Heart Revolution Church’s Path to Community Transformation in San Diego, CA

25 Years—But Really, Just 4

Their church has a quarter-century of vibrant history serving the San Diego community. A few years ago, however, leadership decided to pivot the name of their ministry to something that better spoke to the core of their mission.

“‘Heart Revolution’ has always been a part of our mission statement,” said David Ennis, who’s served as Financial Director for the past four years. “So it was always in the DNA, but it was never in the name of the church.”

As fate would have it, they made that switch—along with transitioning pastors—the week COVID struck. That one-two-three punch to their ministry was felt immediately. “Looking back at reports,” said David, “literally half of our donors walked out of our church that day.”

Building Back Stronger

“To be honest… [our focus] was just making it through,” David said of those early days. “There wasn’t a lot of outreach. [We were] trying to rebuild, and figure out how we keep this church afloat and not close our doors. Because we’re not serving the community if we close our doors.”

As they had for nearly a decade, Heart Revolution took advantage of Pushpay’s technology solutions to keep their head above water, and describe the online giving tools as their “backbone for receiving funds.”

“All the tools facilitate every donation that we receive as a church, but also provide ways to make it personal and measurable,” said David.

Beyond simply offering a channel to accept funds, the analytics they saw through the platform have informed and shaped their strategy for engaging and retaining their now-thriving community. For instance, on the tail end of the pandemic, when they realized that the average age of their growing membership was between twenty-five and thirty-five, they recognized the need to offer child care services to these parents.

What’s more, they heavily rely on staying connected to this younger generation all seven days of the week. “ Our app, in a lot of ways, is the pulse of the church. You could get connected to a lifegroup. You could watch this past Sunday’s message. You have the message notes. You have the giving tab. You have all the different events on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night.”

Local and Global Impact

Once again serving as the strong beating heart of their south San Diego faith community, Heart Revolution is making a monumental impact for everyone around them.

They share thousands of pounds of donated food each Thanksgiving, to a line of cars that stretches nearly a mile long around the block. During back-to-school season, they provide hundreds of free backpacks and haircuts to kids before they return to the classroom. They work closely with one of San Diego’s largest homeless NPOs, going so far as to walk those in need to shelter facilities.

“It’s no longer, ‘Come to Heart Revolution Church,’” David said. “Heart Revolution Church is going to the community.”

But their reach isn’t restricted to city limits. Not by a long shot.

“A way that we support local initiatives, and even global initiatives, is by adding tabs,” David said, speaking to the Pushpay platform’s ability to direct gifts toward specific causes. “We opened up a Ukraine missions tab to give funds to a pastor we had connections with over there. When the fires were really bad in Hawaii, we had someone in our church who has family there. We opened up a tab on Pushpay, the ‘Hawaii Missions Initiative,’ and we were able to send her out to help tons of people in that area.”

“We don’t feel like it’s taking away from our [regular] tithes and offerings,” David added. “We’ve actually found that when you have these specific avenues for people to give, to tie their heart to the needs of the community and to the globe, that actually brings more into the church, and our tithes and offerings haven’t gone down when we did those things.”