After working with tens of thousands of churches over decades, we know that keeping members engaged can have a huge impact on membership and financial stewardship. That’s why we built an affordable church app. The app is so affordable that we now offer
it for free!
What Our Church Center App Can Do for Your Congregation
1) Build an Online Church Directory
According to a Gallup study, the number of members attending weekly has dropped 13% in the last 20 years. That’s why churches can’t solely rely on Sunday services to solidify their community. They need group participation such as prayer ministries and Bible studies. They need to encourage members to interact with pastors and their peers. They need promote church events and fundraisers, and they need to gather volunteers to strengthen the community through good works. Vanco Mobile’s church center app helps with all of these things, but at its heart is a directory that serves as a virtual hub for everyone to connect with online profiles.
Building a virtual church directory with the Vanco Mobile app is easy. Individual users can download the Vanco Mobile church center app and create their profile within minutes. They can select their avatar, enter their contact information (phone number and email) and choose to make that information private or public within your church’s community.
2) Manage Groups Online
Virtual Bible studies, prayer ministries, leadership committees and other gatherings allow members to take a more active role within the church community, but it can be hard for individuals to meet up at the church with busy schedules. Having the central, virtual hub that Vanco Mobile provides allows you to create groups, join groups, invite others to groups and share virtual meeting information. This all makes remote meetings much easier.
Managing groups within Vanco Mobile is simple, and it’s even easier for your members to join. It only takes three steps.
Step 1)
Send members a notification to join the group.
Step 2)
After selecting the invitation sent to them by their church, members will be prompted to accept or decline the invitation.
Step 3)
Select “Accept.”
3) Accommodate Communication with Online Chats
We rolled out the Vanco Mobile church center app just as COVID-19 was putting limits on social gatherings. To adjust to the new circumstances of meeting virtually, pastors and church leaders needed to scramble to create or ramp up their online gatherings.
Early on, we heard from one of the pastors who was stretched with all the new responsibilities of virtual gatherings. This pastor felt that many of their members needing spiritual guidance didn’t reach out because they were worried they were infringing on their clergy’s limited time. The chat helped as members could write out their queries and receive responses later in the day. It also helped remove an extra barrier that stands in the way of most churchgoers connecting with their pastor: designated office hours.
Many members don’t feel like being a bother and scheduling a formal time to meet, which often results in fewer meetings. Without these one-on-one gatherings, it’s hard for pastors to offer the spiritual leadership many members need. This is why Vanco Mobile became more than just a quick way for members to connect with church leaders. The chat feature served as a key springboard that led to members scheduling more formal meetings.
With the group chat, members can also connect with new church visitors, forming an online welcome committee. They can also coordinate with church volunteers and even check in with fellow members. If your members want to chat with another member or your pastor using Vanco Mobile’s church center app, it only takes a minute to get started. Simply follow these easy steps.
Step 1) Go to the directory and type in the name of the person you want to chat with.
Step 2) Once you found them, select their name and tap the Direct Message button.
Step 3) Type your message and hit Send.
4) Make Donations Easy
Over the last two decades, we’ve helped tens of thousands of churches increase donations. We’ve found that simply making it easy to give has a significant impact on the number of donations. People are generous, and church members are especially giving. Philanthropy Daily found that 62% of religious households give to charity compared to only 46% of unaffiliated households. The most common reason members don’t give is that they forget. With work, family and a ton of other concerns, your church’s mission can easily slip to the back of your members’ minds.
With the Vanco Mobile app, giving is easy. You can quickly connect links to your online giving pages or connect to your giving platform, such as Vanco’s suite of eGiving products. By using a suite of eGiving products, we found that churches were able to increase donations by an average of 26%.
One of the biggest reasons for that 26% increase in giving was an uptick in recurring donations among the churches who began using our product. The eGiving tools within our suite, such as text giving, allow donors to easily make their gift recurring within seconds.
5) Simplify Virtual Worship
Since COVID-19, many churches have expanded their virtual services and several congregations have opted to include them in addition to in-person worship. As many communities found out, these services are inexpensive to offer and relatively easy to maintain. However, many members can lose your virtual sign in information or have troubles finding it. Our church center app offers one hub to broadcast all the necessary links and files, such as the bulletins for each service.
6) Looking to Get Started?
You can learn more about the app and features like mobile giving, including answers to frequently asked questions, by clicking here.
