Developing a Church Management System for God’s Fire Ministry International
Chapter One
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The aim of the study is to build a database system which would be effective in storing data and serving as a church management system for God’s Fire ministry International, Ghana.
The objectives include:
- An extensive study of the literature around the operations of a typical information management system.
- Identifying the key areas of operation in the church where automation is needed.
- Design of systems with the potential of proffering solutions to those areas identified in (ii) above.
- Implementation of the designs in (iii) above and providing recommendations for the future.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
This chapter examines in detail, the history and developments made in the ICT sector, through previous research work on this subject of computerized church management systems. We would also examine the characteristics, models, architectures, and limitations as pointed out by various scholars and researchers. This will provide the groundwork for figuring out an efficient way to implement a church management system for the God’s Fire Ministries International
CONCEPTUAL AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK/REVIEW
One area where modern information technology is being regularly utilized is in religious activity, such as with Bible mobile applications. Around the world, more and more people are using mobile applications to find information about themselves, their friends, and their religion. There are numerous studies on the impact of information and technology on churches today. By gaining an understanding of how the church uses information for learning, (Gunton, 2011) demonstrated the value of information. The research’s findings suggested that church organizations, church leaders, and laypeople may find it useful to think about how information can be used to increase faith, foster relationships, manage the church, and respond to religious knowledge. Additional study came from (Bolu, 2012(ICT) adoption in church communication for expansion in Nigeria was one of his topics of discussion. He evaluates the use of ICT infrastructure in churches for human resource management and church administration. The findings indicated that while most churches have websites and email addresses, there is minimal interaction between churchgoers and leaders. Finally, even though the majority of churches do not have adequate ICT staff and infrastructure, they firmly believe that they must. On the other hand, information technology, according to (Sellers, 2007), is crucial for churches. Technology is a huge issue for every church since it is a major issue in society, according to Seller in his journal titled Technology and Ministry (Sellers, 2007). Additionally, Sellers discusses that information technology is meant to function as a form of community for congregation, it has a way for people to connect with the church and to stay connected when they are away, and also update users on what is happening within the church. (Grinter, 2011) presented the results of their research in four sections focused on different aspects of ministry served by ICTs: Corporate work; Sunday Worship Service; Coordinating the Church Community; and Outreach to People outside the Congregation. Further, Grinter also describe that technologies play an important role in the management of the church to support financial data, payroll for any employees, service for community and so forth.
EMPIRICAL/EXISTING SYSTEMS REVIEW
The current systems with features similar to those of the proposed system are examined. Almega Church Office, Methodist Center Management System, and Church Community Builder are among them.
Methodist Center Management System (MCMS)
This system’s primary goal is to help the pastor and the center committee members better manage and maintain the center’s information (Nee, 2005). Operating this system requires less learning, making it simpler for the intended consumers. Additionally, it is advantageous to the center because it requires less physical space for storage and less labour to categorize the information. The system aids the pastor in distributing the duty among the congregation. In addition to making information access and retrieval simpler, it also makes sure that information confidentiality is upheld. However, this center is not responsible for overseeing or maintaining data regarding offertories, tithes, or the center’s financial situation.
Almega Church Office
The ten modules of this software, which was created specifically for Chinese churches, are divided into different tiers, each of which consists of four modules: Members, Groups, Offering, and Attendance (Kurniawan & Cassandra, 2014). It helps the church with time-consuming tasks like allocating resource usages and storing and tracking member attendance. However, it takes some time to understand how to utilize this application. Users who cannot understand Chinese may find it strange as the English language option is not fully functional.
Church Community Builder (CCB)
The Church Community Builder is an on-line web-based database management system for churches. It comprises Church Management System, Private Member Community and Public Website Content Management. The system has four main application suites; Groups, Event Calendar, Giving and Tasks and nine functions that enable its members to have sharing online, keep track of its members and visitors, manage the resources and build report as well as to customize the setting of the website page level and structures for the church easily.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
This chapter examines how the current system works as well as how to create a better alternative for its enhancement. The relationship between actors, entities, platforms, and information flows within an organisation is critical. In a nutshell, system investigation and analysis is the study of an existing system with the goal of improving it or developing an entirely new system to replace it. The main task here is to design a new system that is as efficient, if not more efficient, than the existing one using tried and trusted development methods. The Waterfall model is used in software development.
RESEARCH DESIGN/APPROACH
The descriptive survey design was used in this study to gauge user opinion on the quality of implementation. This study design was chosen in order to elicit a reasonable response rate from the participants. This will assist the researcher in gathering enough data to code and quantitatively analyse it.
RESEARCH SETTING
The research will be set in the community of the software users. This is a very small scope because the users are not expected to be more than 50 after implementation.
DATA(REQUIREMENTS) COLLECTION INSTRUMENT
A survey questionnaire was the instrument used for primary data collection. All the questions on the questionnaire were scaled using the Likert scaling method. Answers to the questions in the quantity of relationships between variables in each section were coded. The measurement consists of rules for assigning numbers to objects in such a way as to represent quantities of attributes. A five (5) point Likert scale option was used in assigning values to both the quality and performance data collected from the respondents. The value ranges from 1 – 5 (1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Average, 4 = Agree, and 5 = Strongly Agree. These values were used to measure respondents’ degree of satisfaction with the final product.
CHAPTER FOUR
IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
This chapter discusses the deployment and testing of the church management application. The section discusses the implementation and the user feedback review of the application after deployment.
SYSTEM DEMONSTRATION
The system we have developed is mainly a web-based system. The three-tier architecture is followed in the development of the system. A three-tier architecture has three separate components: a client, an application server and a database server. In implementing a three-tier architecture the number of choices is more than the traditional client server architecture. The communication protocol used to communicate between the client and the application server can be different from that used to communicate between the application server and the database server. The workload distribution among the three components can vary widely across applications.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
CHAPTER INTRODUCTION
A church management system was developed in this project with the view to embrace technology in our everyday life. The system was able to register and store church information and enabling login. This project also emphasized on the web-based system which substitutes the current method of manual records.
CONCLUSION
The result of this project leads to the conclusion that if this software is introduced and implemented, it would help the church achieve the objectives above and also help eradicate the paper work from the system.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We recommend that any group or persons that wish to further improve upon this project may incorporate:
- Online facility for member and other users to donate to the church.
- Provide facilities for members to communicate online.
- Provide facility to signal members birthday and anniversaries.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
The web enabled system “church management system” on successful completion enables the members of church to view the status of the records. It will also provide the facility to the user so that they can send their request online. The Authority of the church will be also benefited by the proposed system, as it will automate the whole registration procedures, which will reduce the workload for the Authority.
Since every system has some limitations, so the proposed system is also not untouchable in this regard. Although it includes many features but still it would not be sufficient as the user requirements are not always same. The change in the requirements will need some changes in the system to fulfill the requirements. The security of the system will be one of the prime concerns once it will be made online.
This program would enhance the running of the church information. The existing system will be used alongside the new system to ensure that the church does not loose valuable information when switching to the new system.
REFERENCES
- Gunton, L. (2011). Religious information literacy: Using information to learn in church community. The Australian Library Journal, 60(2), 155-164.
- Bolu, C. A. (2012). The church in the contemporary world: Information and communication technology in church communication for growth: A case study. Journal of Media and Communication Studies, 4(4), 80-94.
- Hackler, D., & Saxton, G. D. (2007). The strategic use of information technology by nonprofit organizations: Increasing capacity and untapped potential. Public administration review, 67(3), 474-487.
- Grinter, R. E., Wyche, S. P., Hayes, G. R., & Harvel, L. D. (2011). Technology in protestant ministry. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 20(6), 449-472.
- Kurniawan, Y., & Cassandra, C. (2014). Development of church information system (A case study approach). International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications, 8(12), 199-208.
