Steffen Henke and his team handle communications within the Fokus Kirche, a modern Protestant free church in the Union of Free Pentecostal Churches (BFP). The Fokus Kirche now has three branches: Düsseldorf, Mönchengladbach and Bad Langensalza. We spoke with him to see how they use Socie in his congregation.
What were your challenges?
We are a growing campus church now represented in three locations. We have found that we have to organize communication differently now than we used to when we had only one location. For example, news from one location did not arrive everywhere, and it also became more difficult to communicate information to everyone at once. Therefore, we started looking for a modern communication platform. Our church already has a great affinity for social media, so a digital solution was obvious.
How did the installation of Socie go?
The advantage of Socie is its modular principle. This makes it very easy to put together the required functions. The Socie team also helped us tremendously. After we explained what we were looking for, the team set up a demo app for us, which we continued to work with ourselves.
What functions do you use?
Important for us is the calendar – here everyone can see what is, when is planned and no one misses anything anymore. The groups are also used a lot, especially for topics that used to be all via (always incomplete) WhatsApp groups. Even the coordination of our small group leaders is now done via the app. This worked particularly well during our church camp: both beforehand and during the weekend we shared all information via the App.
A useful feature for us is the photo albums, which make it easier for members to participate in events, continuing education trips or sessions on the progress of new construction at a location. Last but not least, the bulletin board is also heavily used.
How did you introduce the app to your congregation?
We had a launch day where we introduced the app at all locations. There were also flyers and a help desk after the church service for a few weeks. Also important was our church outing, where we used the app for all the information about the program, etc. – That was our record-breaking weekend so far in terms of attendance.
How do you and your members like using the app so far?
The app is well received by the church community, we have received many positive comments and the number of users is steadily increasing – new ones are added every week.
Where do you see room for improvement?
We are using the news feature a lot so far to draw attention to events. There is still a lot of potential for us to tell the many stories from the Fokus Kirche. It would also be nice if it were easier to integrate videos in the future.
Would you recommend the Socie app to other communities?
I would recommend every municipality to regularly evaluate its communication needs and adjust them if necessary. In our case, because of the new locations, it was necessary to create a new platform for everyone – and then of course an app is ideal, since we all use the cell phone as our main source of information anyway.
The Socie app is very clear and very easy to start and use, so in my opinion a good solution.
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