I know a number of you work with Shepherd’s Staff Church Management Software from Concordia. I just wanted to make you aware of a five week online training session for Shepherd’s Staff users being offered twice in the coming months by the WELS Technology Office. The session entitled Membership & More will be offered from January 28 to March 2, or March 31 to May 4. Membership & More focuses on the Membership and Attendance modules of the popular church management software package from Concordia Technology Solutions. New and experienced users will learn tips and tricks for managing important member data efficiently and will experience the power of sub-groups and reports which can be created.

The class is designed to take advantage of a virtual classroom which includes discussion boards, self-guided tutorial exercises, screencasts and a weekly audio/web conference where class participants will be given a chance to ask questions and delve deeper into concepts learned during the week.

Training topics include:

• Managing people data
• Entering activities, skills and training
• Maintaining an electronic registry of official acts
• Creating sub-groups, a.k.a. the hidden power of Shepherd’s Staff
• Running Membership reports
• Maximizing member communication
• Tracking attendance

The cost of the course is $30. To learn more or sign up for either session visit: http://www.wels.net/jump/mam.

If you are not a Shepherd’s Staff user, but your congregation is interested in the product, WELS congregations can get a 10% discount. Just email softwaresales@cts.cph.org for more information or visit http://www.shepherdsstaff.org.