We’ve been hibernating for much of the winter. Actually, since October! Our team has been hard at work rebuilding our database and streamlining our processes. This extensive database work has required us to delay publishing on the hundreds of churches that have continued to pour in through our Crowdsource Submit A Church form. However, taking these steps was necessary for us to prepare our technological infrastructure for the rapid growth that we are experiencing. Thank you for your patience! We are now extremely well positioned to rapidly work through our backlog.
We’re excited to show off our new website and some shiny new features. Here are some highlights:
-Verified Clear Member Churches are now featured on our Home Page! These are the early adopters of the VC Membership pilot program which we introduced in September. We’re excited to feature them prominently on our home page as emulators of the new standard of clarity we are aiming to replicate. (Please note that it does not cost anything to receive a Verified Clear™ score).
-Find A Church lets you search for a church by location! View churches by score on one of the two maps (LGBTQ Score or Women in Leadership) using your current location, city, state or zip code. In an effort to further promote those churches who meet our standard of clarity (Verified Clear), you’ll notice their markers on our map are distinct from every other score. That’s intentional. Verified Clear is the new standard of clarity and these are the churches who believe that #ClarityIsReasonable. (Again, please note that it does not cost anything to receive a Verified Clear™ score).
-Browse By Denomination or Network at the bottom of the “Find A Church” page. Part of recreating our database included a more logical way to organize by denomination and network which has revealed some fun facts about our database. For instance, if you don’t count Non-Denominational churches, which is the largest represented group with 626 congregations, the largest single denomination is the Episcopal church with 235 congregations scored! The Southern Baptist Convention follows closely behind with 232 congregations and 182 in the United Methodist Church.
-Church Clarity Merchandise is now available on our newly launched Marketplace! Be sure to check out our selection of gear and check back for frequent updates to our inventory.
-Resources section is now available and specifically geared towards church leaders who are interested in getting clear. In it, you’ll find PDF’s explaining how to be clear and what our scoring process is. This section will also be helpful for reporters who want to get up to speed on Church Clarity.
This is our first major release of 2019 but there is plenty more on the way. Check back regularly for updates and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to stay in the loop!
