other tools in active development (Planner and Sermons) with many others in the pipeline.
Why the world needs another church software company
There are a lot of church software companies. At least a dozen companies make some kind of church management system (Elevato, Churchtraconline, Simple Church CHRM, Breeze Church Management, etc.) and there are a few companies making lots of tools for churches (like Planning Center Online). I wish all of these guys well and with few exceptions don’t plan on competing with them.
I’ve started Simple Church Tools on this premise:
In the town where I pastor, there is a church — let’s call it Hip Church. Hip Church is huge — it dwarfs every other church in town. Hip Church has a pretty big staff full of MacBook-toting, latte-sipping creative superstars. Hip Church has an awesome facility with smoke machines, computer controlled stage lights and an awesome indoor playground.
90% of the church software out there is aimed at a church like Hip Church, but for every Hip Church out there, there are dozens of “regular” churches; churches that aren’t huge and are a bit more traditional than contemporary.
We aim to build software for those regular churches. While we hope all kinds of churches will benefit from our software — my target is churches with less than 200 regular attendees that still fall more towards the traditional end of the spectrum.
About Us
Us is me — Ryan Hayden. I’ve served as the pastor at Bible Baptist Church in Mattoon, Illinois for over five years. My church is neither huge (we have less than 100 members) nor hip (we still from a hymn book, use offering plates, etc.) but I love it and plan to stay here and serve here a long time.
I’ve been developing web stuff since 2004, and lead a small team of freelancers working on this project.
Scratching My Own Itch
Because I’m both a pastor and a web developer, I’m always trying to find ways to use technology to help with various things in our church. Sometimes, I can’t find anything online that meets our churches needs so I just build my own. That’s how all of these tools start.
Because I’m a pastor — I’m thinking all the time as I build it — How will this save time? How will this actually be used? Will volunteers or non-technical people be able to figure this out?
I hope that shows in our software.
Come over to Simple Church Tools and give our prayer tool a try. If you want to sign up — you can lock in the current price for your church forever(which will go up for new users when new tools are added.)
