About Michael Tribett

My story starts in Las Vegas, Nevada, where I was born and raised. By my mid-twenties I was very isolated. I had bad social anxiety and very few friends, and the friends I did have had moved away. My sister, probably my closest friend, had just moved to Ohio. She could hear how low I was.

She encouraged me to try a young adults ministry that met on Tuesday nights. I asked her if it was a church thing. It was. I went anyway, mostly to appease her, and for the first time in my life I saw people together who wanted to be together. I kept going back. Many of them went to Hope Church, so one weekend I went too.

I came to faith in 2016 on a mission trip to Thailand. A couple of months after I started at Hope Church, I was on a plane with twenty-some people I did not know, headed for a church in rural Thailand right on the border of Laos. I almost pulled out. I am so thankful I did not.

The Christians I met there were a small community surrounded by Buddhist neighbors, and they did life together every single day. Years later I would recognize it as the church described in Acts 2. The American team welcomed me like family. God revealed Himself to me there, and it changed the trajectory of everything.

When I came home, the leader of that trip, Scott Worthington, started discipling me. We met once a week, then worked out together every day, and he invited me into his home and his family. Other men at the church did the same. I was formed by people who would not let me stay on the outside.

I went to seminary because people in my church saw something in me and said so. After I had been a Christian for two years, several of them told me to consider it. In 2018 I moved across the country to the Raleigh, North Carolina, area to study at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest.

I never planned to become a pastor. I went to learn to disciple others well. I taught high school through most of seminary, stepped away from teaching for my last semester, and finished a Master of Divinity in Christian Ministry in 2022, with a focus on missions, global studies and discipleship.

I serve at Exchange Church in Rolesville, North Carolina, where I have been a member since 2018 and have served in different leadership roles. My wife and I have served in youth ministry since 2021, and we have led a small group together since 2023. It is a smaller church, and close-knit.

Before that, I led a discipleship group at Southeastern from 2018 to 2020. In Las Vegas, at Hope Church, I led a small group and served as a leader in the college ministry from 2016 to 2018, and I led several short- and mid-term missions to Thailand and Laos between 2017 and 2020.

I ended up in church software because my wife saw a gift in me before I did. After seminary she encouraged me to look at technology, so I took an entry-level job at a major church management software company. I spent about three years there and learned church management systems inside and out.

Those systems are good at what they do. They keep careful records of who showed up and who gave, and they let a church communicate from the top down. What I could not find anywhere was a way to keep up with the relationships between the members themselves. That gap stayed with me.

In April 2025 I stepped away from that job to be a full-time dad to our two young daughters, and to start building something of my own.

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

He looked fine on paper. He was showing up. He was in small group. But nobody knew he felt alone.

I was heartbroken, and so were my pastors. They had no idea. A friend shared church-growth research with me that named what I had felt. In Win and Charles Arn’s 1984 study, most new Christians who stayed had made seven or more friends in the church in their first six months; most who left had made two or fewer.

I had lived both sides of that. Connection is how God grew me, and isolation is what He saved me from.

When I asked a mentor how to get into product management, his advice was simple: build something you are passionate about. So I did. I showed early prototypes to dozens of pastors and church planters, and they shaped what FlockConnect became. I started FlockConnect LLC in July 2025.

In early 2026 FlockConnect went through the Missional Labs Faith and AI Accelerator, and in April I presented it at the Missional AI Global Summit in Silicon Valley. In May I started the whole product over from scratch, with real specifications and architecture, because church data deserves the highest standard I can build to. FlockConnect Starter opened to every church in late August 2026, and the Collie plans opened in November. More about FlockConnect.

I build with AI agents. I taught myself to code with AI, and I direct the agents from specifications I write, checking their work as they go. I keep the direction with me. FlockConnect LLC is self-funded: there are no outside investors, and I am not seeking any.

My wife’s income carries our family while I build, and I have turned down investors and partnerships whose approach I disagreed with. FlockConnect is not for sale, and I have put that in writing. I write more about how I work in my notes.

Besides FlockConnect, I am building Ozzie, an open-source Mac app that keeps watch over Sunday in Planning Center and drafts the notes a person sends. I am building it during the AI for Church Hackathon 2026. I also run Household Theology Press, a free library of Reformed homeschool and family-discipleship resources.

Ozzie · Household Theology Press · All work

Introduce me as the founder of FlockConnect, and add Ozzie if the audience is church staff. These three bios are written in the third person for event programs, podcast notes and articles. Use any of them as they are, or trim them to fit. For a headshot and more, see the press page.

The short version: Michael Tribett, founder of FlockConnect LLC, born and raised in Las Vegas, living in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area since 2018, with a Master of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Everything below is current as of the date at the foot of this page.

Name

Michael Tribett

Work

Founder of FlockConnect LLC, started July 2025

Building

FlockConnect, a Church Relationship Manager; Ozzie, a Mac app for church admin work

Also

Household Theology Press, a free library of family-discipleship resources

Lives

Near Raleigh, North Carolina, since 2018

From

Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was born and raised

Faith

Became a Christian in 2016, on a mission trip to Thailand

Education

Master of Divinity in Christian Ministry, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022

Church

Member of Exchange Church in Rolesville, North Carolina, since 2018

Before

About three years inside a major church management software company; a high school teacher during seminary

Funding

Self-funded, with no outside investors

Accelerator

Missional Labs Faith and AI Accelerator, Winter and Spring 2026