How Connect Christian Church Boosted Community Engagement and Generosity

It’s interesting to look at growth through the lens of churches who serve a small, tight-knit community. And it’s doubly interesting when that church has led their local faith community for nearly 140 years.

“[The original area] used to be a junction point for a railroad in Missouri, then it became a brand new city called Carl Junction in 1885,” said Kenan Klein, Worship and Student Minister at Connect Christian Church. “A group of 36 individuals… saw that there was no church and thought, we need to put a church there to ‘connect people to Jesus.’”

Their church—named in honor of that “connect” line above, which was discovered in the original founders’ 19th century paperwork—had grown to roughly two hundred active members by 2020. Connect Christian was filling up their building for two services every Sunday, and at the beginning of March that year, they decided to include a third service to meet the needs of the community.

“We shut down three weeks later,” Kenan said—as did the rest of the country, per COVID social distancing restrictions.

As with most other churches, serious conversations had to take place immediately, specifically with regard to technology’s role in maintaining engagement during the uncertain months ahead. And while Connect Christian succeeded in holding their community together, inefficiencies in the digital approach became obvious during the pandemic—particularly with online giving.

“[Our previous technology platform] used a third-party to take all their transactions, and because it was third-party and not in house, it would take two to three weeks to hit the books,” Kenan said. “During COVID, that was terrible. There are some weeks where we have money coming, but we really need to spend money now that we don’t have, because it’s in this nebulous transition period.”

There were reliability concerns as well. “Facebook went down in 2021 for twenty-four hours. All of our ministry was on Facebook. At that point we’re like, we need another option that we can control that is not another entity, but it’s ours and we can have access to it, so if Facebook goes down we can go live there.”

Knowing a change was needed, they began their due diligence and started researching other technology solutions, and Pushpay quickly became a front-runner. One of the most appealing factors was how Pushpay processes all transactions in-house, which means gifts can be delivered in a couple days, as opposed to a couple weeks.

There were other advantages as well. “I think we should always be faithful stewards of the churches [finances],” Kenan said, emphasizing how this is especially critical for smaller churches. “For me, the biggest concern was return on investment. How is this product going to pay for itself? Because if it doesn’t, we can’t use it.

“I just basically made a spreadsheet of [our previous platform’s tiered pricing] and Pushpay’s price breakdowns, and the tools we use.” It was clear that a tiered plan would soon become untenable for Connect Christian’s goals, whereas Pushpay’s all-in-one pricing wouldn’t change as their community grew.

And grow they have—after adopting Pushpay’s suite of tech solutions, their congregation doubled in size to 400 active members in just three years.

While Connect Christian’s still-growing congregation is a joy for their ministry, Kenan has also been delighted by Pushpay’s customer success team. “I love that we were a church of 200 at the time, and I got the same experience as [a megachurch]… I’m in Southwest Missouri, and I was flown out to one of Pushpay’s customer meetings, and I’m like the smallest church there, talking about some of the things we’re doing.