ReportCompareIntegrationsSee Your Church Automated
2026 State of Church Operations Report

Your church runsitself. Finally.

What happens when your church runs itself.

Read the Full ReportBased on 847 churches surveyed, Q4 2025
0.0 hrs/week
saved per staff member
Across giving, scheduling, and follow-up workflows
0%
volunteer confirmation rate
vs. 61% industry average with manual reminders
0.0x
increase in first-time guest follow-through
Triggered within 24 hrs — no pastor action required
Automate v3.2 · Live847 pipelines running now
Planning Center Sync·Tithe.ly Giving·Breeze ChMS·Mailchimp Sequences·Slack Alerts·Rock RMS·Pushpay·Church Community Builder·Elvanto·ServiceU Events·Guest Follow-Up·Volunteer Scheduling·Planning Center Sync·Tithe.ly Giving·Breeze ChMS·Mailchimp Sequences·Slack Alerts·Rock RMS·Pushpay·Church Community Builder·Elvanto·ServiceU Events·Guest Follow-Up·Volunteer Scheduling·
Section 01 — The Problem

The average church loses 740 hours/year
to work that should be automated.

We audited 847 churches across 38 states. What we found isn't a technology problem — it's a disconnection problem. Every system works in isolation. Nothing talks to anything else.

73%

of churches over 500 members still run giving reconciliation manually

Average time: 4.1 hours every Sunday. That's a full work-week lost every month to copy-paste.

Church Admin Survey 2025, n=847
61%

volunteer confirmation rate when reminders are sent by hand

One missed Sunday slot costs $340 in reactive staffing. Multiply by 52 Sundays.

Volunteer Management Index, Q3 2025
68%

of first-time guests never receive a follow-up within 72 hours

The window closes. Research shows follow-up after 72 hrs drops return likelihood by 4x.

Guest Retention Study, Lifeway Research 2025
15 hrs

lost per week by solo pastors to tasks software should automate

ChurchTrak export → Excel → Mailchimp. Repeated every week. Every single week.

Solo Pastor Operations Audit, Automate 2025

From the field — verbatim

"I spend Sunday evenings manually entering attendance into three different systems."

Executive PastorGrace Community Church · 1,200 members · Nashville, TN

"We duct-taped Planning Center to Mailchimp with Zapier. It breaks every other week."

Operations DirectorElevation Church · 3,400 members · Charlotte, NC

"I found out a first-time family visited four weeks ago. We still haven't followed up."

Solo PastorCornerstone Fellowship · 210 members · Boise, ID
Section 02 — The Fix
Section 02 — Head-to-Head Comparison

Every workflow. Every platform.
One honest table.

We compared what churches actually use — manual processes, Zapier patchwork, and Automate — across every workflow that eats staff time. The math is in the last column.

18.6 hrs
Total time saved/week
8 / 8
Workflows fully automated
42+
Integrations connected
Workflow
Manual Process
Zapier Patchwork
Automate
Time Saved
Integrations
Giving SyncFinance
4.1 hrs/wk
7
Attendance TrackingOps
2.2 hrs/wk
5
Volunteer SchedulingPeople
3.3 hrs/wk
4
First-Time Guest Follow-UpOutreach
1.8 hrs/wk
6
Event RegistrationOps
2.1 hrs/wk
5
Weekly ReportingAdmin
2.9 hrs/wk
8
Donor Lapse AlertsFinance
1.4 hrs/wk
4
Small Group MatchingPeople
0.8 hrs/wk
3
Total / week
~16 hrs lost
~6 hrs saved
All 8 automated
18.6 hrs
42
Fully automated
Partial / workaround
Not supported
Hover rows for detail notes
Section 03 — The Connected Stack

Every tool your church uses.
Finally talking to each other.

Automate sits between your existing tools — no rip-and-replace, no retraining staff. Connect your stack in under 20 minutes and watch the first automation fire on Sunday.

🗓
Planning Center
ChMS

Scheduling, people, check-ins

Connected
💳
Tithe.ly
Giving

Online giving platform

Connected
🌬
Breeze
ChMS

Member management & giving

Connected
📧
Mailchimp
Email

Email sequences & campaigns

Connected
💬
Slack
Alerts

Staff notifications & alerts

Connected
🪨
Rock RMS
ChMS

Full church management suite

Connected
📱
Pushpay
Giving

Mobile giving & engagement

Connected
🏛
Church Community Builder
ChMS

CCB community platform

Connected
automate.pipeline — live
847 pipelines active
Data Collected
Check-in, giving, registration — all sources
01
Automate Processes
Rules engine evaluates every event in real-time
02
Actions Fire
Emails, Slack alerts, reports — triggered instantly
03
Reports Delivered
Monday 6 AM — dashboard already updated
04
Recent Pipeline TriggersLive feed
06:02:14
Weekly report generatedSent to 4 campus pastors · 847 attendance records
05:58:03
Donor lapse detectedMarcus W. · 23-day gap · Follow-up email queued
05:41:22
Volunteer confirmedSunday worship team · 11/12 slots filled · 1 auto-filled
04:17:09
First-time guest follow-upThe Hendersons · Visited Sun 2/23 · Email + pastor alert sent
03:55:44
Giving sync completeTithe.ly + Pushpay · $24,840 reconciled · Zero manual entry

Also connects with: Elvanto, ServiceU, Church Online Platform, Subsplash, Kindrid, Realm and 30+ more.

See all integrations
Interactive Demo Environment

See your church automated.

Select your church size. We'll show you a pre-built pipeline that matches your operations — giving sync, volunteer scheduling, guest follow-up — all firing automatically.

Select your church size to see your demo:

Under 200
Solo pastor setup · 15 min onboarding
200 – 1,000
Multi-team · Planning Center native
1,000 – 5,000
Multi-campus · Full pipeline suite
5,000+
Enterprise · Custom workflow builder
See Your Church Automated
No credit card required
·
Live demo in 60 seconds
·
847 churches already automated

"I walked in Monday morning and the report was already in my inbox. The follow-up emails had already gone. The giving was already reconciled. I just had my coffee."

Pastor David KimExecutive Pastor · Harvest Church · 2,800 members · Sacramento, CA