My church doesn't use a Church Management tool, yet.

However, I believe that the two leading players in the market are Fellowship Technologies and Shelby Systems. Both have a software as a service product. Check out:

http://www.fellowshiptech.com/
http://www.arenachms.com/

I am sure that there are others out there. Does anyone have other links?

Also check out the ChMS Discussion Group over at Google Groups:

http://groups.google.com/group/ChMS

This is a place where church tech guys have been discussing various issues related to these and other Church Management products.

John
john-simons.com

What is out there in the free / open source sphere in terms of software that could be used for Church Management? How far are we from being able to build something with Drupal that can take care of this?

This is something I don't know much about. But, you might want to check out civicrm. It can go with Joomla or Drupal.

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.mattfarina.com

I am leading a project to develop an open source web based ChMS that hopes to be similar to F1. You ca find out more at TheOpenSourceChurch.org

We are still in development, but I hope to have a beta release in no more then 3 months.

I used CiviCRM for awhile and found that it didn't play very well on my hosting environment's database. They wanted mutually exclusive features or something like that. It looked like it had potential...

Also, it seemed like it was a bit of a hassle to get setup and then configured.

However, the support community is pretty strong on it.

Cool. :-)

Another interest of mine is mission agency management software. There are some guys building that from LightSys. They call their programs Centrallix and Kardia. It is a very ambitious project, but might have some interesting cross-over ideas.

I'm not seeing Arena's hosted service offering. What am I missing?

Look at their FAQ. Question 2 says that you can host your own, or they will host it for you. I don't know their particulars, however.

John
john-simons.com

The CiviCRM folks just released a 2.0 version. It's a major jump. Anyone tried it out?

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Co-Host
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.mattfarina.com

I'm doing research for a new podcast (Grow Your Church Show). I found
http://www.ekklesia-systems.com

Very cool. I HATE that half these companies don't put pricing "Becuase everyone is different." Frustrating. Also, can these companies say "camtasia" half the time I just want to see if its more than an ugle access database.

How about Church DB?
http://www.churchdb.org/

Seems to be free and web based.

Check out: www.liferay.com
It has features that works like virtual desktop as well as social collaboration built-in.

check out www.iconcmo.com a complete web-based software.
Hope this helps

Dave,

On your Ekklesia Systems (now http://www.ekklesia360.com/) we have a camtasia video here: http://www.ekklesia360.com/online-demo/ this was recorded before a few of our Internet Presence Management features have been launched: http://www.ekklesia360.com/ekklesia-360-blog/churc...

Cobblestone (which integrates with Ekklesia) has pricing under 'Sign-up': http://www.cobblestonecn.com/

Hope that helps.

I'm glad you found the ChurchInfo project at www.churchdb.org. I started this project in 2004 based on the InfoCentral project. It has been a great ride, with more than a dozen developers coming on to help with various aspects of the project. We currently support seven languages and have more coming. We have a demo installation available free for experimenting. If the demo has been modified too much just send me an email and I will reset it.

Mike

Michael Wilt
ChurchInfo Team Leader

I'm so glad that someone is doing something with the old infocentral (now "ChurchInfo") project. This is a pay-class product for a donation-class (or even free) price. I am in the process of getting a demo setup on my server so that our church leadership can give it a run-through. So many new features since the infocentral days!
Keep up the good work!
-Mike

Originally started to bridge InfoCentral as a module for XOOPS, OSC (Open Source Church) is a Church Management Software package now based on ImpressCMS (www.ImpressCMS.org). It supports Membership, Giving and Attendance. The OSC project is managed and championed by www.churchledger.com, which also offers hosted packages for churches and non-profits.

I was doing some research on one of ChurchTechToday's sponsors and came across this forum. I thought it would be helpful for you all to know about Bellevue Church Management System (http://BVCMS.com). This is a completely open-source management system that is picking up speed daily. I invite you to read a little more about them here: http://churchtechtoday.com/2011/01/17/5-benefits-o...

Blessings,
Lauren