Fireside Chat #2: Business as Ministry and Vendors Who Care About Your Mission

This transcript was machine-generated from the video recording and lightly edited for readability. Speaker labels are based on context. [unclear] marks a short passage the transcription could not capture.

Zach Norris: Hey, everybody, appreciate y’all joining, and excited to be back with Justin again. Last time we were talking about some hidden costs in ministry and all the fun stuff that goes with that, from the standpoint of really everything IT, including payment processing and donation processing. So excited to be back here. Justin, if you don’t mind, a short intro would be great again, for anybody who may not have seen the first episode and might be watching for the first time today.

Justin Dean: Yeah, sure, man. It’s great getting to chat with you again about this stuff. I think it’s important: we’re both in the church tech industry and working with ministries, and just understand, even us, we’re vendors in this space. You want to do business with people who actually care about your mission, and that’s what I’ve been all about in my career and journey. I was a communications director at Mars Hill Church in Seattle forever, started church conferences, and worked for big tech giving companies running marketing. Now I have the pleasure of being a fractional CMO and helping with strategy for different organizations in the church tech space and nonprofit sector.

Justin Dean: It’s a pleasure, but you see a lot of different types of companies, a lot of different ways that they’re backed and who truly owns them, and it’s hard to find vendors who actually care about your mission. So I’m looking forward to today’s discussion, man. You run a company that is right in that segment and truly cares about mission. That’s why you do what you do.

Zach Norris: Yeah, it’s fun. I really do enjoy it, and it’s totally different than, for lack of a better term, working for the man, if you will. That doesn’t mean you can’t do ministry working for the man, so to say. I just like the flexibility that it has right now, because it really does empower me to make decisions that are fully kingdom based, rather than having to submit to some sort of authority above. My only authority in the business right now is God, which is amazing. That, and of course the United States government, which is always fun when it comes to tax season and any sort of regulatory concerns. But that’s a different discussion.

Zach Norris: I’m really excited. I really do want to talk about some of the ways you can tell the difference between a vendor who actually wants to serve the mission and one who just wants a contract. We touched on that last time. It’s going to be really interesting to dive into the way that I’ve set up Lamb in particular. We have this unique model that lets us operate almost as a ministry when it comes to churches, ministries, and nonprofits. It is a way that specifically honors God and honors our customers. We’re totally vendor neutral when it comes to decisions on what people want to use and what we recommend.

Zach Norris: And it’s not really a business model decision, although it technically relates to it. It’s more of a values thing. Having an open mind to allow a ministry to use whatever tools and systems they need to use is imperative, and I see a lot of companies that tend to force you one way or another into a thing that may not fit. In fact, the mission statement of our company is that we have a mission to bear witness to God’s creation through the design and implementation of the world’s most powerful technology solutions.

Zach Norris: We are empowered to build things, right? Work is good, and we should use it for good. So we get to show the love of Christ, the amazingness of Christ, through these really creative and different ways of thinking when it comes to IT. That’s what we do, because churches have these weird things they need done that traditionally a business would not. I’m curious what you’ve seen on that side too, with mission-based organizations, and any other experiences you’ve run into.

Justin Dean: Yeah, there are so many different vendors and options in the church world when it comes to giving, technology, church management platforms, and the like. And it’s interesting. I’ve seen both sides of it. I’ve seen companies that started out [unclear], and then as they grow and expand and acquire other companies, how it changes. So it’s hard to distinguish these days who’s going to serve you best and what’s the best way to steward that. It really comes down to whether they’re genuinely partnering with you or just selling you a product.

Justin Dean: And it’s hard to know that on the front end. They might have a great sales process where they’re holding your hand and promising everything, and then as soon as that contract or agreement is signed, all that kind of goes away. You’re left on your own, and support leaves something to be desired. We see that a ton, particularly with companies as they get [unclear]. There are companies that started out [unclear], but then they get bought by private equity, by companies that aren’t even Christian companies. You start this company that’s serving churches, and you may very well still serve churches, but over your head are these companies that aren’t Christian by any means, and their goal is just to grow the company so they can flip it again.

Justin Dean: That really changes things quite a bit, all the way down to how the church and the donors feel it, whether it’s lack of service, a change in service, or a change in features and pricing. That permeates down, and it really matters when you start to look at that kind of thing. [unclear] Try to avoid contracts, so you’re not locked in. But also, that’s a clear sign that they’re trying to maximize profits instead of actually serving you well. One way to maximize profits is by locking you into a contract for five years so you can’t move around and see what else is out there. That would be a red flag.

Justin Dean: It’s probably important, as you evaluate vendors, to go through a checklist of sorts of what to look for. That would be one: are they actually trying to lock you in with contracts or not? Another thing to look at when you’re in that sales process: are they just telling you about their product, or are they actually asking questions about your goals, how your church expects to grow, things like that? If you’re a church plant [unclear], but if your goal is to become a 100-person church, or a 300-person church, or even a 2,000-person church, that’s a good discussion to have, particularly if you’re signing a contract. What’s it going to cost when we get to our goal? Because we don’t want to be locked in. But most sales processes aren’t really talking about that.

Zach Norris: Yeah, absolutely. I think another thing is when a vendor can be honest enough to say when they’re not a good fit, or when it doesn’t make sense to work with them. That’s one of the hardest things as a business owner: refusing business. And we probably do it at least once a month. It’s one of the things that just eats at you. You’re like, oh no, this is something I would love to do, but you just aren’t a good fit. So having the honesty and the integrity to actually say, maybe we’re not a great fit for what you’re doing. And you know that a lot, with the all-in-one platforms.

Justin Dean: Yeah. You’re talking with them about your church, and you’re like, we’ve got a great website already, and they’re trying to convince you to move to their website builder. It’s like, well, why? We don’t need that add-on. We’ve already got a great website. So when a vendor can tell you, hey, you actually don’t need this part, or we could actually drop you down to a lower tier, instead of focusing on whatever quotas and add-ons they need to sell that month, they’re actually looking at your needs. Okay, you’ve got a great website, you’ve got a great app. Or even telling you, hey, you don’t need an app. You’re a 100-person church. Nobody’s going to download the app and use it. Just make sure your website is [unclear].

Justin Dean: They can tell you that instead of selling you on a $100 to $500 a month thing that nobody’s going to use, just because it gets them more revenue. That’s huge. A vendor that has the honesty to tell you that they aren’t a good fit, or that you don’t need a certain thing, is definitely a good sign.

Zach Norris: Yeah, I think also along those lines: when they have full, upfront pricing that’s transparent. You don’t have some crazy random fee tacked on at the end. I think about this from the IT side of it. We work pretty closely with a certain telephony company that happens to have all of their taxes and fees and everything listed up front on the estimates. Their invoices are notoriously simple in comparison to others in the industry. I think that’s part of why I’ve gravitated toward working with them so often. For churches that makes a lot of sense, because they don’t have to pick through and dig through everything to figure out what’s happening on their bill.

Justin Dean: And it often shows that the vendor is invested in working with you instead of invested in keeping you as a client by holding you hostage. In churches, the budgets are set, and they’re not adjustable like they would be in a business, where maybe the owner has the right to override it and change things. In the church, if you’ve got 500 bucks budgeted for something, and the vendor says, oh yeah, we’re 500 bucks, and then you get the invoice and it’s 500 plus tax plus this fee and an administrative fee, and you went over this month, so this month it’s actually 800 bucks.

Justin Dean: There’s no process in a church to pull that from another fund. Or if they do, it’s pulling from things like missions, or they need to wait until the budget resets the next year to adjust that kind of thing, or they’ve got to get the finance committee to meet and override it. So it’s very important to have upfront, transparent pricing like that. Let alone the fact that, why would it not be? Why are there extra fees? Just name your price and put it out there. I hate when you go to a website and it says contact us for pricing. It’s like, all right, A, you’re probably too expensive. I’m definitely not going to call. It just shows that they’re trying to charge you as much as they possibly can by having a conversation with you first, instead of just saying, here’s the cost.

Zach Norris: Yeah, it’s like going to a restaurant and then you’ve got the tax, the tip, the additional fee now.

Justin Dean: All of the extras, and then they ask you to leave a tip on top of the tip. Or they added the tip and don’t tell you, and then you add your tip on top of that, and they’re getting a 40% tip. I’m all about being generous, but sometimes I like to know that I’m being generous.

Zach Norris: Exactly. Yeah, that’s good. I think another thing, in the IT industry you see a lot of contracts, and making it easy to leave if you need to is really important too. If you’ve signed a contract and you’re in a contract, you’ve got to honor the word that you’ve given. But if you’re in a situation where your contract is coming up, and they drag their feet to give you an answer as to when your expiration date is, and by the time they give that to you it’s passed, right? Those are things that I think are just a big challenge. Vendors that really want to work with you will be kind to you and transparent with you. They want to invest in you, because they understand that your happiness is what’s going to keep you as a customer.

Justin Dean: Yeah, rather than a hostage situation. And the data thing is a big deal, particularly with churches and giving. Those are your people that you are shepherding, and part of that is protecting them and the data they’ve handed over by donating to your church. So when you’re locked into a platform that doesn’t let you move that or migrate it over easily, or doesn’t even let you access it, that’s a big deal. It means that you’re probably going to be locked into a platform that you can’t afford or that you shouldn’t be with, and it just makes it that much more complicated. So I think that’s an important one. Not getting locked into a contract is one thing, but not being able to move your data is an entirely different issue.

Zach Norris: Yeah, it’s pretty crazy for 2026 for that not to be simple to do. A hundred percent. Very cool.

Justin Dean: Yeah. I’m just trying to think through, when churches are purchasing from vendors, even when they’re talking with guys like you or they’re talking with giving platforms, how do you experience churches making decisions? How do they hear about you, or how are they choosing you over someone else?

Zach Norris: Yeah. If they hear about us and it’s the first time they’re hearing of us, and we start to get into a conversation, and they’ve never worked with Lamb and they don’t know anybody who’s worked with Lamb, oftentimes that conversation is a little bit different. We have to build trust, we have to offer a couple of references, that kind of thing. But usually if we have a warm introduction to a church, there’s a lot of trust already built there, because we’ve done this for literally hundreds of churches and we have a track record of success with it.

Zach Norris: That being said, I think that’s something I look for in a vendor: has this worked for other churches? Not every church has the same situation when it comes to really anything. I would argue almost every church has something different about its process. They do, for literally everything. But there are similarities, enough that it’s worth at least exploring the references a company may have, or even just digging in online, looking at a couple of reviews, or getting some sort of proof of concept for a solution and saying: hey, I trust you, I think this would work, but can we try it, just to make sure we’re not missing anything? Because oftentimes the church can’t really understand all of the nuances of a technology until it’s truly implemented. So, the ability to explore something with a proof of concept, and really try to break it. I always tell my clients: abuse this product and try to break it with every crazy thing that you could possibly do. And as long as you’ve done the stress test on it, daily life is going to be so easy.

Justin Dean: Yeah, I think that’s important as well. It’s a great question about how they buy. I’ve worked for churches in various capacities over 15-plus years, and churches are very relational and emotional buyers. It never really comes down to comparing feature to feature. There’s certainly a foundation of: it has to do this for it to work for us. Pricing, despite what we’re suggesting and putting out there, rarely comes up either. It should; you need to be a good steward, like we said, and look at that. But most church buyers want to do business with people they trust, who have the same values, who they know are going to support them when they need help on a Sunday morning and child check-in isn’t working or people aren’t able to donate. They want to know they’re going to be supported and the platform can handle it.

Justin Dean: Most of the time they’re having a conversation with you because they were recommended by someone else, or they looked at a demo that looked really great. It’s important when you’re evaluating vendors: are they putting out content that’s specific to the church and speaks to you, or are they just selling software? A vendor that truly cares about the church and knows the church is going to put out content, a blog post at the very least, things that truly help the church and come alongside you. They’re going to have easy, accessible support options: a phone number, a chat, an email, something to get hold of them. I think that’s really important to look at when you’re evaluating different vendors.

Justin Dean: I’m curious, what are your thoughts on the stewardship pricing issue? How much should a church be spending on tech? Have you done anything around this, what percentage of their budget, things like that? I feel like churches are sometimes trying to get away with spending as little as possible. That’s great, you don’t want to overspend, but you want the right technology and the right solutions for your needs. What have you seen? What does a church typically spend on tech?

Zach Norris: Yeah. As far as how much they should spend, the answer is a paradox. It’s always less and, simultaneously, it’s always more. It’s a really big challenge. They always need something more, because oftentimes the technology budgets of churches are much lower than they should be, particularly from a cybersecurity standpoint, though I do see that changing. That’s usually where our creative stewardship angle at Lamb comes in. We’ll try to save on the commoditized stuff and then reallocate that budget into the more strategic stuff. So think phones and internet: save on that. And think cybersecurity, and maybe security cameras or something like that: spend money there. Get FEMA grants, and there are all sorts of other tools there.

Zach Norris: But the short answer, from what I see them spending, is that I don’t think there’s a specific budget or percentage I could really nail down, going back to the fact that all churches do things so differently. A more campus- and broadcast-heavy multisite church is a lot different than a Baptist church in the country, right? These are totally different sides of technology, and a lot of times we’re looking at both types of churches. It fully depends on the specific ministry that church has, the call they’ve had to serve a particular community, and that’s going to look a lot different for the IT budget.

Justin Dean: Yeah, I think that goes back to why it’s important to talk about their goals when they’re picking vendors. Do you need full production for your stage? Are you going to livestream, or plan to livestream in the future? Is security an issue where you’re at? Do you need to step that up with different cameras and magnetic doors and things like that? How many kids come through the church, and do they go to their own space? All that kind of stuff is very important to talk through, because no one solution is going to fit every church. Every building is different, every structure is different.

Justin Dean: I think you’re right. There’s not a set budget, like four percent of your budget should be technology. It really depends. I know many churches that get away with the very minimum when it comes to technology, and they’re doing fine. There are necessities, for sure. I think everybody should have online giving. But sometimes it can be more cost effective to [unclear]. At my own church, we had two projectors on screens, and the projectors broke, and replacing the projector bulbs and everything was the same cost as buying an LED screen with the installation and wiring and everything that would have had to happen. So we said, well, let’s just buy an LED screen and ditch the projectors. Now we’ve got a pretty nice screen, which provides a lot more flexibility. It’s cheaper to run overall, and you hardly ever have to replace anything about it. You’ve got to look at stuff like that when you’re stewarding money well.

Justin Dean: I know that comes up a lot when we’re talking with people: how much is too expensive? I think it’s a balance of what’s the right technology and what’s the right cost, and finding what’s good for your scenario. It’s the attorney answer nobody wants: it depends. Everybody hates it.

Zach Norris: As long as the answer isn’t “how much do you have?” Then you’re talking to the wrong vendor at that point.

Justin Dean: Yeah. When the vendor’s first question is “what’s your total budget?” Why does that matter? What is your cost?

Zach Norris: That’s good. What’s a practical thing that churches can do? In the interest of time here, and kind of winding things down, what could someone on a church IT team, finance team, wherever, do this month? How could they apply some of the stuff that we’ve talked about?

Justin Dean: With anything that a church does, you’ve got to evaluate it with: is this helping us fulfill our mission? Take right now, this quarter, and evaluate all your vendors, from giving to telecom to security to building management, everything. Go evaluate all your vendor relationships, and make a process to do that at least every quarter. Just ask yourself: is this partner helping us fulfill our mission and be good stewards in the best way possible? And go look at what other options are out there. We shop around for car insurance and things like that frequently, but you never think about your giving platform or the other technologies that are supporting the church.

Justin Dean: A lot of it is because, in our minds, it’s hard to switch. We don’t want to deal with it. Executive pastors and church admins are so overworked as it is. The last thing they want to think about is switching a giving provider, or switching their church management software, or swapping out the phones and the security system, something that may be cheaper overall. But who’s going to manage that project? There’s no one here to do that. You’d be surprised these days, when you go evaluate what’s out there, how easy it is. Donorbox makes it easy to switch from one platform to the other without losing recurring givers, moving your data over easily, things like that.

Justin Dean: I love working with churches who use them. It just makes things easier, because they’ve actually thought through those things: what’s going to make the mission of the church easier? That’s the whole key of technology solutions: just make it work so you can get out of the way, and the church can go about its business of helping people and carrying out its mission. So don’t shy away from at least looking at what’s out there and how things have changed, because so many churches have been on the same platform for 10 years, because it’s like, whatever, it works, the money’s flowing, and we don’t have time to deal with this.

Zach Norris: Yeah. And I appreciate Donorbox too. Number one, for making the conversation possible between the two of us, but also because the company as a whole fits the model that we’re talking about. It just makes sense, and I think it’s totally worth a look. Man, I appreciate the time, running through some of this stuff today and having a little fun here. I asked last time, same question here: where can people connect with you, and how can they get in touch with you?

Justin Dean: Yeah. As churches are thinking through technology solutions and things like that, that’s what I’m here for: to help them evaluate all the different options. You can get hold of me on all the social media platforms, or just Google Justin Dean Marketing and I’ll come up. I’m always happy to walk churches through what’s the best solution for them, and I’ll point them to the right platforms that will meet their needs. Sometimes it’s going to be a more expensive platform, sometimes it’s going to be cheaper. It really depends on the church and your needs and what’s best for you. And again, thanks to Donorbox for making this conversation happen and connecting us. I love getting to talk with other people in the industry, and I love talking about how Donorbox is a great solution, one of the best technology stacks out there. They make it easy to switch to them, and in a lot of ways it makes the most sense for churches. Definitely take a look at them. Thanks again for connecting, man. It’s always good to see you.

Zach Norris: Yeah, that’s great. I appreciate you, man. Thank you so much.