How McLane Church enhanced community connection with Pushpay

Summary

Church: McLane Church | Multi-location
Type: Protestant | Multi-campus
Using Pushpay Since: 2020
Products: ChurchStaq (Pushpay Giving + Pushpay ChMS + Custom Church App)

KEY RESULTS

• Consolidated giving, ChMS, and a custom church app into one integrated platform
• Enabled systematic pastoral care tracking, including long-term bereavement follow-up
• Replaced a fragmented multi-vendor approach with a single connected solution

The Situation

If your church already made the leap to digital but still feels like you’re missing people, you’re not alone.

McLane Church had been ahead of the curve. They launched McLane Church Online in 2017 and operated across three physical campuses. When 2020 hit, the pivot to online services was relatively painless. But reaching people and truly connecting with them turned out to be two very different things.

Lynora Rumm, Site Pastor and Master Admin, felt the gap. “The pivot online was really easy for us. But we felt like we couldn’t connect with our people in a more comprehensive way, like one-on-one and tracking those connections.”

The church could broadcast. What it couldn’t do was follow up with a grieving family six weeks later, track which new visitors had been personally welcomed, or ensure that someone walking through a hard season didn’t slip through the cracks. The technology they had helped them be visible. It didn’t help them be present.

Lynora started evaluating church management systems. She found one that seemed close enough and drafted the email to sign on. But she didn’t have complete peace about it. “How much peace can one have with church software?” she joked. Before she hit send, a forwarded email from Pushpay changed everything.

The Solution

The email announced that Pushpay had acquired Church Community Builder, creating a comprehensive platform that brought giving, church management, and a custom church app together under one roof. For Lynora, who had assumed she’d need to stitch together multiple vendors, it was a turning point.

“I was blown away by what they were offering. It wasn’t just the electronic payment, but the church management software had features that allowed us to really connect with our people, not just through life groups, but through every ministry that we have.”

The Results

For McLane Church, the win wasn’t a single dramatic metric. It was the elimination of gaps: gaps between campuses, gaps between systems, and most importantly, gaps between the church and the people it’s called to care for.

Everything that previously required multiple platforms and manual workarounds now lives in one place. Staff can move from tracking a connection to checking giving history to updating a care workflow without switching tools.

But the real difference shows up in moments that don’t fit in a spreadsheet. A family walking through loss gets a follow-up call at week two, week six, and month three, because the system remembers even when a busy pastor’s calendar doesn’t. A first-time visitor gets a personal welcome within days, because the process queue makes sure no one falls through.

As Lynora puts it: “The app, the church management software, the online pay… everything just married together in one nice, neat package. And really, that’s what we love about Pushpay.”

Because of that integration, she says simply, “We’re able to connect with them even better.”