Mobile App For Church: Why do you need it and How to Build One?

Everyone is on their phone these days and the virtual world is taking over our real lives. In fact, 83% of the youth sleeps next to their phones. Therefore, we won’t be surprised if you would like to connect with members of your community over a mobile application. Many churches, these days are using mobile apps for their church in order to bring together their people better and provide them with a common platform to have viable discussions, religious and otherwise. This is what the aim for almost every project around the theme of mobile app development for churches.

A survey shows 73% of churchgoers are reading the Bible electronically. A number of forward-thinking churches are using technology and communication to keep their congregation abreast of news regarding their ministry. And Sodio being a forward-thinking technology powered company believes that the believers and devoted folks can do a lot with help of our technology-powered solutions. You may have a look at one of the mobile apps created by us: Eternal Message. So in this blog, we thought to discuss the process of developing a mobile app for the church.

A church can be used to keep the members aware and engaged in the various activities that happen in your church. Not only this, members of your church even who may be far away can be part of all the events and prayers with the right use of latest technologies and solutions in the form of this mobile app for church. In this post, our aim is to help you understand the whole process of how to create a mobile app for your church. Following that we can engage in discussion on how does the process looks like. So, without any further ado, let’s have a look at the features your mobile app for church should have and why they’re important:

Why Mobile App for Churches are Important?

ACCESSIBILITY: It is easier for people to reach more people through a church app as almost everyone has a smartphone. This increased accessibility will help the members and devotees to be constantly close to the faith and its values. Time and again, elders contemplate as to why the younger generation is not as close to the god and faith as themselves, maybe it’s because their whole world is centered around their smartphones. And building a bridge between the church and their virtual worlds (Read: smartphones) could go a long way.

CHARITY AND FINANCES: With a centralized system that controls all the church-based activities it is easier for the church to organize charities and collect funds or have an online merchant for direct money transfer transactions that accept donations for the community as well as betterment of the church. Proper transparent and in-depth accounting, as well as auditing, can be performed too with this a mobile app for churches. This will help in keeping a track of all the charities and finances. Accepting payments would mean a bit complex process that is not everyone’s cup of tea. But fret not, Sodio will take care of it for you. Have a look at our process of payment gateway integration in mobile apps.

MEDIA: Your sermons can now be attended by people who don’t have an easy access to churches but are keen to listen to them. All you need is to record them and upload them on the applications through media plug-ins. There is also the possibility of live airing of the sermons. The audio of your church choir can be uploaded and streamed by the members. This can also include the hymn sheets from your church choir. Have a look at our guide on How to make an audiobook app.

NEWS UPDATES: It is a great method to keep people updated about the daily news of the church community and all the church-related activities and functions. This would make everyone feel more included in society. You can also include features that allow people to update about their personal lives as well. It will be an amazing thing to do as the members of your church would be more involved with each other, and hence brotherhood and harmony will be promoted in the community. This can be an incredible idea to include in the mobile app development for churches.

SAVES PRINTING: The cost of printing is not less and the cost of buying is even more. Also, save paper, it saves the environment. With a mobile app for the church, specifically for the activities happening in the church, all the printing can be avoided. It will be replaced with the updates that will be sent using the admin panel for the church. It will be a huge time-saver for the people who are presently taking care of the printing and things related to that. Apart from all this, your community will be one of the few who is doing their bid to save the environment.

FEATURES OF A CHURCH APP:

While making an app for a church with so many activities and events lined up over the whole year is cumbersome and has too many features that can be listed here, we will try and explain some of them to you. This will help you to know what to expect from the mobile app for the church. So, here are the features that you should definitely be aware of.

• CALENDAR: A calendar is a must-have feature of your app as it will show all the important events in the church. The upcoming meetings and sermons of the church can be flagged on the calendar and people can keep checking it for updates.
• NOTIFICATIONS: There should be notifications regarding news updates of the ministry, latest videos uploaded, latest books added and upcoming events in order to keep the people of the church updated with the regular happenings and to ensure they don’t miss out on anything.
• BULLETIN: This space should have all the news about the church, be it local church news or news from the Vatican.
• AUDIO: This space can have the choir and the hymn-sheets for people to get a church mass like feel at a place of their choice.
• DONATION: There should be a space to accept donations from others and to invest in the various church initiatives.
• COMMUNITY FORUM: This kind of feature could include a chat mechanism where people can share their views on the latest church events and discuss any future initiatives in order to engage them all.PRAYERS: Your app can include variously written prayers that people can recite in their own homes.

SOME QUESTIONS YOU COULD HAVE IN MIND

•  What kind of technical support do church applications require?

Such kind of an application generally requires some backdoor work. Volunteers who currently do the work can be trained to do it all with the admin panel that comes with the app.

•   What happens when the app malfunctions?

If the app malfunctions our team will do our best to help you with it. In fact, it’ll make sure there is no such problem in the first place. Products developed by Sodio are known to run with the lowest downtime.

• Can the developer incorporate all the features that reflect our ideology?

We would try our best to incorporate the exact features as you will tell us to add to the application. Our main aim is to make an app which you can use well. An app customized and tailor-made according to your needs is something that we shall strive to provide.

HOW CAN SODIO HELP

Sodio is one of the best product development companies. Our capabilities in mobile app development and building successful platforms have been recognized by people across the world. We have successfully delivered more than 30 android as well as iOS apps. The mobile apps created by Sodio have the much-needed “wow! What an app” factor and we ensure that this quality is reflected in each and every product we make. So, are you looking to create a mobile app for your church? Or a similar app maybe? Maybe you need to just ask some questions about an idea or project? Feel free to get in touch with us. Our team would be more than happy to help you.