Why I built FlockConnect

It started with a friend who was leaving

During COVID, one of my closest friends told me he felt completely isolated. We were in a small group together. We did life together. He had been a member of our church for nearly two years, and he really only knew about three people. He told me he had decided to leave.

I was heartbroken. When I brought it to my pastors, they were heartbroken too. They had no idea. He looked fine on paper. He was showing up. He was in a small group. But nobody knew he felt alone.

The research named what I had felt

That stayed with me, so I started reading. A friend pointed me to church-growth research that put words to it. New members who form real friendships in their first months tend to put down roots and stay. New members who are processed through programs and events but never actually connected to anyone tend to drift, often without a word. In their numbers, most new Christians who stayed had made seven or more friends in the church in their first six months; most who dropped out had made two or fewer. The relationships were the signal.

This is the research Win and Charles Arn carried to pastors, in their book The Master's Plan for Making Disciples. I had lived both sides of it. Connection is the thing God used to grow me, and isolation is the thing He saved me from.

The gap was hiding in the software

The more pastors I talked to, the more I heard the same thing. Their software could tell them who showed up on Sunday and who gave. It could not tell them who actually knew anyone.

A church management system is built to run the operations of a church, and the good ones do that well. But it watches the relationship between the institution and each member. It was never built to watch the relationships between the members themselves, which is exactly where someone quietly slips away.

So I built the missing layer

FlockConnect is a Church Relationship Manager. No software can see a friendship form, and FlockConnect does not pretend to. What it does is give a church's whole team one place to keep up with care for each person: to notice who the church hasn't seen lately, to follow through on what was promised, and to share the load. It does not replace the church management system a church already runs; it comes alongside it. FlockConnect is an Official and Authorized Planning Center Integration, and a church on anything else brings its people in by CSV.

Collie, the assistant inside FlockConnect, can show a pastor how a person they are looking at is doing and draft a note or a next step. Nothing it drafts reaches a member or a connected system, and no care record is created, until a person approves it. It is not the shepherd. That is the pastor. It is the sheepdog at the pastor's side. And the pastor is not the Chief Shepherd. That is Christ, and pastors and care teams serve under Him (1 Peter 5:4). The picture owes much to W. Phillip Keller's Lessons from a Sheep Dog.

What I believe

I believe people are made to know and to be known. I believe the church is where that is supposed to happen, and that when one person falls through the cracks the whole body loses something: their gifts, their service, the part only they were ever going to play. You do not just lose a number. You lose a person.

I do not believe the answer is more automation standing between a pastor and their people. I believe it is better sight, so that the next time a pastor sees someone, they already know who needs them. Deeper connections lead to deeper relationships. Deeper relationships lead to better discipleship. That is the whole reason FlockConnect exists.

A little about me

I am Michael Tribett, the founder of FlockConnect. I grew up in Las Vegas, where at Hope Church I led a small group, served as a leader in the college ministry, and led several short- and mid-term missions to Thailand and Laos. In 2018 I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, for seminary, and I have been a member of Exchange Church in Rolesville ever since, serving in a few different leadership roles. Today my wife and I serve in youth ministry and lead a small group together. I hold a Master of Divinity in Christian Ministry from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where I also led a discipleship group.

I came to faith in 2016 on a mission trip to Thailand, and I have spent the years since around both ministry and church technology, which is where I kept running into the same blind spot in every tool. FlockConnect went through the Missional Labs Faith and AI Accelerator, and it is an Official and Authorized Planning Center Integration.

A church on Planning Center connects through the two-way Planning Center integration. You can read more on the blog, or find me on LinkedIn. Writing about FlockConnect? The press and media kit has the facts, the logo files, and our prior coverage.