The Best Number for Your Church

How many people are attending Sunday services? How much money are people giving? How many people are serving? For many churches, these types of numbers are commonly used to measure success. But maybe the best number in your community is actually zero. Dave Gibbons shares that when Jesus shows up in our churches and neighborhoods, he doesn't just bring about inflation of crowds, but real, systemic transformation. 

About Dave Gibbons

Dave is the Lead Pastor and Chief Visionary at Newsong Church in Santa Ana, CA. He is also the Founder and Chief Vision Officer at Xealots, a human development group focusing on helping Creatives, Innovators, and Artists find their destiny. Subsplash has been blessed to partner with Dave and Newsong over the last handful of years, and we have been deeply impacted by his perspectives on training up leaders and engaging with culture. We hope his insight in the video above is encouraging to you as you seek the welfare of your cities (Jeremiah 29:7). To learn more about Newsong, download their app here. You can also check out Dave's books by following this link. 

About the video

We had the privilege of visiting with Dave during one of our trips to Southern California last year. We were so encouraged by our conversation with him that we asked midway through if we could record some of his thoughts, and he kindly agreed. So there we were, sitting in Dave's living room discussing church and culture, with Dave speaking into the mic. We couldn't keep the conversation to ourselves, though, so we decided to create a visual representation to go along with Dave's thoughts. The laundromat in the video represents the process of renewal and transformation, as clothes change from dirty to clean. 

Is there something God has placed on your heart that you'd like to share as an encouragement to fellow pastors and church leaders? We'd love to hear about it! Let us know at hello@subsplash.com. 

4 Engagement Tips for Easter Sunday

Easter is right around the corner! You've probably spent the last weeks (or months!) planning for how to engage with your community on this momentous weekend. Did you know that your app can play a huge part in those plans? We're not here to throw a wrench into the hard work your team has already completed, but we wanted to share a few ways you can use the Subsplash Platform to come alongside the strategies you already have in place. Let's take a look:

Announce your app from the stage.

Want people to engage with your content post-Easter weekend? Let them know about your app! It's very likely that most people coming through your doors own a smart phone...77% of American adults do, according to Pew Research. A simple plug from the stage allows every person to know where they can go to stay connected. It's quick, easy, and provides a great on ramp to keeping your gospel content in front of your community. We've found that churches that announce the app from the stage tend to see better engagement on mobile, including both Church of the City and Hillside Community Church - click the links to learn more about each church's experience.

 

Go digital.

Want to go green AND enable people to connect with your church, even after your services? Add your connect card and bulletin to the app! Visitors can submit information via the app at any point, and now their notes will live on their phone. Our friends at Calvary Chapel Worship Center in Portland went completely digital with their bulletins and connect cards, and were able to save thousands of dollars in the process. Even better, they saw engagement increase with digital bulletins! Learn more about their story here.

 

Use push notifications.

Push notifications are easy to schedule, and they receive a significantly higher open rate than your email blasts. Tap into this tool to keep more people in the loop during Holy Week and the weeks following. Here are just a few ideas of push notifications you can send to your community in the coming weeks:

• Reminder of service times and weekend event schedules
• Share a Bible verse/devotion to prepare people's hearts for your service
• Encouragement to invite a friend to church
• Share your Sunday bulletin
• Share Sunday's sermon and any other follow-up materials after your service

 

Refresh your app.

Keep both members and visitors coming back to your app by adding a fresh new look! If you haven't already, make sure to check out our new custom app layouts, which are available to all Subsplash clients. You can now customize your app on a deeper level than ever before, even down to adjusting the margins on each page! Contact your Client Success Manager to learn more about new layouts.

We are praying that God would use all of your hard work and preparation to draw people to himself, and we can’t wait to hear stories of all the amazing things he does through your ministry! Happy Easter to all! 

The Village Church: Multiply

Sometimes, "faith" can be spelled "r-i-s-k." But that hasn't kept Matt Chandler and the team at The Village Church from leaning into the Holy Spirit and trusting in God as they seek to transition their five campuses to autonomous churches. We sat down with Matt to hear more about this vision and what his team has learned through the process. "We're just believing through a lot of prayer and God revealing some things to us that tomorrow is going to be better than today," he said. We loved hearing the story behind Multiply, and we can't wait to see how God will use each of these new churches to impact his kingdom. 

Check out the video to hear more about The Village Church's transition and Matt's encouragement to other pastors (trust us, you're not going to want to miss that part). And to hear more from Matt Chandler, download The Village Church's app here. 

Remembering Billy Graham

We were deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Billy Graham this morning. Rev. Graham was a faithful teacher, pastor, and friend to countless people. He preached the good news of Jesus to more people than anyone else in history. It is estimated that nearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries heard the gospel through his public meetings and crusades, and hundreds of millions more through television, radio, and the internet. 

There are few people who haven't been impacted by Billy Graham's teaching. Glenn Reph gave his life to Jesus at a Billy Graham Crusade in 1963. Glenn would go on to faithfully lead major companies in the payment processing industry, pastor multiple churches, and join us here at Subsplash as the Vice President of Finance, all with Jesus at the center of his life. "My one purpose in life is to help people find a personal relationship with God," said Rev. Graham. The ripple effect of his faithful work is unquantifiable.  

As his health was fading, Billy Graham gave the exhortation, “Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.” While we mourn the passing of a faithful leader, teacher, and friend, we rejoice knowing that he is now face to face with the one he loved so deeply, free from pain, suffering, and strife. His legacy will impact and inspire many generations to come.

To listen to some of Rev. Graham's sermons, check out the Billy Graham Association app.

Client Spotlight: Hillside Community Church

Nestled at the base of Angeles National Forest, Hillside Community Church serves about 3,000 people from the surrounding Inland Empire of Southern California. The church was planted 35 years ago, with many founding members still in attendance. Today, they serve a wide demographic of people with an increasing number of young families. We chatted with Ryan Hubbard (Graphic Designer) and Morgan Nottingham (Project Coordinator) to learn more about Hillside’s communication strategy and how they utilize the Subsplash Platform.

 

Back To The Drawing Board

With an increasing focus on reaching the younger generations, Hillside Community Church decided to go to the drawing board and find the best solutions for using both their app and their website. “We did a lot of surveying to find out how many people used an electronic Bible, how many people took notes on their phone, and essentially how many people interact with digital content while in church,” said Morgan. After collecting all the data, Ryan, Morgan, and the rest of the team at Hillside made the decision to use the church website as an external tool, and have their app be primarily for internal use - the one place people could go to stay connected to the life of the church. “We didn’t create the app with the hope of using it to provide all the same information that’s on our website,” said Morgan. “We wanted it to help us connect with our church, encourage them to read the Bible, watch media, and share our content with them.” If you download Hillside’s app, you will find sermons, events, giving, a custom Bible-reading plan, and more content tailored to regular attenders, while the website showcases content that is more relevant to visitors and first-time guests. “We had to consider ways to make our communication go beyond Sundays. The app is the way we communicate with our community Monday-Saturday,” said Morgan.

The Results

Hillside’s new strategy saw an increase in engagement both in the app and on the web. Ryan and Morgan said that about 33% of new visitors on Sunday indicated that they heard about the church through the website or social media. Additionally, app usage has steadily increased by 20% year over year, with an average of 800 sermon plays each month. When the church decided to run a financial campaign to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey, they purposely made the option to donate to that fund available solely through Subsplash Giving in the app. In three weeks, $71,000 was raised. All who donated were set up with a new Subsplash Giving account, making it easy to set up recurring donations when they returned to the app. The church also saved roughly $20,000 by adding their Sunday bulletins to the app and cutting back on printing. This simple yet calculated strategy has not only helped Hillside save money, but put relevant information in front of the people who need it most. Those who are looking for a church can easily find the information they need where they are most likely to search for it, and once they attend a service, they can easily stay connected by keeping up with the app.

Full Speed Ahead

Implementing a new communication strategy can sound like a daunting task, so we asked Ryan and Morgan what that was like for Hillside. “A huge part of our success [in moving forward with digital content] comes from our senior leadership believing in the value of digital and social interaction,” said Morgan. “We know that the younger generation is the future of our church, and we found that that generation is much more dependent on electronic devices.” In addition to catering to the younger generation, Hillside made sure that everyone in the church knows where to go to get the content they need. “Our Senior Pastor talks about the app from the stage,” said Ryan. “We wanted to make sure we communicate that it’s ok to use your phone in church, and that the app is where to go to stay connected.” Hillside’s congregation is certainly enjoying the benefit of having one place to go to stay connected, and so is the church staff. “The biggest thing for us is that we positioned ourselves in a way so that we are only using one tool,” said Ryan. And that tool has helped more people in the Inland Empire hear the good news of Jesus’ saving grace.