Time is precious on a church staff. No church ever seems to have enough people to do all the work the church sees around it.
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 [creating] 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.”
