I’d like to express my gratitude to Radius International for sponsoring the blog this week to tell you about their upcoming conference which you can attend in-person or via livestream. I’m grateful for each and every sponsor!

Westminster Books is offering 50% off new editions of a couple of classic books.
Today’s Kindle deals include a few noteworthy titles.
(Yesterday on the blog: 10 New and Notable Christian Books for April 2023)
A New Christian Authoritarianism?
There is a new issue of the 9Marks Journal available and it deals with nationalism and theonomy. It features quite an extensive list of writers.
Should Men Still Pray with Lifted Hands?
“In 1 Timothy 2:8, we read that Paul exhorted men to pray in church while ‘lifting holy hands.’ What’s the connection between lifted hands and holiness? And what about lifted hands and prayer? Is this practice culturally dated, or is it a relevant one we should adopt today in our corporate church gatherings?” John Piper answers.
Dennis Prager’s Troubling Defense of Pornography
Carl Trueman writes about Dennis Prager’s surprising defense of pornography. “Many aspects of Prager’s comment are disturbing, not least his failure to address the dark nature of the pornography industry itself. But it is also instructive, because it exposes the superficiality of some of what passes for conservative thought today.”
Thankful God Is Not a Stranger
“‘I was so thankful, when this happened, that God was not a stranger to me.’ I don’t remember when or where or from whom I heard this. I don’t recall the context or what the ‘this’ was that happened. But this statement has stayed with me for decades.”
Promise
Susan Lafferty writes poetically about God’s sure promises.
The Light and You
“Can you imagine a world without light? A world where you can’t see your hand in front of your face?”
Flashback: Protect Your Church in One Simple Step
Preach. It’s as simple as that one step, that one commitment. The church that remains faithful to God is the church that remains faithful to the Word of God.

Spiritual discernment…distinguishes and separates truth from falsehood, darkness from light, healthy from unhealthy, sound from unsound, and good from evil, based on the Bible’s plumb line. —Mary Kassian

This week the blog is sponsored by Church Social and is written by Jonathan Reinink.
I am currently serving as an elder in my church. In my church, elders and deacons serve three-year terms. Between meetings, pastoral visits, and being in tune with what’s happening both locally and in our denomination, there’s lots of work to do. Life is busy.
Sometimes it can even be a little overwhelming. And yet, God instructs elders in 1 Peter 5:2 to “willingly” and “eagerly” shepherd the flock. I find this a helpful reminder to be diligent and faithful in my work.
Professionally, I run a software platform for reformed churches called Church Social, and a key goal of the software is to help elders, deacons, and pastors in their roles. Church Social simplifies the administrative side of the office so that church leaders can better focus on the spiritual side of their work.
Let me walk you through some of the features in Church Social that specifically help church leaders.
Member Directory
Probably one of the most useful tools in Church Social for church leaders is the member directory. This lists all the families within your church, with photos, contact information, special dates like birthdays and anniversaries, and more.

I’m constantly going to this part of the app to grab a member’s phone number, or to get directions to their home when going on a visit, or even just to put a name to a face when a new member joins our congregation.
If you’d like to learn more about the member directory, see my previous article here on Challies.com which covers this feature in detail.
Shepherding Groups
My church organises the families in our congregation into shepherding groups, which we call wards (sometimes also called districts). Each elder and deacon is then assigned a shepherding group that they are responsible for. This is a practical way to ensure that each member in our flock is properly cared for.

Church Social has first-class support for shepherding groups, allowing you to easily see which group each family is assigned to, and which elders and deacons are responsible for that group. You can even send messages specifically to certain groups, and generate reports for these groups.
Member Insights
When you’re assigned the elder, deacon, or pastor role within Church Social, you’re given access to sensitive data within the software that isn’t visible to everyone.
For example, there is a report that lists dates pertaining to deceased family members. It highlights sensitive dates for members who have lost loved-ones, such as a previous spouse’s birthday, or the anniversary of their passing. There are also reports for identifying joyful occasions, like milestone birthdays and anniversaries.
Church Social also generates statistics and reports based on your data, including membership trends, demographics like your average member age, and a plotted map showing where your members live relative to your church, useful for strategic planning.
Visit Tracking
A brand new feature that I’m really excited about is our upcoming visit tracking feature for elders, deacons, and pastors. If all goes well we hope to launch the visit tracking feature this week.
This feature lets church leaders track past and future member visits within the software, helping ensure that all members are visited regularly. It also helps elders, deacons and pastors better coordinate their visits, avoiding situations where a family doesn’t receive a visit for a year and then receives multiple in the same week.

Previously there was no easy way, at least in my church, for us as church leaders to know when a particular family was last visited. But now, with Church Social’s new visit tracking feature, you can easily see all the visits made to a particular family. There’s even a report that lists the families who have gone the longest without a visit — highlighting potentially higher priority visits that should be made.
There is also the option to include notes when creating visits, making it easy to reference these in the future if needed. In my church we always write short visit reports whenever we go on visits, so this is a natural place to store them.
Church Social will also send an email reminder the day before your scheduled visit — just in case you forgot (not that you would!).
File Storage
Between meeting minutes and agendas, incoming and outgoing mail, church policies and guidelines, churches end up with a lot of files. The files section in Church Social makes storing and sharing these documents safe and easy.
You can create folders that all members can access (great for things like policies), and also create private folders that are only accessible to the elders, deacons and pastors. This is great as it creates a centralised location for these church files, meaning you don’t need to email files around anymore.
Schedules
Every Sunday one of our elders takes a turn being the “serving elder”. This basically just means he’s responsible for caring for our pastor that day, shaking his hand at the start and end of the services, and he also leads our council in prayer at the start and end of that day. Naturally, we have a schedule in place to keep track of who’s up next, which we manage in Church Social.
Schedules in Church Social are really nice as they aren’t just static lists. When you’re assigned to a particular task on a particular day, that task appears in your personalised church calendar, and you also get an email notification reminding you about that task.
We create schedules in Church Social for a lot of things — weekly greeters, ushers, nursery lists, etc. — and the reminder emails are really helpful.
Term Management
As previously mentioned, elders and deacons in my church serve three-year terms. To help keep track of these terms, Church Social has a term management feature that lets you specify who has served as elders, deacons, and pastors in your church, including their term length.

Probably the most useful part of this feature is the “Office-bearer terms” report. This report will list all your active and past terms, grouped by the year that the term ends. This is really helpful information when nominating new elders and deacons, as you can quickly see who is currently serving and who has served more recently.
Give it a try
If you’re a church leader struggling to stay organised, or wishing you had more insight into the members in your care, I highly recommend taking a closer look at Church Social.
Church Social has been a huge help for the elders, deacons and pastor in my particular church, and we receive similar feedback from customers all the time. For example:
“Church Social allows our elders and deacons to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time shepherding the flock.”
— Dr. William den Hollander, Professor of New Testament at the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary
“Thanks for all you do. I cannot tell you how much of a game changer Church Social has been for us. It’s been an AMAZING help.”
— Rev. Michael Dixon, Senior Pastor of the Christ Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Mill, South Carolina
“Church Social is a great resource for pastors. It makes tasks that were time consuming, extremely easy. Church Social helps pastors focus on caring for their congregation by providing easy access to current membership details.”
— Rev. John van Popta, Pastor emeritus of the Fellowship Church in Burlington, Ontario
To learn more about Church Social, or to sign up for a free trial, visit our website at churchsocial.com.
If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!

Good morning. Grace and peace to you.

Today’s Kindle deals include a nice selection, most of which are published by Crossway.
(Yesterday on the blog: Mothers Have Wondrous Healing Lips)
5 Misconceptions about Heaven and Hell (and 5 Truths)
There is so much misunderstanding about heaven and hell. This article offers some clarity by addressing a few common misunderstandings.
If There’s No Purgatory, Will We Be Pure Enough for Heaven?
And speaking of heaven and hell, how that purgatory? Without that place of purification, could we ever be pure enough to enter heaven?
How to Read the Prophets
“The Prophets are difficult to understand. In part, that is because God revealed Himself to them in dreams and visions. Only with Moses did God speak face to face (Num. 12:6–8). The Major Prophets include Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The Minor Prophets include Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Here are several tips that will help you read and understand the Prophetic Books.” They are helpful tips!
Why Is the SBC Membership Declining?
“The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) released its annual statistics about membership, attendance, baptism, and other matters this week. The data paints a portrait of the largest Protestant denomination in the United States undergoing a significant decline in a relatively short period of time.” Ryan Burge explains what’s going on.
To the Soon-To-Be Pastor
This article offers wisdom to those pastors who may just be graduating and heading into their first position. But, of course, the wisdom goes farther than that.
Wise Women Build Homes: Motherhood’s Lasting Influence
Here’s one for the moms.
Flashback: Two Lives Blending Into One Life
…their two lives should blend in one life with no thought, no desire, no feeling, no joy or sorrow, no pleasure or pain, unshared.

Our sins are many, but His mercies are more: our sins are great, but His righteousness is greater: we are weak, but He is power. —John Newton