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St Paul’s Marylebone and St Cyprian Clarence Gate Talks About Digital Transformation in the Church  

Having been part of the pilot run of our custom-designed Digital Church Platform and its Visitation Module, St Paul’s Marylebone and St Cyprian Clarence Gate - two busy community and worshipping communities - have created new order in their documentation, preserving time for their wider mission. Here, Finance and Operations Manager Martin Carr explains how digital transformation supports the churches. 

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Source: https://www.stpaulsmarylebone.org/

What is the current church community like?

St Paul’s Marylebone is a very busy church. For example, we have a whole team of people chopping vegetables for a community meal this evening, and we had a group of women doing Zumba earlier today. St. Cyprian is quieter - it's now closed in the day, but we're trying to get more groups to come and meet there through community outreach, there's still more to do.  

How important is it for churches to have a complete understanding of their current situation? 

I think we absolutely need to understand our current situation; someone once said you can have good admin without a flourishing church, but you can't have a flourishing church without good admin - I think that's true. We need to understand where we are now to move forward.  

What challenges did you find your church was facing before implementing the Visitation Module?

The visitation is a statutory requirement that happens every three years. I think the Visitation Module is actually helpful for much more than visitations alone. It helps as a general, evolving church management software (CMS) that keeps everything in order, all in one place. It feels like the next step in what has been a 20-year process of going from paper to digital filing for online churches, which is easier to access from anywhere and more environmentally friendly.  

Normally, preparing for visitations is a question of trying to bring together all the paperwork and attaching a lot of different documents to emails for someone to organise at the other end. It's a slightly messy process - it's easy for emails to go astray, and you don't have a clear overview of what you're doing. 

This year, we had a request from the Diocese of London to be part of the Visitation Module trial, and we were delighted to be a guinea pig. It was much easier to see and input what we had in a clear order, as well as to have a direct insight into what we were missing and what we needed to put in place. 

What were the benefits of using the Visitation Module? 

The church management software made everything available to the Archdeacon without them having to print out or save piles of documents. It also gave me a chance to assess our situation, prepare properly, find where the gaps were and address or flag them to the Archdeacon for feedback. You don't have to do everything all at the same time with the Visitation Module, which is helpful - you can do the insurance one day and the safeguarding at another time, for example.  

What's different to your approach to visitations now? 

Using the church CMS module means we're much better prepared, and I’m hoping that as I have uploaded so much this time, next time, it will be a simpler process as I won't be starting from the beginning. I can also add new documents as we go rather than trying to bring it all together at once in another three years' time. It's a more logical way to prepare for visitations and makes them less overwhelming.  

The word visitation refers to the Archdeacon arriving at the church on a visit, but now, a lot of the administrative purposes can be done virtually with this material ahead of time. Therefore, when the Archdeacon is here, they can talk to us about other things, which makes the visitation a wider and more thorough process.  

What specific services does the Visitation Module provide for your church? 

We've been using the best CMS for the church for about nine months, and so far, I think the main thing is that it provides church software on which we can upload and display our compliance and regulations documentation easily to make sure we're doing everything right.  

As an example, today, churches or online churches need to have a lot of policies, and with the Visitation Module, we're able to list them clearly. We can see the ones we have, the ones that need updating and the ones that need to be initiated. It gives us the chance to make sure we're up to date by flagging where there's work to do.  

Would you recommend the Visitation Module to other churches?

I would definitely recommend it - it's a good thing to do, and there are no downsides. I know some people get anxious about new tech, but if you can use a Google browser, you can use this. Once you're in, it's fairly intuitive.  

Church offices are full of historical documents, and over time, it would be great to have church website CMS, less paper and ensure everything is accessible - it makes us more efficient and better able to use our time as best as possible.