(Above, left to right) Kingdom Kids Director Mary Tod Braswell; Ministry Coordinator Sarah Miranda; Worship + Communications Pastor Reid Work; Youth Director Hunter Stonebraker; Lead Designer Mary Kate Kitsmiller; Assimilations Coordinator + Interim Kingdom Kids Coordinator Logan Hunt; College + Young Adult Director Caleb Anderson; Teaching Pastor Will Campbell
Six years ago, Reid Work and a colleague were called upon to plant a campus for an established church in the Chattanooga area. Clearly, they did a lot of things right from the start: just two years in, the vision for that church plant was reimagined entirely.
“We began as a campus of that church and then quickly outgrew even our own expectations,” Work recalls. “So, it became pretty evident that we needed to pursue what it looked like to be our own fully autonomous church.”
As someone who has “been there since the beginning,” Work learned a lot about growing a church, successfully, during his time at what’s now called Citizens of Heaven Church. But he also learned that rapid growth exposes operational weaknesses just as quickly.
With only two staff members at Citizens Church in the beginning, one of the first questions Reid Work and his co-founder asked was simple: who does what?
“Day-to-day operations were split up between the two of us,” he recalls. “It was like we were wearing 50 different hats and obviously only had one head each.”
That reality affected every part of the ministry — including Citizens of Heaven’s “digital front door.”
Without a defined budget in place, the two men initially relied on volunteers to help establish an online presence for the church.
“A lot of people stepped up to the call and said, ‘Hey, I can help run some social media if you guys need it; just send me what you want posted,’” Work says. Other members volunteered to help manage website updates on a monthly basis.
“So, it was really an all-hands-on-deck mentality,” he explains.
Even so, the church didn’t have much to work with in terms of content, photos or even detailed information about Citizens of Heaven. At the time, survival — not optimization — was the priority.
“I can say a lot of different things about how our Web presence was lacking, but we just had to look at the quickest options available as we began to form,” Work admits. “We picked the quickest route.”
Building a better (digital) front door
In practice, that meant new tools were introduced one by one as different communications needs emerged. Fast forward a few years, and the staff — now three people, with one primarily handling children’s ministry operations — was relying on a fragmented setup that began “showing the seams” as growth continued. As a result, the church’s digital presence no longer reflected its reality.
“It really didn’t describe who we are, or what we believe, or what we’re about,” Work explains. “It didn’t encapsulate a true vision or a snapshot of day-to-day life here, from Sunday morning to Saturday.”
At the same time, he — as the staff member leading worship and communications — was studying exactly how pivotal communication was (and is) in the life of any church.
“I was learning how we could really succeed or fail based on just front-door elements and how well we communicate with people both internally and externally,” he says. “In this day and age, people are going to look at those things and take an automatic snapshot in their heads of what a church is or isn’t.”
“Ours wasn’t a terrible approach,” he adds. “But over time we figured out, ‘OK, this isn’t just a platform we use to send members Bible verses and remind them to check our calendar. It also needed to act as a true front door in a lot of ways.’”
A better, more consistent, more reflective website — actively updated — became a top priority.
As he learned more about church communications, Work began envisioning an app that could help keep everyone connected, staff and members alike.
To this end, he began reviewing the church’s broader technology ecosystem to better coordinate everything from volunteer management and service planning to website development and upkeep.
CAPITAL CAMPAIGN? YES. CHAOS? NO.
As the leaders at Citizens of Heaven Church prepared for a major building initiative, one of their biggest questions was centered on giving: Would transitioning to a new, all-in-one church tech platform create unnecessary friction for donors and staff alike?
As it turns out, the opposite happened: instead, the integrated Campaign feature within the Subsplash platform streamlined nearly every aspect of the process. Used across the church website, mobile app, QR codes, and tap-to-give functionality, the tool allowed members to make one-time gifts or pledge recurring commitments over periods of up to three years — all within a single system.
According to Worship + Communications Pastor Reid Work, the simplicity of the experience proved critical. Congregants can easily navigate the giving process regardless of age or technical comfort level, resulting in virtually no support requests or confusion during the campaign rollout.
“The Campaign feature created a welcome mat in front of the door,” Work explains, noting that a few instructional slides were enough to guide users through pledging and giving independently.
The self-service functionality also reduced administrative strain. Members could create, edit and manage their own pledges without staff intervention, while church leaders maintained real-time visibility into pledge totals, campaign progress, and overall commitments.
Work said the alternative likely would have involved juggling multiple software tools and manual tracking systems to manage donor records and campaign updates.
“Without it, we would have had a lot more headaches, three more apps, and five more software platforms trying to keep up,” he said. “Instead, it’s all consolidated under our Subsplash One platform.”
Moving from marketing to ministry infrastructure
Although overhauling the church’s Web presence was top of mind, the administrative burden was also becoming overwhelming for the small staff. A fragmented setup created inconsistent workflows, duplicated effort, training headaches, and hyper-dependency on specific individuals — Work, in particular.
“A lot of admin-type things fall under the ‘communications’ piece of my role as Worship + Communications Pastor,” he explains. “To put it simply, the first year we were surviving, just trying to figure out how to operate as a church. At year two, we were figuring out what we needed to hone in. Year three was about fine-tuning and tweaking what resonated with our church in terms of vision and day-to-day processes.”
By Citizens of Heaven’s third year in operation, Work began viewing the church’s communications systems as more than marketing tools — they were ministry infrastructure. Consolidation, then, became as much a mindset shift as a technology decision.
By 2024, the staff had grown enough that some of Work’s responsibilities could be redistributed, giving him time to step back and evaluate the church’s systems more strategically.
“I just began thinking: What if we didn’t have our website on our current platform?” he recalls. “What if the world was our oyster? What if we could pick and choose what was best for us?”
Around that same time, a longtime friend transitioned out of a church-facing ministry role and into a sales position with Subsplash, an all-in-one church technology platform. The move prompted Work to spend about a month researching the platform and eventually request a demo.
“I knew Subsplash did X, Y and Z, but I wanted to learn more,” he says. “When [my friend] showed us the Subsplash One platform, it really began to break it down for us — what it could do, what it could replace, how it could really put everything under one giant umbrella.”
After discussions with the church’s elder team, Work green-lighted the transition — a pivotal decision. Especially because he would be leading the process internally.
From fragmented to highly functional
Fortunately, Subsplash’s migration support team helped make the transition manageable.
The migration process took roughly three months and included consolidating years of data and information stored across multiple platforms.
“In that time, we were just processing all the people data and information we had stored in other places and getting it imported into Subsplash, setting it up the way we wanted it,” Work says.
The transition also included rebuilding the church’s website and app.
“To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have figured it all out on my own, so thankfully, Subsplash’s team was a huge help making that jump,” he recalls. “We’d used so many different apps, so many different platforms for different things, that it was a lot of consolidating.”
Once the all-in-one platform was in place, Work faced another challenge: helping staff members “unlearn” the habit of using separate tools for separate functions and begin thinking about church operations as one connected ecosystem.
“It meant thinking with a ‘Subsplash brain’ to say, ‘No, all of it can be done right here,’” Work says.
After onboarding calls, training sessions, and hands-on learning, the new system gradually became second nature.
“We haven’t looked back, nor regretted it,” he says. “We’ve been very, very pleased with it.”
More ministry, less management
According to Work, one of the biggest advantages has been simplicity.
The transition allowed the team to retain the features they valued from previous software platforms while gaining additional benefits, particularly a more intuitive and user-friendly experience.
“I think some of the other software that we used before was overly complicated for what we needed it to do,” Work admits. “I’m sure it works really well for others and what they need, but it created a lot of issues on the staff side of things for us.”
With such a small staff, Work says there simply wasn’t enough bandwidth to master the ins and outs of multiple systems.
“There was no way for us to know all the nuances of every tool,” he says. “This way, we got to keep all of the positives that we loved about the other software and only add really beautiful benefits to that.”
Best of all, the new platform has freed up several hours each week that Work can now spend on ministry instead of troubleshooting systems or training staff members how to navigate different tools.
“Again, we were using so many different platforms that I had to train them in different ways,” he says. “A lot of those tools weren’t as intuitive as Subsplash has proven to be.”
In some cases, Work says, he would simply complete projects himself because teaching someone else the process would take too much time.
“It has freed me up from doing a lot of hand holding and training,” he concludes. “And that has allowed me to do other things that I’m also gifted at and that are part of my role.”
