Stories from the Church: Web Player

The Subsplash Web Player is the perfect compliment to your app to reach your audience in new ways! Whether your content is consumed on a mobile device or a desktop, we’ve got you covered. The content uploaded to your app is encoded and maximized for playback across every medium. This means there is no dual entry–upload in one place and your media is instantly delivered to your app, web player, and podcast feed. We’ve seen great adoption rates of the Web Player so far, but want to encourage everyone to check it out and see how it fits the need of your organization. Simply check out the ‘Web Player’ settings page in the Subsplash Dashboard to turn on this channel–it’s as easy as that, and it comes fully loaded with your content.

I had the opportunity to chat with a few of our lovely clients to hear how they’re liking the Web Player. Here are their stories:

ALL SAINTS CHURCH, SEATTLE WA

All Saints is a small church of 100 people in the heart of Seattle. By the grace of God, their app has had over 3,000 downloads! They cut their time uploading media to different sources in half by adding the Web Player as their media page on their website. Not only does the Web Player satisfy the functional requirements for them, but they are thrilled with the design of the page and how seamlessly it works with their current website. They love that it is 'easy to share and easy to update!'

ELEVATE LIFE CHURCH,  ORANGE PARK FL

Elevate Life Church in Florida implemented the Web Player onto their website immediately after release. Elevate Life fully utilizes the Web Player, Apps, and Podcasting. They promote the App and Web Player to their congregation often, and consider it a key part of their communication strategy. Because they only have to upload their media in one place now, they have seen significant time savings from what used to be hours updating across multiple services. They ‘love the streamlining capabilities’ and even based the look and feel of their website redesign on the Web Player. Elevate Life just launched their second campus and is a congregation of roughly 1,900 with over 4,500 app downloads!

LIFEGATE CHURCH, ATLANTA GA

Lifegate Church in Atlanta is a 1,000 member church. They use their App and Web Player as the resource for their congregation. By streamlining their processes, they’ve noticed that the Web Player saves several days worth of work per week. The adoption by their congregation of a centralized location for video, audio, and podcasting has ‘been awesome’. All ages have responded well to the app and Web Player from teens to members in their eighties. “The amount of people listening is over and above what we could have ever thought”.

Want to hear more about how this tool can be customized to fit your needs? We'd love to chat with you! 

The Mobile Revolution and the Church

7:00am hits, phone alarm goes off. Eat breakfast and check Twitter for morning news. Play your favorite Spotify playlist on your morning commute. Check notifications on your lunch break. Pay for coffee with the Starbucks app. Text family about dinner plans. Watch the hilarious Jimmy Fallon video your friend sent. Snap a pic of the breathtaking sunset. And much more in-between.

Sound familiar? Maybe the details differ for everyone, but one thing is the same for us all: mobile has become woven into our daily lives. With mobile passing the TV as “America’s first screen”, and people spending almost 2.5 hours daily engaging with apps alone, content consumed on a mobile device isn’t something to brush off as a passing trend.

In fact, we say with confidence that mobile has become vital. With the revolution of apps, mobile devices can now sync our daily, necessary, and leisurely activities all in one control center. People are relying on their devices to consume and communicate what is useful, helpful, and empowering in their daily lives.

[Enter the Church] These are the people that make up your congregation. These are the people that are actively seeking how to use their devices in greater and better ways. These are the people that can greatly benefit from your church’s resources beyond the Sunday service. With the global reach of the app stores, churches and ministries now have an amazing opportunity to enter the space of mobile technology and use it to provide a vital function in their congregation’s daily lives: hearing the Gospel, and staying connected to Christ’s Church.

This is a call to action. An action that we’ve seen countless churches use to fulfill their mission to spread the good news of Jesus, and use technology to be an active presence in the lives of those they shepherd. From more app downloads than members in their congregation, to increases in sermon downloads, to increases in giving, we’ve seen churches like The Village Church, Elevation Church, Fresh Life, and many others find great success through The Church App Platform. By making sermon archives, blogs, push notifications, giving, and other resources instantly accessible, apps can help you meet your audience in their context, on their time.

Think about the people that work weekends and can’t make it to Sunday services. Think about those that need your pastor’s weekly blog post to encourage their spirits. Think about the people who will share sermons via their social channels and will reach their friends and families as a result.

While there are a lot of overwhelming and uncertain ramifications that may accompany the mobile revolution, we challenge you to look at the great and powerful ways technology can be used for good. Here at Subsplash, we are passionate about using technology and delightful design to help make the most of your Gospel content. We want to see the Gospel shared to the ends of the earth. With The Church App Platform you can easily create and manage your own mobile apps, putting your content in the hands of a wider audience. We’d love to help you get started.

On iPhone Apps for Ministries

Hello from Subsplash! Just wanted to give a shout out to Alex Murashko-a friend from Saddleback and a writer for Assist News outlet. For the last couple of weeks, Alex has been researching ways for churches to use mobile apps as a means to reach a greater audience. We had a chance to talk with Alex about how we thought apps were changing the church tech landscape. It was an awesome conversation, and we wanted to share the article with you. It has some great insights from Chris Ediger, over at Giant Impact, and David Charzan, Executive Pastor at Saddleback Church. We hope you find this article helpful. Thanks Alex!

http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2010/s10050028.htm