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/ http://www.ont

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/ 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?