Did you know you can use unscented dental floss to cut cakes? It saves you the hassle of cleaning and drying your knife between every slice, and the results look beautiful.
Custom forms in Faithlife Equip are like the dental floss hack for common church administration tasks. They help those tasks take less time, gobble up less of your patience, and deliver the smile-sparking result you’re looking for.
Here are three things you can accomplish the simpler way with custom forms, just one handy tool in the integrated ministry platform.
1. Run smooth sign-ups
How often do you use sign-ups?
They’re the ideal tool for event registrations, gauging church volunteer interest, and even getting shirt sizes.
Yet . . . there’s a problem.
Running sign-ups should be simple, but they can be surprisingly tricky.
• Paper sign-up sheets have a knack for disappearing.
• People have to remember to sign up in person—or ask someone else to do it for them.
• All the information often has to be typed in, creating extra work (just what you needed).
Custom forms in Faithlife Equip help you dodge all those issues. Create a form for whatever you need.
When you’re done, you can print the form, sure!
But you can also do all this:
• Mass email a link to the form
• Mass text a link to the form
• Add the link to your church’s digital bulletins
• Add the link to your church’s newsletters
• Even embed the form on your church’s Faithlife Sites website
When you can distribute your church’s sign-up sheets in so many ways, no one misses the chance to jot down their name. And just as importantly, they can take action immediately instead of hoping they remember on Sunday.
2. Do digital discipleship
Before you can learn to drive, you have to have a vehicle. Before you can disciple someone, you have to be able to communicate with them. (That’s why “discover” is the first step in the digital discipleship journey.)
Passing around visitor cards on a Sunday morning only gets you so far. What about those visitors who come to your church’s live stream or your church website?
You don’t want them to slip through the cracks, either.
When you create a custom form for visitor info, you can share it in your live stream chat and on your website. Once you have visitors’ information, you can reach out and let them know how glad you were they joined you, see if there’s anything you can pray for them about, etc., and start building a relationship.
You can use your custom forms in other stages of the discipleship journey, too—like when people sign up for a new members class.
3. Reach your volunteers
Every month, our church’s long-suffering nursery director puts out a post in our online church group asking for any days volunteers won’t be available. It works, but it could work much better.
• Some nursery volunteers aren’t even in our church’s group, so she has to reach out separately.
• Since the announcement is really easy to miss, there are always adjustments to the schedule—people didn’t see it, so they didn’t comment with their unavailability.
Skip all that hassle with a custom form. You can not only send it out in multiple ways (see the first point), but you can also get to work on volunteer scheduling without transferring everyone’s responses into a spreadsheet. They’re all in one spot, easy to see at a glance.
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Where else might you be able to plug in custom forms?
Take a look at the 17 form fields available in the gray boxes below; it might give you some ideas.
Create your first custom form today!
And if you don’t yet have Faithlife Equip, see everything it can help your church do—all with one login, one password, and one bill.
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