Ricardo, what motivated you to seek a church management system?
There is a lot of prejudice on the part of the church, on the part of pastors. They think that to organize, to computerize the church, is to lose some of its spirituality.
We started the work a few years ago, more or less in 2013, with a vision of excellence, but with few resources.
But as growth came, we noticed that when it came to structure, and not just cell phones, our amateurism and lack of knowledge were impacting the growth of the church.
On the issue of small groups that was still, at the time, on paper, that paper cell group report that I know many churches still use. So the information didn't reach the herd because we didn't have an adequate system to get some information.
So we gradually started to improve that.
The church grew, it was already more organized. And we made a decision: We're going to have a church management program!
We hired a company to have a cell group system, membership, and finance. It was a high value, but we understood that it was a necessary and important challenge. We needed to invest in that area.
Was it a ready-made program, or did they hire a software development company to build something for you?
It was something specific, it's a company that even does it for others. But what was the difficulty:
When we think of a system for cell group management, we don't consider that the vision is changing, it is increasing, so in our minds we thought that the program was simple. “I think it's that, that, and that other. That's all we need.”
But the growth came and then when we got there at the front we were faced with the reality that after 6 months of the program it was already obsolete.
Before hiring this company, did you even research the market if there was a ready solution that would meet these needs?
We knew some, from the Church in Cells Ministry - G-Cel - that we even used before the growth of the small groups. But it came to a point where there were the issues of growing coordinators, supervisors who didn't behave, couldn't give us any more.
We looked at others, which were platforms made for all churches, but were not satisfactory because of the moment that Batista Betesda was living with the cell groups.
The central point is that at the time there was no application like célula.in.
We thought: “let's do a program, hire someone to do it”, but the experience wasn't cool. Maybe because that person doesn't understand, I don't know, what cell groups are, we don't actually use the question of the cell group program as we would like to use it.
And speaking of computerizing the church, of having an evangelical church system, most churches are not even financially able to hire a company.
And most of the churches that I have had contact with as the coordinator of DNA Central, in the state of São Paulo, are unable to pay someone to create an app for a church, to pay for a membership list system. Then they run out of information and this limits the church's growth.
The church needs an app to keep up with growth, but they don't have the money to do so. This is the case of small churches.
And there is another side, which is what I have been saying to the pastors. Of course we're going to make a lot of mistakes and that's my case here, it depends on your vision, the vision is far-reaching.
When building a program, as was our case here, we have no idea where we are going to arrive, nor do I still have what God has for us today. I have been dreaming of great things.
But in practice this is sometimes very fast, it catches us up and engulfs us, and then I see a lot of people losing money and getting tied up in this issue.
One thing that the churches may not even know is that there are alternatives, they think the best thing is to build their own solution. So they're left with the one: “Oh, I don't have the money to be able to build so I'm going to run out”.
There are also pastors, and I live with many, who think that it's not necessary, it's not important to have an app for a cell-based church. But having good cell group reports is very important and the sooner a church begins to organize itself, the better it is for its growth in all areas as an organism and as an organization.
Ricardo, why do you believe that the sooner you start receiving cell group supervision reports is better for the church?”
For some factors, however, the main thing is that you are creating a culture. Organization is not in the culture of most churches. This aspect is a difficulty for many cell-based churches.
I've been talking to church pastors who are smaller than Bethesda and even bigger, and they say, “Well, the leader doesn't give me the monthly cell group report, the leader has trouble giving me the information I need.”
That's because leaders don't understand how much this impacts the pastor's vision, of developing strategies. We pastors need to know where the church is going and what needs to be corrected, so the sooner we start working on this aspect the better it will be in the future.
In my view, it doesn't matter how many cell groups a church has. Pastor, start creating this culture in the new leaders now, so it will be much easier when small groups multiply and your church begins to grow.
When you decided to move forward with a process of digitally organizing this information, what was it like to convey this to the leaders?
Perhaps you who are listening may think that “Oh now I have an app for church and my problems are over”. No! That doesn't happen.
I was in our last GD and we came to the conclusion that talking about the importance is something that we will always have to do.
Why? Because new cell group leaders are emerging. They didn't have that task. They used to take care of people, but as leaders they need to think about that more administrative side”.
Now, theory is one thing, but what about practice? In theory, if you do research with my leaders, everyone will say “we know it's important”, but in practice there's a lot of backstage work, which is always saying “Look, you have to do it, it's something that “it's not just for English to see”, it's something you can count on if you explore the app and it will help. Maybe kill some of the problems that the cell groups have, see, maximize time.”
About the culture of having information to make strategic decisions for the advancement of cell-group model.
How much of this do you believe is the role of the pastor, the coordinators, the supervisors, and how much of this, so to speak, can be “outsourced” to the church's app?
It's not an easy division, but I believe that first the incumbent pastor must be convinced of the investment and the importance.
In the hierarchical chain of cell groups - superintendents, coordinators, supervisors - I believe that mainly supervisors (those with small groups directly linked to them) are the engine, the connecting links to motivate leaders and make them understand the importance of the weekly cell group report. Show that it is important not only for the GD but for coordination, for the network, for the church pastor.
On the application side, I see that you have done something very important very well, which is to really ask, to be open to listening to the pastors: “Look, what can be improved, what are the needs?” , and then it's been a really cool thing for those who are using célula.in, because you're listening to learn about the needs, the struggles. Then the app comes to be really practical for the local church.
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