HomeSoftwareMobileGrowing Your Church with a Mobile App

Growing Your Church with a Mobile App [Q&A]

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There's no doubt that mobile is important in the life of the Church. If your church is struggling to know how to communicate well, what to do about the bulletin, or what technology might perhaps be vital in the years to come, it's a fact that mobile devices and communication will be at the forefront. Tony Caudill founded Aware3 with the intent to help churches reach their members the other six days of the week, where and how church fits into their lives. We sat down with Tony to find out more about his company's mission to help churches:

How was Aware3 founded and what is the goal of the company?

I started Aware3 back in 2013 because I was frustrated with my church experience. Things like paper bulletins, giving plates, and registration tables weren’t working for me and my family. Every week, we threw away bulletins or were unable to give because we didn't carry cash or a checkbook on us. If I didn’t have a pen, I couldn’t fill out the connection card. I’d lose my sermon notes. I felt like I could help make the Sunday experience easier and make it simple to connect the other six days of the week. And that's the heart of Aware3: to help people connect with their church when, where, and how it fits in their life.

What are the main ways Aware3 seeks to help churches and ministries?

Search “custom mobile app” in Google. It’s easy to check the mobile app box for your church. It’s important to not just check the box with mobile. Mobile can have a significant impact on your ministry, but it’s a unique space. We are 100% focused on the faith-based market. It’s our passion. We wake up every day and go to sleep every night thinking about how the Church can grow through mobile, and we do something about it.

While our church partners love the general “coolness” of having a mobile app, we have real areas we know we’re making an impact:

Sunday Experience: Passing notebooks for attendance? Asking people to manually fill out a registration form or hope they remember to visit your website when they get home? Mobile can make these Sunday activities more successful and efficient.

Monday – Saturday Engagement: How are you connecting with your members beyond Sunday? Have you made it easy to watch a recorded sermon over lunch? Can they give on Tuesday afternoon? Can they access your Bible study on Thursday?

Tool Adoption: Many churches today have a website, church management system, video on Vimeo or YouTube, audio on iTunes, an online giving solution, and much more. These are all important things, but they’re only as good as they are accessible. By aggregating your content and tools into a simple and easy to use mobile app that is available 24/7 they will be used more.

Increased Generosity: Connection creates generosity. Giving is best done through your church branded mobile app, which we talked about in a recent blog post.

Explain how your mobile app and platform works for churches?

We have taken the tech out of the app building process. To launch an app we walk our church partners through four simple steps:

Step 1:  App Set Up: This is where we help the church to make the app look and feel like they want. They design things like the app icon, loading screen, home screen, and buttons. Setup typically takes 1-2 hours.
Step 2: Merchant Set-Up: If the church uses our integrated giving solution, they need a relationship with one of two payment processors, which usually takes 10-15 minutes.
Step 3: App Build: We take your information, build your app, test it, and submit it to Apple & Google for approval.
Step 4: Launch Prep: Once Apple & Google approve your app, we schedule a 30-minute demo of the app portal. We show you how to turn features on/off, update graphics, schedule push messages, etc.

Our average church goes live with their app in three short weeks. It’s painless.

How do your solutions work with the existing solutions a church might already be using?

Mobile should be a blessing, not a headache. Our church partners are busy, and the last thing they need is another tool to manage. Our goal is for your app to go on auto-pilot once it launches. That’s why we’ve integrated with many popular online ministry tools such as Vimeo, YouTube, iTunes, and Church Community Builder. For example, as long as you keep Vimeo up-to-date, your app will stay up-to-date. No need to upload your video in multiple places, which saves our church partners time and dollars.

What else would you like people to know about Aware3?

We are a lean and passionate team from Kansas City. We deeply care about the future of the Church and firmly believe in the power of mobile. While we love the impact we’re making on Sunday, we get equally if not more excited about the impact we’re making Monday through Saturday. We are on a mission to make church interactive and accessible. If you share our passion or are interested in hearing more about our journey, we’d love to connect.

To find out more about how Aware3 can help your church with building an app, visit them here.

Lauren Hunter
Lauren Hunterhttps://laurenhunter.net
Lauren Hunter is a writer who loves the big picture of God’s journey we are all on together. In 2007, she founded ChurchTechToday, a website for pastors and church leaders to harness technology to improve ministry. Married to her high school sweetheart, Lauren lives in Northern California with her husband and their four children. Her latest book is Leaving Christian Science: 10 Stories of New Faith in Jesus Christ. She can be found online at https://laurenhunter.net.

1 COMMENT

  1. Hi Lauren,

    This was an amazing article. Our church has touted the idea of a mobile website, but here is my question. I am a seasoned front-end web developer and use the power of WordPress to deliver amazing results. I’m sure you know, but most of the premium themes that are available now can offer many of the same features and functionality as what an actual app can deliver.

    That being said, is it really necessary to focus on having a web app or would you look to more creative designs via the web and how it presents and delivers the content that is going to be specifically for the mobile viewer?

    Thanks for sharing the amazing content you offer on here!

    Blessings,

    Greg

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