Aware3
Jeromie Jones, Executive Pastor at Momentum Church provides an honest and in-depth interview about his experience with the Aware3 ChMS app:
Q: Tell us a little about yourself, your church, and your role. I’m the Executive Pastor at Momentum Christian Church. If you really wanted to know what we are all about, we are a church planting church. We’ve planted 3 churches here in the San Diego area and we’ve got a 4th that we’re getting ready to plant in the first part of 2020.
Q: What’s the best part of having an app for your church? I would say probably keeping all the different parts of our ministry connected and at people’s fingertips. For example, someone can listen to a message or one of our midweek podcasts and immediately, from our app, after listening to it be able to register for something. We talk a lot about community groups, we want people to be able to immediately join a group.
Q: What challenges were you facing that you hoped an app would help you solve? The way culture is headed is that everything is mobile. Asking people to go to a website to do anything is becoming less and less viable as an option. Once someone gets integrated into our church, they stop visiting the website, unless they’ve set up giving through it or something like that. We needed something to help keep regular people connected, informed, and we were just trying to cut down on the number of steps we asked people to do. If you’ve gotten used to going on Amazon and doing one-click shopping, you don’t like it when your church tells you, “ go here, fill out this form, then go here and do this.” So we were trying to cut down on the number of steps that people had to take and we were trying to keep information in one place.
Q: You mentioned registrations a few times, has that been the biggest area the app has helped with? Registrations have been a big one. One of the things we use it for is for all of our community groups. A lot of our community groups are sermon based, which means whatever’s talked about on Sunday is what they study on a deeper level during the week. We’ve been able to put our sermon notes in there so that as they fill out the sermon notes, it’ll send the notes and then community group questions directly to them. That’s been really big. A lot of our giving now happens through the app. So registration is a big one, but I would say those other two are an even larger use of how the app is being used–So community group guides, Sunday morning note taking, and giving.
Q: Can you tell me about a specific person or family that your app helped get more connected to your church? We have a woman that got baptized about five or six months ago. She downloaded our app and came across our leadership development podcast that we do, listened to all of that and found out about some opportunities through that. She clicked on over, registered for our women’s fall retreat. She had never been on a retreat, had no idea what it was but found it and then signed up to start serving all through the app. Just her getting the app and exploring, she’s taken two or three steps in her faith just from things she discovered there. That probably cut out four or five months of conversations and work and stuff like that–you know, saying, “ Hey have you thought about doing this or have you tried this.” Since the app was there and the different steps were already there that she could take on the app, she was able to do it at her pace, at the timing she wanted.
Q: What have you learned about your church since going more digital? I think it helps you identify who the raving fans are more quickly because you can see that there’s a group of people who are consuming everything and you can also see what things are most helpful to people. We try different things, like we’ll put out a spiritual guide resource on the app and see how people interact with it. It gives us a lot of good real-time feedback on how people are interacting with some of the materials and resources.
Q: What was the most surprising part? I was surprised about how quickly everyone has switched to digital giving. You always expect as people trend younger that they’re going to give more online, but right now about 70 – 80% of our total giving comes through the app or the aware3 website behind it. I was not expecting it to shift that fast. I’m glad, it makes things a lot easier.
Q: How has your app improved engagement & process at your church? On top of the ways already mentioned, just getting people connected to things quicker. When people have a question they don’t have to email someone and wait for a response because a lot of times the information can be found on the app. In all the analytics and stuff that we’ve looked at, every step in a process that people have to go through, you lose people at each step. If you can cut out 2 or 3 steps, you can usually add at least a few more people to whatever it is you’re doing just from the sheer convenience factor.
Q: Do you use any of the interactive features like live polling?
A: Yeah, we’ve done live polling. Our marriage ministry team was trying to figure out “which of these things” would people be most interested in. So we used live pulling to get some feedback. The push notifications we use a lot to connect directly to one aspect of the app.
Capital Christian Ministries International and Matrox empower Zambia’s vulnerable youth by connecting them with donors around the world
Ben lives with the family of his best friend in the capital city of Lusaka in Zambia. Both of the boys are strong, healthy, and now completing their last few years of high school with formidable marks. When they are not studying, they take their talents to the soccer field. On the surface, Ben probably seems like a child you know, but his success today is nothing short of extraordinary, perhaps even a miracle, brought about by the passion and dedication of Capital Christian Ministries International (CCMI).
Using a Matrox® Monarch HD encoder, CCMI has been able to live stream online, spreading its reach far and wide, and gather the necessary tools, human power, and financial resources to give more children like Ben a future to look forward to. “Using the Monarch HD to do live streaming from these remote sites, we’re able to take a message that, two or three years ago, would have been trapped inside a building,” said Randall Rike, Director of Technical and Media USA for CCMI. “With live streaming, we’re literally worldwide and anyone with Internet can get on and see it.”
Ben was orphaned shortly after being born, with neither his mother nor his two triplet siblings surviving childbirth. As one of the thousands of orphans of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Ben was sent to a transition home, where he would await adoption for the first five years of his life. With the resources available at CCMI, including the help from parishioners in different specializations, Ben was able to receive the medical care, education, and emotional support he needed to make the full transition into his new life. “He’s very intelligent and we’re looking forward to seeing him go on and do much more,” said Bishop George Mbulo, President and Senior Pastor at CCMI.”
Making a positive impact is at the core of Mbulo’s work. In order to bring about change, he and CCMI use video technologies, like Monarch HD, to send live streams of CCMI church services from all four of its campuses, international conferences, and speaker series to Facebook so that the rest of the world can join in. “Social media has become kind of a social event in Zambia,” said Rike. Oftentimes, groups of individuals will gather around their smartphones to watch videos on social media, including CCMI live streams.
For CCMI, live streaming was not always part of the media strategy, but when it came time to begin live streaming the organization’s message, choosing a streaming and recording appliance was a no-brainer. Despite some skepticism about streaming technologies, particularly regarding expensive price points and complicated hardware setups, Rike decided to give Monarch HD a chance. “When I saw this tiny box, it resolved everything, and moreover, I was blown away,” said Rike. “I knew that many ministries were live streaming, and I knew that CCMI needed to get involved sooner rather than later, and seeing Monarch HD made me realize this was now a very real possibility. I personally purchased Monarch HD for CCMI. The price point was well within my budget for these types of projects, and easy-to-use is an understatement.”
When producing live streams from the different venues, the CCMI media and technical team packs a road case filled with cables, converters, adapters, and Monarch HD so that it can connect to any type of equipment a venue may have. The team finds that using Monarch HD is not only effortless, but also enjoyable. “When I shipped this to my team in Zambia, they discovered how cool and easy-to-use it was,” said Rike.
Once on site, the team captures services and events using cameras, which are connected to a video switcher. The video switcher then sends feeds to Monarch HD via HDMI. Because Internet connectivity can prove to be unpredictable at different venues, the team has gotten creative with its means of finding Internet to support its live streams. Some venues, such as the Mulungushi Conference Centre, have a high-bandwidth Internet connection. Most other facilities do not have high enough Internet bandwidth, and therefore require the team to subscribe to a local Zambian phone company. The phone company provides 3G/4G-capable routers, and the team purchases a reloadable, pre-paid SIM card. The team can then connect its routers to the Ethernet of the host venue. “We are building a new sanctuary and soon it will be our own, so we’ll have more control over the Internet,” said Rike. “Right now, we’re using rented facilities, and because of that, we’re at the mercy of whatever their Internet is like.”
When Internet bandwidth is sufficient, the CCMI team connects the HDMI video source to Monarch HD, and sets the device to stream 3 Mbps video to Facebook at 720p and at 30 fps. In cases when bandwidth is insufficient, the team sets Monarch HD to stream 1 Mbps video at 360p and at 30 fps. This lower format allows CCMI to ensure live streams are sent no matter the quality of the Internet connection. The team also often uses both Monarch HD’s SD and USB ports on separate occasions to record copies for director’s cuts during live productions. Thanks to independent streaming and recording settings, Monarch HD can record at the highest possible resolution and quality regardless of streaming bitrate. While using an SD card is ideal for the team, they find that having the USB option has come in handy on multiple occasions. “Having both options is great and ideal,” said Chikombe Chela, Media and Technical Supervisor for CCMI.
Monarch HD has secured a permanent role at CCMI. The device’s ease of use, small form factor, and the Matrox brand it comes from – according to Rike – make it an indispensable tool in helping CCMI bring leadership training, Christian teaching, and stories of hope to audiences across the globe. “As a long time Matrox customer, I knew that the product would work as advertised, but more importantly, Matrox support would ensure complete customer satisfaction,” he said.
