How Springs Church prioritized connection in their congregation

Summary

Church: Springs Church
Type: Protestant
Products: Pushpay Custom Church App + Pushpay Giving

Instead of preaching from the pulpit, they handed the congregation their phones and walked them through every feature together.

KEY RESULTS

• Dedicated two full Sunday services to app onboarding (“Connection Sunday”)
• Non-technical staff member built and now manages the app using Pushpay’s tools
• Real-time QR code giving deployed during services with immediate congregational response
• App became the primary hub for church information, group sign-ups, giving, and staff contact

The situation

If people leave your church, it’s rarely because of the teaching. It’s usually because they never felt like they belonged.

Springs Church saw that pattern and decided to confront it directly. Members were falling through the gaps, not because the church didn’t care, but because there was no easy, centralized way for people to get connected to groups, events, volunteering, or even basic church information. Karen Woodyard, Deacon Ministry Director, named the problem clearly: “For many people who get disgruntled with the church, it’s usually because they didn’t feel connected.”

The church needed something simple enough that every member could use it regardless of age or tech comfort, and comprehensive enough to become the single place people go to stay engaged with church life beyond Sundays.

The solution

Springs Church adopted Pushpay’s custom church app and made a bold decision about how to launch it: they gave up two full Sunday services to do it.

No sermon. No typical service flow. Instead, church leaders walked the entire congregation through the app feature by feature. They called it Connection Sunday.

• Custom Church App: Built by Ashley Moore, Executive Administrative Assistant, with no prior app development experience. She updates it weekly with announcements, sermon notes, and church information. As Ashley described it, “Pushpay makes it very simple. It’s very user-friendly. And now everything you need to know about everything, even getting in touch with our pastors or staff, is right there on the app.”
• Pushpay Giving with QR Codes: During a service, the pastor put a QR code on screen and asked the congregation to give to an orphanage in Haiti. Karen described what happened: “Everybody lifts up their phone, takes a picture of the QR code, and within 10 seconds, donations just started piling in.”

The results

Connection Sunday was one day. But the shift it created has been permanent.

The app became the default way members find information, sign up for groups, access sermon notes, give, and contact staff. Ashley put it simply: “The app has just become the way that everybody finds the information that they need in the church.”

More importantly, the church now builds connection time into every service, not just the launch Sunday. What started as an app rollout became a cultural change in how Springs Church thinks about engagement.

Karen summed it up: “I really feel that Pushpay gave us that edge to where people now can really feel connected because everything’s right there, right in front of them with the church app.”