Church Software

Arena Church Management Software is a new church software program and authoring web tool from Shelby Systems.

Proponents of the software claim it is revolutionary. Christ Church of the Valley in Phoenix came up with the concept, but felt they needed a software provider to handle the business side of the equation and leave the ministers free to continue working with their parishioners.

After contacting Shelby, with over 30 years in the field of software design, Christ Church of the Valley decided to collaborate with Shelby. Work on the program, later to be called Arena, began in 2004. Arena was introduced to the public in January 2007. Arena is designed to handle church management needs while at the same time permitting authoring by the host user. The software is purported to be both flexible and intuitive.

Shelby has created a browser based church management system framework that is fully integrated with ShelbyFINANCIALS.

Key elements are web hosting freedom, robust metrics (weighted measurement tools) to keep up with the membership, their health, and their level of integration into church activities, customizable check-in options, and a flexible approach to groups.

The health meter allows follow-up on members whose is failing that church officers need to check on. Also, since volunteers are the heart of church management, these features permit the tracking of potential volunteers and shepherding them through the training and accountability phases so that these volunteers are not overlooked by busy pastors.

The Community is another feature of the work being done by the Arena division of Shelby. The Community is a development and social environment created to support the Arena Church Management System.

The Community consists of a blog, a forum, and a file-sharing environment in order to integrate all Arena users in one community. By using the Community, the following collaborative solutions may be attempted: „h Integrated tagging throughout the blogs and forums of Arena „h Public and private forums „h Free downloadables „h Search engine-friendly permalink structures „h Plug/in module and file sharing capability „h Technical and Communication blogs on pertinent church subjects

Some critics have claimed that by having too many options that may be customized, it is possible Arena may not be giving the users optimum programs. If the user is required to customize their programs, they may lose out since most users are not programmers and have little knowledge of how to do this.

These critics suggest that the vendor should have wider knowledge bases of best practices which they are ready provide the users instead of having the user trying to program. Even so, these critics believe Arena to be a powerful tool with tremendous potential to satisfy most church needs, and when they don¡¦t the vendor should be coming up with patches designed to improve the program for everyone.