Do you know that about 80% of all internet users make use of a smartphone?
In other words, they use smartphones to check their emails, shop, pay bills, connect to friends, and manage their finances.
When you come to this realization, you begin to see why your church cannot do without a church app. But then, there is a bigger challenge. What should be on a church app? How do you know which app will meet your church’s requirements?
There are so many options on the market these days so having a guide should help to make your job easier. Check out a few features that your church app should have.
Top Features of a Church App
Here is a checklist of the features that your church app should possess:
Easy to update and manage
The job of a church administrator is quite rigorous. As such, they need a church app that doesn’t require consistent management. When choosing a church app, you should pick out one that is easy to update and manage.
By easy to manage, we mean it should be mostly automated and able to integrate with all your other platforms. As such, it should have everything including a bible, study plan, blog posts, sermon, etc. It should not just have all of these, it should update each one automatically.
Push notifications
Research shows that push notifications have a read rate of about 97%. Do you now see how important it is for your app to have this feature?
Push notifications make it easier for you to send out alerts to your stakeholders. From schedule changes to information about digital donations, and sending reminders. With this feature, you thoroughly improve your church communication and congregation management.
The best way to employ this feature is to first segment your subscriber list. This action is necessary so that you can separate your messages since not all messages are relevant to everyone.
Custom content and branding
Every church has a branding style. If you don’t have one yet, you should. Your branding style is your identity, it is what makes people identify your church even without hearing your name.
Now, you have a brand, everything about your church must promote this brand, including your church app. From your church colors to your logo, font to the kind of content you produce. Your app must fit into this picture as well.
You should invest in a church app that you can customize easily. With this, you can always tweak its design and content to suit your purposes. It is easy to have absolute creative control over the app and its final product.
Media player, sermons, and podcast
Smartphone users spend about 89% of all the time they spend on their devices on mobile apps. Let’s not forget that most of the traffic on the internet is video-driven. These facts tell us how important it is for a church app to provide media.
As such, your app should deliver worship services, sermons, podcasts, and lots more into people’s arms. People don’t spend much time reading these days. However, they are open to listening to or watching content on the go. The easiest way to get God’s word into the hearts of the people is through an app with media capabilities.
Check-in application
Attendance is a very important factor to consider when measuring church growth. Because of this, churches must find ways to track attendance. It is pretty easy in a small congregation, but with large congregations, it takes a lot of effort.
To make it easier, you need a church app that comes with the “check-in” application. With this feature, you can decipher who was present in church on what day or during specific events. The beauty is that you can design this feature for key members alone or your entire congregation.
Mobile giving
If you didn’t know before now, giving people a mobile giving option increases giving or donation. Of course, you must understand how to request donations and send push notifications.
With the mobile giving option, digital donation and text giving have become a lot easier. As such, you will find it far easier to raise funds for church development projects and different events. It even helps for church members that have moved out of town or have to make quick trips. They can always still sow seeds to your church regardless of their location.
Prayer wall
Prayer was the core of Jesus Christ’s ministry. We see in different parts of the scripture where He separated Himself to spend time in prayer. In times past, churches had to print church bulletins with prayers, set up prayer groups, or send prayers via email.
Mobile technology has changed the narrative. Now, you can put your prayer wall in the hands of every person with your church app. With this, they can now see prayer points and prayer together remotely. They can also pray for others and share prayer requests when they need to.
Calendar events
A church can have several calendars because of its different ministries and departments. To avoid misunderstanding, you must incorporate all of these calendars into a single calendar. One of the easiest solutions to this is having a church app that updates calendar events automatically.
The calendar feature shouldn’t just update times and dates, it should also include locations and navigation. If can integrate this feature into your app, you make it easy for congregants to remember events and locate venues. The result of this is higher attendance at church and ministry events.
Engagement analytics
Having a church app is one thing, knowing how people use and interact with it is a different ball game. You must have access to analytics that show which part of your congregation uses the app more.
The analytics should answer questions like:
- How often do people use the app during the week?
- What do they use the app for the most?
- What kind of content do people read more on the app?
With this, you can improve the app and make it more suited to the needs of your audience.
Conclusion
Other features that your church app should possess include social media integration, bible, contact pages, etc. You can get all of these and more on ChurchPad. Invest in a church app today to improve church communication and administration.