In August, he joined the church staff at St. Clare of Assisi, Ann Arbor, as the director of music. And while he is pretty facile on the piano, you should see him tap out a message on the computer.Raised a Roman Catholic, Goodell was co-director of The Boychoir of Ann Arbor prior to joining the St. Clare staff. He is a trained classical pianist and came to Michigan to study orchestral conducting.Three years ago at a Clarkston Methodist church where he served as a part-time musician, he realized that the church, like many churches, was considering cutting back staff positions in order to pay for rising costs of church communication.
“I was surprised how much money was spent on some tools, like printing and postage,” he said. “We are spending X-amount of dollars on printing and mailing stuff first class while we are cutting the youth director to three-quarter-time because we don’t have enough money in the budget.”
Goodell was challenged by the question of how to save money on church communications when he discovered the answer—right at his fingertips.
Goodell and his fiancée Debra Gerber started ChurchPost. The enterprise began as a simple, one-church operation. But it did not take long for the couple to realize that it was more than a one-church problem. As other church leaders showed interest, the couple expanded their new Web product into a small business to meet communication needs in a variety of church settings as far away as South Africa.
ChurchPost is an online communication vehicle that rivals the familiar Constant Contact, Mail Chimp or Outlook groups, but it is specifically for churches. Templates reflect church design and needs. For example, youth groups, music ministries and outreach coordinators no longer have to sift through business-oriented templates and then fiddle to make those fit for church groups.
Additionally, a master account on ChurchPost can have multiple authors called “sub-users” who rely on the same database, unlike some of the single-user operations. Constant Contact also does not allow attachments. Most churches appreciate the chance to circulate a flyer or a PowerPoint presentation.
While Constant Contact can create lovely templates (The Record Weekly has used it for the Monday morning mailings—but is changing over) ChurchPost is more versatile. If the youth leader wants to create an attractive weekly e-mail, fine. Or if she needs to just send a quick message — Meeting canceled tonight: too much snow — ChurchPost handles that immediately. ChurchPost also can schedule the same message for delivery for months ahead (think: rehearsal reminders, vestry meetings).
“You have the ability to do both template-driven but also text e-mails,” said Goodell. “It doesn’t look pretty, it just gets information out. Then you can also send a newsletter every week that gives them all the pretty stuff.”
Goodell will join The Record at Ministry Fair on May 3, which will be held at St. Paul’s, Lansing, and lead a hands-on workshop. But no need to wait; the contact information for ChurchPost is also available at http://www.churchpost.com.
Meanwhile, Goodell will be busy at his new music position in Ann Arbor. And if he plays as fast as he types—and talks—the services at St. Clare are going to be really short.
