Ask HN: Any Christian software engineers here?

Does it matter? While I would bet that of the few thousand registered here, at least a few consider themselves "Christians", what you need is someone who is interested in building a system that you have envisioned. Good luck in your search though. If you can get your whole mind into the project I think you will be half way there.

What would a 'Church Management System' do? Have you been to http://www.monkdevelopment.com ?

A large number of HN users are based in Silicon Valley and the surrounding area, which is well known for being largely non-religious. That said, I am a software engineer who is a Christian and spent last summer in the Bay Area, so don't let statistics discourage you. I met plenty of other Christian software engineers while I was out there. Most of them have full-time jobs at well-known tech companies. I don't know if any of them use HN.

Depending on how many software engineers are in your area, it may be more efficient to ask people at church if they are entrepreneurial software engineers than to ask HN users if they are Christians.

I too have considered how church specific software could be made better.

My old church uses a program called The City (http://www.onthecity.org/) to create a social presence for themselves. This was a nondenominational church in Southern California that had ~1000 people/week split into 3 services.

In general, I think the implementation of this idea was awful. Younger people are already on facebook/twitter/etc and don't need another account to maintain. Older people have a hard time getting on it and using it, although I think it does help older members of the church keep in touch with each other. This church has had a hard time getting people to sign up and use it regularly despite the pastor mentioning it every week for months in the service and bringing in outside tech support people to train the congregation.

I see two major problems with church software. First, drawing the line at what exactly is a church. I know many Baptist congregations that would be offended at the thought of using the same software as an Episcopalian parish, nevermind Catholic/Jewish/Muslim/New Age Hippie. The needs of a small Baptist congregation and a small Catholic one are going to be much more similar, however, than a small Baptist church and a mega church.

The second problem is how to handle accepting money. It feels wrong to develop church software with a profit motive, rather than a make the church more Christ-like motive. (I've always wondered about the companies that make the Eucharist crackers and all the other church paraphernalia.) I think the best solution would be to offer the software at-cost (whatever that means for software... hosting fees maybe?) to churches, and then have a recommended donation above that amount.

One of the biggest problems I have with the tech-culture of the church is the lack of open source. I think that OSS nearly perfectly aligns with Jesus's ideals, and it is frustrating when religious people don't see that. A service that brought Linux awareness to more churches would be amazing.

I'd love to chat more about this issue. What type of church do you attend? Are you ordained or have you been employed at churches?

IIRC patio11 is Catholic. Not going to find someone better to bounce this idea off of. If he doesn't respond here you could try sending an email.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/about/

I actually work for a church management software provider, Icon Systems (http://iconcmo.com). I think our aim is rather different than yours, though: we intentionally aim at management tools, where I get the feeling you are aiming more at engagement tools for ministry. Is that a fair statement?

If so, you might take a look at the Table Project (http://tableproject.org/). I think there might be some parallels between your thoughts and theirs—plus, it is a free product, to boot!

I work as a software engineer and am a part time pastor. Yeah I would agree most church software is not that great (I use Easy worship instead of PowerPoint and that totally rocks). First because a lot of what the church does has echo's in business software. Office managers use MS office and off the shelf accounting software. I know pastors use facebook to connect with others (or should be but that is a different post). The church software that I have seen was either too expensive for the churches I was serving at or was not a felt need for us to go out and purchase. I have thought long and hard about church software and I see needs, but most of those needs are being met by off the shelf software that helps with the need to manage or the need to connect.

Interesting idea. There are some guys in our diocese that run a company called Solutio. More web based stuff but really nice.

We use ParishSoft as a church management system for our church. Even thought it's MSAccess based, it's better than I would have expected. Also, since many churches are on a tight budget, including us, it works well for that. Could get some ideas there.