I met Tim Morgan about a year ago when I asked him about 43 Verses; he recently showed me his most recent project called OneBody. OneBody enables churches to add social network features to their web site by using the data stored in their church management software.
The revolutionary thing about OneBody is that it is designed to work with ANY church management software or database.
For those of us building church web sites and those who manage church data, this is an exciting project. I was so jazzed by the project, I asked Tim some questions.
Q: To start, give
us the elevator pitch for OneBody. Is OneBody unique? Why?
In a sentence, OneBody is free, open-source,
volunteer-built software that connects churchgoers on the web. Basically, it's
my solution to meet several different needs I saw my church having.
For the technical types: OneBody is a web-based
application that runs on your church server or a paid host and synchronizes
with your existing church membership database.
Q: So what does it
do? What are the features?
Everything! Well, not quite, but it really has grown to
be something quite interesting and has a little bit for everyone.
OneBody started as a clean, simple replacement for our
aging online directory. With feedback, it grew to provide some basic
information sharing and social networking a la Facebook-style profile pages and
messaging, etc. Finally, we added groups, pictures, Bible verse sharing, and
even recipe sharing!
The 2 main features ministers salivate over:
1. Fast Online Directory - most of our staff at Cedar
Ridge now use OneBody instead of our main membership software, since it is so
fast and easy to use. And they can access the online system from just about anywhere.
2. Groups - our church is very small-group driven, so it
makes sense that we provide ways for the people in the groups to connect more
than just once a week. Each group has its own email address, making it easy for
groups to communicate. Groups can be private (like an Elders group), and group
members can share private prayer requests with one another.
Q: Okay features
are great. Tell us a story of how this is used in a church setting?
OneBody was built originally for Cedar Ridge Christian
Church (cedarridgecc.com) in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. It's
used every single day by ministers, clerical staff, members, group leaders, and
teachers.
But it didn't happen overnight. Our "Technology
Ministry" has worked pretty consistently for the past year to educate
users, improve the system with feedback, and promote its use in the church.
Q: Explain how
OneConnect works? What church management software does it support?
OneBody isn't yet suitable as a replacement for your
church's standard membership database software. That simply wasn't the monster
of a task we had in mind to accomplish.
Rather, we started by building a separate database system
to house the basic contact details and the "extra" stuff that
traditional membership databases don't do at all or just don't do very well: personal
favorites, groups, and email. To accomplish this, we came up with the
"Connector" idea. A Connector is simply a bit of code that runs
periodically and pulls information out of your existing membership database.
We only have one Connector built at this point, and I
won't even bother mentioning the system it's meant for since Cedar Ridge is likely
the only church still using it. But, building a Connector isn't rocket science,
and we hope to add more as our community of programmers grows. In fact, we're
planning to release one for ACS early next year.
Q: How could
existing church management software vendors support this project?
By openly publishing their database schemas and/or
providing hooks to easily (and programatically) export their program's data. It
seems that church management software vendors are sometimes reluctant to give
church "volunteers" access to the raw data, so some coaxing may be
necessary.
But I suspect the most progress and innovation will come directly
from the community of eager volunteers that start to build on this project. My
gut tells me most traditional church software vendors don't want interoperability,
because they want your church to buy *their* online module instead of using
something free you found on the web.
Q: I see that it
is built using Ruby on Rails. If a developer is reading > this, how can they
support this project?
Just jump in. Install the software and give it a go. The
code is completely open and so is the development process. We publish all tickets
(bug reports and enhancement requests alike) on the website; nothing is secret.
At this stage, the biggest barrier to use by other
churches is the lack of Connectors for various software packages. That's where
the most work is needed right now.
And, as you may have have heard, people say Rails is the
hottest and best web application framework out there (and we tend to agree), so
you can rest assured OneBody isn't built with some proprietary, unknown
language and framework. The code is very well organized and easy to understand.
Q: Tell us a
little about what it means that OneBody is OpenSource. How is Cedar Ridge
involved in the project?
Open source means free. "Free" as in it costs
your church nothing to have and use the software. But also "free" in
the sense that it is freely distributable and unencumbered by (most) licensing restrictions,
except that any changes you distribute must be licensed under the same terms.
Basically, it means that if you, as a programmer, make some contributions and
the software is enhanced because of it, no one else can come along and make
money from your work (in a nutshell).
Cedar Ridge is our pilot church and is usually first to
see new features (and new bugs). I do not "work" for Cedar Ridge in
the sense that I do not get paid for my contributions, however I do volunteer
as leader of the Technology Ministry. That's where the connection between Cedar
Ridge and OneBody exists.
Q: What are the
requirements for OneBody? For setup, for maintenance?
1. Full (shell) access to a Linux (or Unix-based) web
server. Windows isn't yet supported. That means that a server inside your
church would do, or a VPS-type hosting account outside your church. While we haven't
tried it yet, shared hosting accounts probably won't give you the access you
need to set up OneBody.
2. A staff person or volunteer with decent computer
skills.
3. Unless we have a Connector already built (or you can
talk us into building it for you), you'll need a programmer to look at your existing
church management software and to write one for you.
As for maintenance, there are the usual maintenance tasks
of running a server.
Q: How can a
church get started with OneBody? What kind of church would OneBody work best
for?
Download. Install.
Perhaps the best way to get started with OneBody in your
church would be to get it up and running and simply promote it as an online directory.
From there, see where people take it.
I suppose any kind of church could use it. While it was
written specifically for a medium independent protestant Christian church, we think
it could work for just about any kind of church. And for that matter, with a
bit of work, OneBody might make a decent online community type site for any
group of people needing to connect online, religious or not (but we haven't
tried that yet).
Q: And if I'm a
church leader, what kind of person do I need to find to implement OneBody? A
programmer? A web designer?
At this point, it will probably take a programmer-type to
make OneBody work. Though, we hope to make installation much, much easier over
the next few weeks and months, and once we get a decent set of Connectors built,
OneBody should only need a sysadmin-type to get up and running.
Time will tell. I suppose it all depends on the amount of
support OneBody gets from the community. While I get some help from friends every
now and then, and my wife is very helpful in testing and providing support,
this is really a one-man project. OneBody will only grow significantly and
become usable outside of Cedar Ridge if people help out.
Q: If you were to
dream, what could OneBody become?
We have many plans, as you might imagine.
In the near future, I hope to port an old check-in system
I wrote years ago to the OneBody system. While not directly related to the current
features, it will fit nicely on top of the login and access facilities OneBody
has. And on that note, OneBody starts to become a platform of its own,
providing a basic layer of functionality common across many different
church-related applications.
Also, we have dreams of building in a general purpose CMS
so the one application could run our church's main, visitor-focused website
*and* the member-only site.
Further (perhaps much further) down the line, we see
OneBody becoming its own sort of church management application, though focused
entirely on a different angle. It was built with the common churchgoer in mind rather
than just the clerical staff. We turn the traditional model on its head by giving
the most powerful tools to the people -- not just the staff.
Those are some pretty hefty goals, I know. And like I
said, it will all depend on help we get from the community. Left as a one-man project,
we'll be finished sometime around 2025. :-)
By Tim Bednar, founder of Plaid
Software for people focused on ministry
