Alive Wesleyan Church
Central, SC
Partner Since: 2013
“Our app gives us another tool in our tool belt. There’s a little something for everyone.”
— Patrick Dagenhart, Worship Pastor, Alive Wesleyan Church
Alive Wesleyan Church is a 120-year-old church body of about 600 members in the Clemson suburb of Central, SC. With a mission to “reach spiritually hungry people and connect them to Jesus and each other,” Alive serves an average of 1,250 people across three services each weekend.
The Challenge
With about 96,000 unreached/unchurched people in its home county, Alive Wesleyan Church needed a way to reach those without a community. At the same time, Alive understood that times were changing and things were becoming more and more mobile.
“We wanted to have another avenue of communication with our church that would be a tool for communicating to our people,” said Patrick Dagenhart, Worship Pastor at Alive. “A mobile app is always available in people’s hands—on something they’re always carrying around.”
While Alive knew they wanted a mobile app, their search for the best provider had previously yielded sub-par solutions with high costs. “Other companies we’d looked at were either very expensive or we didn’t like the product,” said Dagenhart. In addition to employing a communication medium that would be relevant and timely to its members, Alive also wanted a mobile app that would increase engagement during worship instead of just acting as a news channel.
They turned to The Wesleyan Church headquarters, who had recently partnered with Bluebridge as its official mobile app provider. The Wesleyan Church offered to pay app setup costs for the first 25 churches across the country who participated. Impressed by the Bluebridge product, Alive jumped at the offer.
Key Features
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Sermon Notes -
eBulletin -
Push Notifications
The Solution
A Bluebridge customer since 2013, Alive now uses their app consistently in communication and has received very positive feedback from members. While the church sees in-app member engagement throughout the week through helpful features like news feeds and prayer requests, usage always spikes during Sunday worship, as the church makes it a goal to highlight the app’s sermon notes feature in-service each weekend.
In addition, Alive relies on the eBulletin feature to help cut printing costs and share timely information digitally. Though they still print a few hundred bulletins each week for members who prefer the paper medium, the number only accounts for about 25% of the congregation, meaning most members use the app for consuming church information. In addition, small group and ministry leaders are relying more heavily on the convenience of having church content within the app, resulting in less time and resources to print and distribute materials.
Alive also relies on the app’s push notifications feature to remind members of important upcoming events and to drive action. Most commonly used at Easter and other high attendance holidays, Alive reminds members to secure their tickets through a reminder alert on their phones.
In working with the Bluebridge support team, Alive was able to restructure their news feed to promote ordering tickets via smartphones. “Our app gives us another tool in our tool belt,” said Dagenhart. “There’s a little something for everyone. Various people use it for various reasons.”
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1/2
The amount of bulletin printing Alive has cut.
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20%
Increase in online giving
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1,275+
Number of app downloads
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23,000
Number of app sessions since launch