Our phones are filled with a myriad of apps, ranging from social and travel to faith-based and more. However, fascinating research has emerged that despite having approximately 80 apps installed, the average person only engages with 12% of them on a daily basis. This statistic raises a vital question. 

Is Your Church App Optional or Optimized?

Church mobile apps are often positioned as optional and likely upon the 88% of apps that go unused.  “Please download our app if you are interested in registering for our next event” or  “scan the QR code on the screen if you would like to give.”   

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Unfortunately for many churches your church app is not positioned as an integrated and optimized part of the discipleship and engagement strategy.

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If your church app is not part of the discipleship process, the increase of generosity that comes from growing spiritually, might be given to some other entity or crowd funded campaign, instead of your church. That’s because people are affected by what researchers call the “frequency illusion”.  As people scroll social media daily for hours, we all see friends, family and celebrities raising money via GoFundMe, Patreon, Kickstarter, etc more often than seeing what the needs of our church community are. If a regular attender of your church is visiting on average 1.4 times per month, but they are seeing crowdfunded campaigns everyday, which are they more drawn too based on frequency?  

A good question to ask yourself is…

When was the last time you were on your church app and how many minutes did you spend on it compared to how much time you spent on social media that same day? In order to grow giving in your church app, you need to increase the amount of daily time with God that someone is spending in your church app.

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What we have seen is that churches who focus on increasing daily time spent with God in their church app also see an increase in generosity.  Here are 5 ways to increase your congregations daily time with God so that giving grows also.

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1. Create A Reason

Create a reason for someone to visit your church app everyday.  Could be as simple as a daily motivational quote that your Pastor posts.  A short devotional based video created from last weekend’s message.  Or a place for people to submit prayer requests, pray for others and receive notifications when they are prayed for.

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2. Create Community

Create community in your church app that naturally draws people who are wanting to take a next step into a community type setting, but are not quite ready to commit to joining a small group of people they don’t know yet.  The key is a community that is invitational, welcoming, purpose based and that allows them to get to know names and faces so that they feel more comfortable joining a small group.

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3. Felt Need Focus

Covid-19 is no longer a top search trend.  It has been replaced by search terms like “how to cope with stress”, “dealing with anxiety”, “help with depression”, “how to get more energy”.  People spend time reading articles, joining support groups and asking existential questions about life, faith and meaning when they are dealing with a felt need.  Providing those types of resources and groups in your church app gives them a place to go and find help.

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4. Encourage Daily Use

When is your church app mentioned in the order of your service?  Likely only during host announcements when “download our app if you are new to the church” or “open our church app to give” is mentioned.  In addition to those moments, have your pastor incorporate it into the message.  Share prayers that were submitted last week in the app or reflections based on the scripture reading that was available in the app.  Encourage people to engage daily because your pastor incorporates it into the message on a continual basis.  

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5. Ensure Integrations Work

Ensuring integrations work is critical.  When you think about apps like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, SnapChat everyone’s experience is different and customized to the user based on algorithms.  So while everyone is downloading the same app, each user is presented with content the algorithm chooses specifically for them based on demographic and usage data.  For churches that is accomplished with integrations, so that the content you present is personalized to each user. 

Personalized content is based on people profile attributes you have stored in your churches management system like RockRMS, Church Community Builder, Planning Center, Ministry Platform, TouchPoint and others.  Data like age, marital status, kids ages, small group enrollment, giving status, baptism, location, membership and volunteering are all ways to personalize content in your app to present events, content or invitations that will resonate with the exact person you are hoping to reach.   

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Summary

At Apollos we recognize the importance of increasing time spent with God and the positive effect that not only has on someone’s spiritual life, but also the growth in generosity that it creates. So we ensure that all of the integrations we have with giving providers are robust.  

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We integrate directly with all church giving providers including My Well Ministry, PushPay, Simple Donation, Overflow, Subsplash, SecureGiving, Online Giving, Tithe.ly, Church Center and also provide native in-app Apple Pay giving through My Well Ministry, Simple Donation and Overflow. 

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In addition we can offer stock and crypto giving through our integration with Overflow.

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Once you have increased someone’s daily time with God in your app, generosity will grow because the user will see the opportunity to give generously to your church more frequently than what they see on social media.

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Take the challenge…use the 5 ways to increase your communities daily time with God in your church app and see what increase in giving occurs.   

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