At Conversatio Morum, we’re currently in the middle of talking about Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems and rethinking them as Church Relationship Management systems. We’ve previously intro’d, talked about the purpose of doing so, talked about different types of CRM’s, and why you might not want to utilize a CRM solution. You can review those posts here, here, here, and here.
Today, we are going to talk about why a CRM system isn’t actually the solution. The reality is that technology will never fix a people problem. I wrote about this some in my previous post about why you might not want to go with a CRM system. Many times the reason for lack of growth and not following up isn’t because you don’t have a system in place for doing so. It’s more often due to a cultural/people problem. Refer to the questions in my previous CRM post.
New technology isn’t always the solution. Sometimes, depending on context, it may not be a solution at all. You might be trying to use it as a way to police something that isn’t a value in the first place. Technology should always be a way to reinforce and assist with the walking out of those values. Technology never instills values that weren’t there in the first place. First, fix your value issue. Teach on discipleship and evangelism. Talk about Matthew 28:18-20 as much as possible. The leader of our church planting movement, Jimmy Seibert, has stated before that “You state vision till you’re blue in the face, and people are just now beginning to get it.” So that’s the part of the point. Very few leaders state vision as much as they ought. So do it more, get it in your heart more, live it out more. Keep internalizing, keep living out, keep communicating, until it simply flows out of you.
What do you think? Do you have a process problem or a discipleship problem? Do you need to teach on vision or implement technology? Do you have some examples of a time that a technology solution hasn’t fixed a people problem?