A historic move toward a sophisticated church management system was made by the Korean Union Conference (KUC) and Japan Union Conference (JUC) from January 31 to February 7, 2018. The training and implementation for the Adventist Church Membership System (ACMS) were conducted in the offices of JUC and KUC by Sherri Ingram Hudgins, General Conference(GC) ACMS director.
KUC and JUC are the first major unions to implement the ACMS, which is web-based and operated by the GC as a global network. It is expected that this new membership and church management system will help local churches record and transfer membership rapidly and accurately through an automatic and efficient IT system.
After several years of consultation and planning together with the GC and five Union/Conference/missions in the NSD territory, the Asia-Pacific Division Executive Committee approved to implement this system in the NSD territory in May 2016 in its Midyear Committee.
Korean Union Conference ACMS Training
The ACMS provides essential and efficient tools to care for Bible interests, baptized members, and their family members. In addition, local churches can easily enter their comprehensive integrated statistical data relating to their evangelistic and community activities through the ACMS, and they don’t need to submit many different kinds of reports to their conference office. Once local churches enter their data into the ACMS, live-time analytic statistical reports can be immediately produced simultaneously for all the levels from their church to their Conference, Union, Division, and the GC.
Nowadays our churches have a huge challenge with the retention and reclamation of lost membership. The ACMS can help local church pastors and church leaders find and care for not only their lost sheep but also their members who are still recorded on the books, but currently attending other churches.
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Japan Union Conference ACMS Training
The CG has been continually developing and upgrading this global software to provide this sophisticated web-based IT system free of charge to Adventist churches throughout the world. There are 16 full time IT workers who are developing and upgrading the ACMS system at IATec (Adventist Institute of Technology) in Brazil. The IATec building accommodates 300 Adventist IT people to provide customized and integrated IT solutions to support the fulfillment of the mission of the Adventist Church throughout the world.
According to Hudgins, in order to help individual church members to be involved with church activities through the ACMS, it is planned to provide ACMS applications for iPhone and Android smartphones in the near future. Also, it will include an excellent church mapping tool to help the Mission to the Cities with location map and demographics.
Following KUC and JUC, Chinese Union Mission, Taiwan Conference, and Mongolia Mission will implement this ACMS this coming June 2018. The ACMS has been translated into most of the local languages, and each local translator can adjust and update the translations at any time directly through the live-website. Through this ACMS, may the Lord bless and expand His gospel Kingdom in the NSD mission territory!
News Article by Song, SungSub, NSD Associate Secretary