We are on a mission to increase generosity and participation in the churches we serve, and we believe that mobile tools (such as worship planning and online giving) are one of the biggest investments a church can make to ensure the long-term growth of its ministry.

For these reasons and more, we’re always thrilled to come across new reporting showing that digital giving continues to outpace overall charitable giving. Or that the addition of digital giving options is strongly tied with a spike in overall giving to a church.

After all, we tell churches every day that provide fast, easy, and—most of all—mobile giving experiences will increase their giving, improve their budgets, and grow their ministries. There’d be no sense in having these conversations if they weren’t backed by data and demonstrated in everyday experience. But they are! 

And when it comes to data, we’re beginning to see quite a lot of it. One of the advantages of serving over 7,000 churches is that we no longer need to rely on what other people are telling us about the impact of digital giving on givers and congregations. We can take a look for ourselves.

And so we did.

Last fall we did a survey of our churches to gauge the impact digital giving is having on their congregations and on the behaviors of their individual givers. Better still, since the Pushpay platform now offers church admins the ability to scan checks and record cash donations, we can compare the changes in digital giving with trends in “offline” giving (i.e., cash and check) as well.

This survey yielded some compelling insights, but we wanted more. We wanted to see what impact digital giving tools are having in the broader church world. We wanted to see numbers from churches who aren’t using Pushpay. So we partnered with the giving consultants and researchers at Dunham+Company to see how our research compared to some recent research they had commissioned.

The result of this partnership is the Digital Giving Trends in the Church report that is yours to download for free.

The report confirms much of the previous data that has been reported around the growth of online and mobile giving in churches, but it also provides new information about the behaviors of individual donors as they interact with different giving channels.

Here are three key takeaways from this new report.

1. Digital Giving Continues to Grow in Popularity

Nearly three out of every four American churches now offer some form of digital giving (74 percent). While we’d love to see this at 100 percent, it’s still a significant improvement over the 42 percent who reported having online giving just two years ago. (And we’ve come a long way from the 14 percent who offered digital giving in 2011.) Even more encouraging is the significant growth seen with the smallest churches in the country. Churches with fewer than 200 people in weekend attendance saw their adoption of online giving nearly double in the past two years from 29 percent to 59 percent.

2. Digital Givers Give More (and More Often)

On average, digital givers donate 33 percent more ($200 a month through digital means vs. $150 a month from non-digital means). They also donate 44 percent more often than non-digital givers (2.3 times a month vs. 1.6 times a month). Of course, this isn’t because digital givers are inherently more generous than cash and check givers. It could be due to a whole host of reasons, but we can’t overlook the fact that generosity is often a product of opportunity.

Digital givers simply have more opportunities to give. They can give no matter where they are—and regardless of whether they make it into worship services on a given week.

3. There’s Still a LOT of Room to Grow

While many churches have some form of online giving, the numbers still show a gap between how people are giving to their churches and how they give to other nonprofits—and it shows. According to research by Dunham+Company, overall giving to charitable causes grew by 5.2% in 2018. Yet, giving to religious organizations is dropping. Religious contributions comprise 31% of charitable giving in America, down from 58% in the 1980s. 

Years ago, a lot of that gap had to do with method—newer, more agile nonprofits had the opportunity to implement better giving methods sooner than a lot of similar churches did. But today, with both charitable giving at an all-time high and the number of churches using digital giving at an all-time high, it’s clear that there is a gap between the growth in giving to churches and nonprofits.

There’s still a lot of room to grow but your church needs to be fully informed before making any adjustments to accommodate recent giving trends. Get the comprehensive report today. Download the 2019 Digital Giving Trends in The Church for free here.

It goes something like this…

As Pastor Marvin Winans preaches, he’ll ask a question: “Who came prepared to give a $30 seed [offering] today?”

And people start coming.

“We’re all coming in unity to give,” says Cynthia Flowers-Williams, the church’s general manager. “When he asks, you’ll see people get up from all over, and you’ll see the center aisle flooded with people coming to give. They bring whatever they’re coming to bless the Lord with.”

And those who want to contribute but don’t have anything to give? They are reminded of this: “God will bless your desire; He’ll bless your ‘want to.’”    

A Changed Giving Experience

But something new has been added to that moment in recent years.

Mobile phones—and lots of them.

“We didn’t want to count out the Pushpay givers,” Cynthia says. “Just like all of the other people will come with their $30 gift in their hands, the pastor will say, ‘And now all my Pushpay givers, you’re joining us in the middle aisle.’ And now all of a sudden you’ll see all of these people in the middle aisle with their phones in the air, tapping the basket as it goes by.”

It all comes down to this. At Perfecting Church, giving is a part of worship. In fact, the giving moment described above is just part of how giving is done at Perfecting Church during worship services. At another time, people bring their regular tithes as well.

The Power of Check Deposit

Mobile giving through Pushpay hasn’t just transformed how the church gives, but it has also changed how the church’s staff handles its finances. Before Pushpay,  the church typically processed 400 to 500 checks a week. It was no easy endeavor.

“We had to do it all manually,” Cynthia adds. “We had to make sure the slip that was going to the bank was 100 percent accurate. You had two people in there tallying 25 checks at a time. Their accounts had to be the same. If I’m off one penny, and yours doesn’t match mine, we have to do it all over again. The slip that goes to the bank has to be picture perfect. It could take a long time.”

But now they simply run the checks through the scanner they received from Pushpay. Not only does Perfecting Church have fewer checks to process now (since so many of their givers have transitioned to mobile giving), but thanks to the check deposit feature they can now deposit checks without leaving the church.

“Now we don’t have to do the stamping or the tallying of every 25 checks,” Cynthia says. “It’s a much quicker process.”

The first time a person gives a check to Perfecting Church, a staff member has to input the person’s name and other details about the check, but after that all of the information automatically populates the form, saving time and reducing the opportunities for human error.

Why Perfecting Church Loves Pushpay

Cynthia says church members love the Pushpay app because it has made giving so much easier. It has also cut down on the number of volunteers they’ve needed to employ on the weekends. Previously, they had 12 credit-card machines distributed throughout the campus where people could give. Although some people still want to give via these machines, the numbers have shrunk considerably. Cynthia says it used to take volunteers 1.5 to 2 hours a week to process those donations.

“It helps your volunteers,” Cynthia says. “Before [Pushpay], they knew they were stuck in that room for two hours after the service. Now, they’re happier because they can leave a little bit earlier.” That’s just part of how we’ve been able to help Perfecting Church.

Want to find out how Pushpay can help your church? Talk to an expert today.

But, as Ricky looks 30 years into the future, he doesn’t just see one church, either.

He sees 50 Meta communities spread throughout New York City, embedded with the gospel in local neighborhoods.

“New York is very neighborhood-oriented,” Ricky says. “People live in their neighborhoods. They like what happens in their neighborhoods. And so we want to start communities—Meta communities throughout the various neighborhoods in the five boroughs in New York—so people can experience church and transformation right in their neighborhood and take ownership of it without having to leave the neighborhood they love.”

The Challenge of New York City

Starting that many gospel communities is a tough order anywhere, but particularly in New York City. For example, you’ll find finances on the top of many New York City lists of ministry challenges.

Many publications rank the Big Apple as the most expensive city in the US to live. (Just think of it this way: The average New Yorker has to spend at least half of his or her income on housing costs alone.)

As Ricky looked into ways for Meta Church to engage the community, he realized many of the opportunities would require additional funds.The young church particularly focused on three specific projects.

• Advance the gospel locally by securing a meeting venue where Meta Church could meet weekly and expand the team.
  
• Advance the gospel globally by investing in equipment and technology to produce, edit, and distribute sermons online through social media, online, and the Meta Church app.
  
• Advance the gospel globally by supporting church plant efforts around the world.

Less than a year old, the church didn’t yet have a vast network of donors to lean on, but the church aimed high anyway, setting what seemed like an unreachable goal of $15,000. Ricky did whatever it took to get the word out about the new initiative. He told the church body. He emailed supporters. His wife put a link on her blog.

Ricky pointed everyone to the church’s mobile app and online giving options as he did this. Before the church had even launched, Meta Church partnered with Pushpay for its digital giving platform.

At first, the giving solution had been the most important reason Meta Church signed on with Pushpay, but over time the mobile has become a key part of how the church has developed community.  

“A Pushpay app is quite compatible with the way we live life here in New York,” Ricky says. “People live on their phones. It’s been a massive support for us in being able to help people get connected, give, and contribute to what we’re doing.”

Most of the church’s giving comes in through the app. It also provides the church a place for attendees to access sermons, read devotionals, check out social media accounts, find Bible reading plans, etc.

“We do an offering every Sunday, but we’ve never passed a plate, not once,” Ricky says. “Instead, every week we tell people to take out their phone and text META to 77977, download the app, or go online. Those are the three ways to give.”

Thanks, in part, to digital giving, Meta Church raised close to $23,000 during the Christmas campaign—topping the $15,000 goal by more than 50 percent. Because of the open nature of digital giving, donations came in from people Ricky and others from the church didn’t even know. In total, people from seven different countries and several states gave to the campaign.

“It felt unexpected and was a massive surprise,” Ricky says.

Through those gifts, the church had the opportunity to meet—and exceed—all the aims of the project. They secured a meeting location. They bought a camera and streaming equipment (they recently exceeded 9,000 views). They’ve also supported two church plants (in Kigali, Rwanda, and Battambang, Cambodia) by providing six months of funding for meeting locations.   

But Ricky believes the campaign did more than just provide funds for the young church’s neighborhood engagement efforts. It gave the church a glimpse of what God could through them.

“We have this little slogan or mantra that we often repeat with our team,” Ricky says. “It’s simply, ‘God alone.’ We say it. We repeat it. We talk about it. We believe it. We live it. That’s what the giving campaign was all about. When I cast the vision for it to our team, it was  shocking. But we knew God would have to do a major work for it to happen. This campaign has not only padded people’s faith, but it created a new sense of expectation. If He did that then, what is He going to do now?”

Meta Church can’t wait to find out.

So if a small church plant in New York City can surpass its giving goal by more than 50 percent thanks to digital giving, what about your church?

Click here to talk to a Pushpay expert to see how a digital giving platform can help your church plant, missions team, or international campaign raise the necessary funds quickly and easily. It’s easy to get started with a giving platform that will revolutionize giving in your ministry.

For 150 years, the church has faithfully served the community.

They’ve fought injustice. They’ve fed the hungry. They’ve preached the gospel.

An Epic History

When the local bishop assigned the community to then 31-year-old Rev. Floyd Flake in 1976, the neighborhood wasn’t in good condition. Homes looked like they were ready to collapse. Drug dealers dominated entire streets.

Though the church had always had a significant role in the community, the odds looked stacked against the young pastor. But Flake believed the “success of the church is vitally connected to what is transpiring within the community it serves.” So Flake and Greater Allen AME began to build. The church built a senior center to engage the elderly. They built schools to engage the next generation.

In total, the church started more than 60 clubs and organizations to engage members and the broader community. They started a prison ministry, a cancer support group, a ministry to those impacted by HIV/AIDS, and so much more. And God has slowly transformed the community. Families have been put back together and lives have been changed.

Embracing Technology

Today, if you head into Greater Allen AME’s worship services, you might see lots of gray hair and assume the church’s best days are behind it.

But you’d be wrong—very wrong. Yes, you’ll see lots of “senior saints” playing important roles in the church. But you’ll also see a growing number of Millennials connected to the church.  Together, they have big plans to continue Pastor Flake’s vision of community impact.

Technology, particularly the church’s Pushpay mobile app, is becoming an important bridge uniting these two divergent generations. The app is hardly a vanity tool for the church’s ministry. Church members use it to watch sermons online, keep up with what’s going on at the church, and, of course, give.  

You’d expect the church’s youth to be avid users of the church app—and they are. It’s part of the reason the church invested in a mobile app to begin with. Church leaders wanted to engage young people on their terms.

“Mobile technology is huge for youth in the church because it’s where they are,” says Edward Jordan, the church’s youth pastor. “They spend the majority of their time on their phones, iPads, and computers…It’s something that is very relevant to where they are.”

But the church’s older members benefit from the church’s technology use, too. Many can’t get to worship services as frequently as in years gone by. Streaming worship services online means they can still participate, even if they can’t be physically present.

Tech Brings Generations Together

Church leaders have proactively leaned upon the church’s youth to help its older members use the new mobile technology. For example, during the most recent men’s conference, organizers included a 30-minute “technology time” into the program. During these 30 minutes, Rev. Tiate Carson, who oversees the church’s stewardship program and men’s ministry, had youth and young adults travel around the room to help the older men download and use the app.

“I kind of deputized all of our young adults and teenagers,” Carson says. “We had such a great time. I mean they laughed. Who would have thought that this 30-minute session would really turn out to become a great bonding opportunity?”

Each of the older men shot live video of each other from their phones. Carson says some of them had never used the feature before. But now, Carson says, it’s a standard feature on their phones.

“Often times, most churches kind of flow into extreme directions,” Jordan says. “They either become really young and extremely vibrant, but they completely alienate themselves from those stakeholders that helped to build the congregation to what it became, or they may decide to go the complete opposite direction that says, ‘We’ll deal with the young people once we finish taking care of our more seasoned and senior saints.’ I think we really do the church a disservice when we do that. I think the church can take a really strong stance, really a leading stance in helping to build those conversations between the Millennials (and even younger) and our Baby Boomers and Generation Xers.”

A Future of Innovation

Just take a quick look around the church, and you see its future is bright and its impact isn’t just limited to history books. The church runs a soup kitchen on Mondays and Thursdays. It operates affordable housing in the neighborhood. It runs a school. It has a feeding program. Technology doesn’t do any of that ministry. It can’t feed a belly, educate a child, or provide a place to live, but it can, and does, accelerate the work of the church.   

“Digital innovation is essential to the growth and the future of our church because of the next generation,” says Rodeena Stephens, the church’s communications director.

But for large churches to grow, it also takes efficiency and creativity behind the scenes.

Seattle’s Churchome is a great example of this.

Leaning on Good Tech Solutions

Churchome is one of the fastest-growing churches on the West Coast. Pastor Wendell Smith started City Church (Churchome’s original name) in the early 1990s with a bold vision to build a church in metro Seattle that couldn’t be ignored, where people from all walks of life would come to hear the story of Jesus. Over the next few decades, the church grew as it became one of the most influential churches in the Pacific Northwest. Today, it has five campuses in Washington state and Southern California.

But as the church has grown, it has leaned on good tech solutions to help it become more efficient and to continue the growth trajectory. For example, before 2018, Annual Giving Statements had become a monster problem for the church.

“We literally got a bunch of people in a room and stuffed envelopes. It was quite the project,” says Justin Isenhart, the church’s director of business support.

Because the church needed to print and mail Annual Giving Statements, Churchome needed physical mailing addresses. But many people had moved without updating their physical addresses.

This made for a cumbersome process that included more manual data entry than should be necessary. After they sent out the statements, the church spent hours fielding questions from members trying to track down their Annual Giving Statements.

This drained time and resources from other important ministry efforts.

Pushpay Saves Churchome Time and Frustration

That’s why the church began implementing Pushpay’s Annual Giving Statement solution in 2017. In October, Isenhart reached out to the Pushpay team to see what needed to be done in order to import giving data from the church’s previous solution to Pushpay.

“The Pushpay team was extremely helpful as we went through these steps,” Isenhart says.

Isenhart called the process of moving over givers to the Pushpay system both easy and clear.

Then, as the church began sending out the statements, Isenhart says they appreciated the option to create a custom message to accompany the statement. Of course, the church leadership wanted to see the custom message before sending it out. Thanks to the Pushpay solution, Isenhart was able to provide a mockup of the email.

“And, of course, the email looked very professional,” Isenhart says.

After Isenhart and his team imported the giving data into the Pushpay system and approved the email, it took only a few minutes to send the giving statements to members.

Isenhart says the transition to Pushpay’s Annual Giving Statements was a win for Churchome—particularly the staff. The accounting no longer had to lock themselves inside a room for a week to get the statements out the door. Because the statements were now tied to email addresses rather than physical addresses, the church staff needed to field fewer questions from people trying to find their missing statements.  

“The accounting team is an incredible group of people that probably work harder than anybody else in the entire church. They are just extremely faithful,” Isenhart says. “Anything we can do to make their lives easier is great. It provides them with more margin to do the important work they do.”

Isenhart estimates the Pushpay solution saved Churchome at least two full days with their help throughout the import process. Next year, without the need to do a similar import process, he believes the system will save the church a week and a half of time.

“Pushpay has caught up by leaps and bounds on the administrative side, especially with the Annual Giving Statements,” Isenhart adds. “I just don’t think there’s anything better from a product standpoint.”

Pushpay recently launched Custom Giving statements that make the annual giving statement process even easier and more customized to the needs of churches like yours. Now, ministries can create giving statements for any time period, whether every quarter, month, or for a specific period of time. Many churches are currently using this feature to show congregants how much they’ve given within a particular timeframe, then thank them for their generosity or simply show them the good work their generosity helped fund.

To learn how Pushpay’s Custom Giving Statements can help your church shave dozens of hours off this necessary process and encourage even greater generosity within your community, talk to a Pushpay expert today. Your finance person and bookkeeper (and your congregants) will be glad you did.

They’ll show you the valleys that preceded the mountaintops.

They’ll point out the pain that came before the fruitfulness.

Dig a bit deeper and you realize often the obstacle sets the stage for what comes next.

In his best-selling book, The Obstacle Is the Way, Ryan Holiday says it like this: “The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.”

Pastor Scott Blanchard, who leads Lakepointe Church in Macomb, MI, has embodied those comments.

For Scott, born 80 percent deaf with a call to start a church for the hearing in one of America’s toughest metro areas, obstacles have set the stage for a beautiful story of God’s faithfulness.

Obstacle #1: Can God call a deaf man to preach?

For some, the call to pastoring comes like a lightning bolt that knocks you to the ground. But not for Scott.

Scott first felt the pull toward pastoral ministry as a child, not long after becoming a Christian. He remembers practicing “church” services in his parents’ basement. The service included music and a short sermon. Scott’s mom, dad, and brothers all came.

“It was a cute little five-to-ten-minute thing,” Scott says. “There was this drag. I could sense this pull toward becoming a pastor.”

Scott loved the idea of “doing church.” But, born 80 percent deaf, Scott had a speech impediment that made him a bit tougher to understand at times.

Often, when he’d tell his Christian school friends about the sense of calling he felt toward pastoring, they’d look at him funny. They’d hear the speech impediment and they’d snicker.

“That’s not your calling,” they would say.

And, for some time, Scott believed them.

Once a month during chapel at Scott’s school, students could participate in the service by singing a song, playing an instrument, speaking a short monologue, or even sharing a 15-minute sermon.

Every week Scott would take a long, hard look at the sign-up sheet. He wanted to preach. Sometimes he’d write his name on the list, but then he’d chicken out and play the trumpet instead.

“Trumpets sound like trumpets,” Scott says. “I was a good trumpet player. I don’t have to talk. Trumpets make beautiful music.”

But each time Scott would chicken out, he felt awful. He’d listen to the other preachers-to-be get up on the stage, and he’d hear a whisper from God. “You need to get up there.”  

Time was running out. 9th grade came—then 10th, 11th, and finally, 12th.

By the second semester of his senior year, Scott needed to preach now—or never. Next year, Scott would head to Bible college. He hadn’t declared his major officially, but he still knew he wanted to pastor. He had to make it through this hurdle. If he couldn’t preach at his school chapel, he might as well look for another calling.

“I had a sermon ready for three years,” Scott says. “For three years, I had said no to God every month. Finally, I went up there and scribbled my name on the sheet under ‘preach’ because I didn’t want anyone to recognize it.”

Scott preached the Bible fearlessly that day. He remembers little else of what happened, except that those same friends who a few years earlier had suggested an 80-percent deaf boy couldn’t preach wanted him to do it again.

Obstacle #2: Can a deaf man plant a church?

A few months later Scott started Bible college as a ministry major. After graduation, he took a position on staff at a large Baptist church in Florida. Few people still knew what to expect from a deaf minister who served among the hearing community.

But Scott flourished with every new assignment. He launched and grew a singles ministry. He led the church’s assimilation process. He showed a knack for developing systems and processes that helped people and ministries grow. All the while, he believed one day God would use him to lead a church of his own.

During a Purpose Driven Church Conference at Saddleback Church in 2004, Scott started taking interest in church planting. Over the next three years, the idea continued to incubate. By 2007, not only had Scott and his wife, Karen, committed to starting a church, but they believed God was calling them to uproot their young family from Florida and move back to metro Detroit, Scott’s hometown, to start the new church.

But to plant a church in metro Detroit, he’d need to solicit the prayer and financial support of others. Up first in that battle was a church planting assessment that would play a big part in deciding whether Southern Baptists would fund the effort. 12 church planters and their spouses gathered with 15 assessors for four days of intense questioning. Only the readiest planters would get funding.

The assessors asked tough questions of Scott and the others. At the end of every day, the assessors re-convened to rank the candidates. On the first night, although he didn’t know it at the time, they ranked Scott last.

“At face value, we didn’t think you had a shot,” one of the assessors later told Scott.

But each night, Scott crept up the rankings, to ninth, to fifth—and finally to the top of the heap.

Scott was ready, the assessors said. The funding would come.

Obstacle #3: Where will the people come from?

After selling their home in Florida (a challenging story itself), the Blanchards arrived in Detroit ready to engage a region in desperate need. In 2009, when the family arrived, Detroit found itself nearing the end of a 30-year tailspin. Two of the nation’s three largest automobile manufacturers, based in Detroit, needed massive “bailouts” from the US and Canadian governments in order to survive. Major news publications featured Detroit as a city in crisis.

Detroit’s decline extended to the surrounding area (the Blanchards planted their church in nearby Macomb, MI), too. People were fleeing Detroit and the area around it. Between 1950 and 2010, metro Detroit lost 61 percent of its population.

Add to those circumstances that Southern Baptists (the denomination Scott partnered to get the church started) historically struggled to launch new churches in metro Detroit.

Despite the not-exactly-ideal circumstances to start a new church, Scott and his team (and two other families who had moved to Michigan to help get the church started) focused on engaging people in the community.

Lakepointe often led with evangelistic events, like Vacation Bible School, Easter egg helicopter drops, and guest speakers ranging from a 9/11 survivor to a former mobster to professional athletes to engage guests. All seemed to bring new people into the fold.

Scott also leaned heavily into technology. The church posts regularly on social media, investing in both Facebook and Google ads. They use cutting-edge videos. Recently, they’ve also partnered with Pushpay to create a church app.

“Everybody has a smartphone these days,” Blanchard says. “It’s part of our culture today. I really like that people can give in 15 seconds. You don’t have to fill out 100 pieces of information in order to give.”

Thanks in part to mobile giving made easy through Pushpay, the church regularly invests in the community, such as the outreach to parents it does during an annual summer festival. Lakepointe provides a changing station, free diapers and water, and games for older kids. The church also operates a food bank that provides families in need a week’s worth of groceries.

The church has grown steadily and baptized more than 120 people in its first eight years. After a successful capital campaign last year, Lakepointe is looking for a permanent home for the church.
Yes, people still ask about Scott’s speech impediment when they first hear him speak. (He often jokes that he is from England when they do.)

But Scott is still the only church member who is deaf or hard of hearing. He isn’t just Lakepointe’s pastor. He models what it means to overcome obstacles in order to serve the church family.

“I think God uses me to inspire people to serve Him,” Scott says. “If God can use me, He can use anyone.”

Real Life Church in Covington, WA, gets that.

For two decades, Real Life has passionately ministered to the growing needs of their Covington, WA, community. Their Early Learning Center, called “Real Kids Learning,” serves the educational needs of children before school, after school, and during the summers. Its community garden and storehouse ministry helps feed local families. Finally, mission trips engage communities around the world.

Everything Real Life Church does centers on its mission to connect people to the “realness of God.” And the church’s accounting team works behind the scenes to support all of those efforts. By managing the church’s giving and financial transactions, this team ensures the church can properly support its various ministry efforts. Doing this efficiently can make all the difference to the frontline ministry efforts of the church.

Turning 3 Giving Platforms into 1

Just three years ago, the church had three different platforms to engage givers. The church had one platform for text-to-give, another for kiosk giving, and still another for event registration (which was still done largely offline).

Real Life staff members spent 20 hours a week just manually inputting event registrations into their system. It took three to five hours a week to manually consolidate information from the church’s different platforms.

Managing the church’s giving solution took time away from other tasks that needed to be done. Not only did this hamper ministry efforts (by sucking much-needed time away from them), but it complicated the work of the staff.

Making Giving Simpler

Real Life needed to make a change. Church leaders looked at a few different options for giving solutions. Pushpay quickly moved to the front of the line because leaders saw the company’s passion for the local church and their commitment to create excellent products.

“Pushpay made things so much simpler, cleaner, and easier,” says the Senior Pastor Steve Murray.

After transitioning to Pushpay, Real Life no longer had to juggle three different giving systems. Executive Pastor Ed Holmes suggests the move saved the church more than 250 hours of work in a year’s time.

That 250 hours is hardly an abstraction for Real Life Church. Less time managing financial transactions means more time to devote to other important ministry causes. It means fewer long days for team members. It means less stress for key behind-the-scenes church servants.

Of course, time savings led to financial savings as well. Thanks to some of those financial savings, Real Life was able to invest in a new bus for a local drug and alcohol rehab center. They also advanced some extra funds for continuing education for single moms.

Step of Faith

Britney Holmes, Ed’s wife and the church’s events and services coordinator, has seen the platform’s effectiveness firsthand as she manages events at the churches.  

Speaking to churches who are considering a transition to a new digital giving solution, Britney says she understands the hesitancy. It’s a big decision.

“We used to be in your shoes. We used to be very hesitant and didn’t think we needed to transition to an online giving platform. What I realize now is that we didn’t want to be uncomfortable in learning a new thing and how that would fit in our flow of things. I think what holds churches back is the feeling that they’re not there yet. In reality, it’s the fear of doing something new and having to learn something new…By taking the step of faith as a church, you’re opening the door to reach so many more people than you reach now, bringing something on that helps you to be relevant and provide a level of excellence that people are experiencing everywhere else they go. It’s a huge benefit.”

See how your church can save staff time and money by switching to an intuitive, easy-to-use giving platform. You, your staff, and your community will be glad you did. Click here to talk to a Pushpay expert today.

And it has even launched churches.

Back in 2014, when Chad and Julia Veach wanted to tell the world they were starting a church in Los Angeles, they popped a Dodger cap on their one-year-old, took a picture, and bundled the photo with the story of God’s call on their lives.

When it was time for the Veaches to host their first gathering for the new church, they only promoted it on Instagram. Followers started to add up. Curiosity mounted.

“I knew Instagram was the new website,” Chad says. “Back in the day, in church we were obsessed with a good website. What’s the church website? Does it have all the info and all that kind of stuff? I knew people are going to websites now as often as they’re going onto social media. So I trimmed that social media page in the beginning. Even today, I’m obsessed over it as far as making sure it reflects our creativity and our heart and who we are and our culture and our stance.”

Using Social Media to Grow the Church

And let’s be clear, if you wanted to get involved at Zoe Church, you had to follow them on social media. The church moved meeting locations every week. You couldn’t keep up without social media.

“We’re like a food truck as a church,” Chad says. “You have to follow us to know where we’re gonna be. So that, I think, created a following.”

But Instagram was just the beginning. Being in the heart of the entertainment industry, Chad knew social media excellence and technological proficiency would help him engage West Hollywood.

It has been four years since Chad’s then-youngest child donned the Dodger cap to announce his family’s upcoming move to Los Angeles and three years since the launch of Zoe. Today 1,500 people attend five worship services in West Hollywood’s El Rey Theater.    

And the media has taken notice, too. Zoe has been featured in The New York Times, GQ, and Slate.com, to name a few.

Zoe’s digital approach has played a part in this exposure and church growth. Whether it’s creating videos for their YouTube channel or worship services, images for social media, or banging out clever social media posts, excellence matters, but it’s excellence with a purpose.

“Showing people Jesus and the gospel is our goal. I think that social media is just an amazing avenue to connect them to the front doors of our church,” Julia Veach says.

Zoe Church’s Mobile Giving Philosophy

Pushpay has been a part of the church’s digital arsenal from the start. In fact, they signed up with Pushpay nine months before they officially launched the church. The church had financial needs in those early days—from buying children’s equipment to production equipment. During the church’s first Sunday (in his home), Chad introduced everyone to Zoe’s church app. It has been a central way for people to get involved in the church ever since, and it allows them to give in just seconds.     

“We have so many Millennials come, and they don’t have checkbooks,” Chad says. “Got to make it easy for people to give.”

Today, 85 to 90 percent of the church gives digitally.

The mobile app is just one more example of how Zoe has learned to speak the language of its highly mobile, massively diverse Los Angeles community.

“We just found these tools in our hands,” Chad says. “The web, social media, and technology—this stuff is available to all of us to use for good. I heard someone say this a long time ago: Whatever we avoid, the enemy attacks. So if we avoid technology, we just let the enemy have its way with it.”