WHEN TECHNOLOGY BECOMES A MINISTRY PARTNER
By RaeAnn Slaybaugh
At Calvary Church Colorado, a staff culture of eagerness to adopt (and even shape) new tech tools — combined with a platform partner willing to listen — has cultivated first-class, forward-thinking digital engagement strategies.
For many churches, when deciding to adopt new technology, it isn’t so much a question of usefulness; it’s about whether the staff has the time, capacity and desire to implement it.
This stands to reason: as we all know, church leaders and staff are notoriously busy. Additionally, many rely on a growing collection of software, apps and other tools that don’t always “play nicely” together. As a result, even a promising new all-in-one platform does seem like a better option, it can also feel like yet another thing to learn and maintain — let alone maximize.
But Calvary Church Colorado in Aurora seems to buck this trend.
As Admin Pastor Joshua Taylor explains, the church has spent more than a decade embracing digital tools, testing new functionalities, and working closely with its technology provider — Subsplash — to address ministry needs as they emerge.
A BETA TESTER IS BORN
The relationship began in 2014 with a relatively straightforward objective: make the church’s digital content more accessible and create a better mobile experience.
Over time, Calvary’s use of the Subsplash platform expanded to include giving, website hosting, livestreaming, messaging, groups, events and other ministry functions.
For Joshua, the progression illustrates what can happen when technology adoption is treated as an ongoing partnership.
“The big key that sold us was that they were open to listening,” he explains. “It wasn’t just, ‘OK, cool, got it.’ It was, ‘Hey, let’s see what we can do with what you’re asking and see if we can improve that feature.’”
Joshua comes by his dedication to digital development honestly: his father — founding Pastor Ed Taylor — is himself a technophile.
“He was a big adopter of technology, even as a kid. He loved playing the Atari 2600 and was always interested in new things like ‘the computer,’” Joshua says, laughing. “So, Calvary got on the app game, the website game, pretty quickly.”
Not surprisingly, then, after earning a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies and gaining ministry experience outside Colorado, the tech-loving pastor’s son returned to Calvary in 2014 to take a position that was heavily social media-focused. It was no easy task; at the time, the social media platforms we all know and love now were still finding their footing.
But Calvary was already experimenting with digital communication, including making sermon messages available as MP3s on its website. Before long, father and son both recognized that congregants were increasingly accessing information on their phones — and that simply having a website was not enough. For one thing, the desktop experience didn’t necessarily translate well to a mobile device. Second, the church’s existing app wasn’t very intuitive or sophisticated enough to convey the church’s unique DNA through its digital presence.
This challenge came to a head when Subsplash approached the church in 2014. As mentioned, Calvary already had an app through another provider. Despite the Taylors’ love of technology, moving to a new platform represented, in no uncertain terms, a lot of work.
“When they first approached us, it was a big task, like, ‘Man, do we leave this app company and go to a new one and really just trust them with everything?’” Joshua recalls. “But in the end, we really just wanted to be in people’s hands, essentially.”
Calvary ultimately made the move to Subsplash because it offered a more attractive, church-specific digital experience via a platform the team found easier to use. Within roughly a month of the initial conversation, the church had moved over both its church app and its radio ministry app.
LET THE NEED LEAD
When Calvary first partnered with Subsplash, the platform’s primary offering was its mobile app and media experience. It didn’t yet provide the broader collection of functions the church uses today.
This limitation didn’t prevent the relationship from developing. On the contrary, Calvary continued using the platform while Subsplash expanded its capabilities.
Then and now, Joshua has regular communication with the church’s assigned client success manager, discussing how the technology could better serve the church’s needs. Joshua says he was particularly interested in the possibility of bringing church management functions into the same ecosystem and kept raising the subject during these frequent conversations.
“And so forever — I mean, on every call — I’d be like, ‘One day, I really hope …’” Joshua recalls. “And they said, ‘Oh, that’s just not our lane. That’s not what we’re doing.’”
Eventually, however, Taylor got a different response: Subsplash began developing ways to connect its app with other softwares through application programming interfaces, or APIs.
Soon after, Calvary was invited to test the app’s new giving functionality.
At the time, Taylor says, 80% to 90% of Calvary’s giving still came through checks and cash. The church had an existing giving solution it liked, but Joshua saw an opportunity to make the experience easier for people who were new to electronic giving.
Initially, Subsplash provided the front-end experience while another system handled back-end functions such as recordkeeping and giving statements. As the platform’s own giving capabilities matured, Calvary eventually moved over those functions, too.
The same pattern emerged with the church website.
Calvary’s online presence took a lot of legwork, including coding that was done in-house. So, when Subsplash introduced website hosting, Taylor took the chance to test the available features. He found it easier to build pages and incorporate existing media with the new system.
“What was really cool is that I could embed, natively, our media and our sermons,” he says. “It was a one-click stop.”
Giving could also be embedded and, importantly, similarly easy to use.
“Instead of doing all the back-end work and coding that we were doing with other companies, it was just so simple,” Joshua recalls. “It was a simple block system.”
Calvary has since built three iterations of its church website
using Subsplash, with each benefiting from the platform’s continuing development.
CONSOLIDATION GOES BEYOND CONVENIENCE
Calvary didn’t begin with a plan to consolidate every digital function under one roof. The church started with a problem, evaluated a potential solution, and expanded its use of the platform as additional capabilities became available.
In contrast, many churches accumulate software one need at a time. A ministry launches a new program and adopts a tool to support it. Another department needs a different capability. A separate provider offers a particularly strong solution for giving, communications, scheduling or media delivery.
Individually, those decisions might make sense. Collectively, though, they can create a nebulous patchwork of systems that’s nearly impossible to navigate.
“A lot of times, churches will have 10 or 14 or different tools they’re using — one does one thing really well, and so on — and that’s why they’re kind of locked in,” Joshua acknowledges. And while he concedes that a consolidated platform like the one his church has embraced might not offer every specialized feature available, it does provide more than enough to get started.
“In the long run, the centralization will make it so simple for a church to be able to navigate not only their congregation, but their effectiveness.”
LEADERSHIP NEEDS TO “GO FIRST”
In 2014, about a year after Calvary started using the Subsplash platform, the church had about 47 staff members, compared with about 33 today. During those early years, leadership made it clear that digital engagement was part of the church’s direction and encouraged staff, ministry leaders and volunteer teams to participate.
To this end, Joshua Taylor asserts that staff adoption is a must for building a staff culture that’s keen on tech. It makes sense: when the people responsible for ministry understand a tool — and use it themselves — they are better equipped to introduce it to others.
Initially, he was met with some resistance.
“We definitely had some people who were like, ‘No, this is not what I want to do. I love my pen and paper,’” he recalls. “And we said, ‘It’s not a replacement. It’s just an addition until the tech becomes good enough to replace it.’”
In all his attempts to encourage the staff to embrace new technologies, Joshua says he continually asked himself a guiding question: If his grandmother were attending, would the tech make it easy for her to get involved and stay connected with the church?
“We’re a multi-generational church,” he explains. “And Subsplash has been super consistent with being able to stay on track with the vision and the goal of allowing technology to be easy for someone to be introduced to.”
PARTNERSHIP FUELED BY HONEST FEEDBACK
One of the most distinctive elements of Calvary Church’s experience has been its relationship with Subsplash’s development and client success teams. Calvary has benefited from having established points of contact with the provider, including regular communication and opportunities to test developing features, explain what isn’t working, ask questions about a proposed change, and follow up on concerns.
“I’ve been a part of countless beta meetings with them, talking about real things that could potentially be roadblocks in their initial designs and initial functionalities,” Joshua explains. “I have a long list of things that we’re still working on. But even in this last week, I’ve talked or communicated with three project managers who are overseeing different features and subsets for Subsplash.
“It’s a win-win. Really, we see it as a partnership,” he adds. “If they improve it, other churches get blessed by it. We’re solving church problems with a company that’s willing to listen. The better their product is for the — big-C — Church, the better the product is for us.”
Beyond Calvary’s four walls, the church’s quarterly Pastors’ Community and its annual Refresh Ministry Conference — which gathers church leaders and ministry teams from all over the U.S. — give Joshua and his team opportunities to hear what other churches are experiencing and bring practical questions back to Subsplash. The result is a two-way exchange: Calvary can help inform product development, while improvements made in response to its feedback might benefit other ministries.
ADOPTING WITH DISCERNMENT
It’s important to clarify that Calvary’s willingness to experiment doesn’t mean it adopts every Subsplash feature immediately. Children’s check-in is a good example. Although the church was interested in expanding its use of these capabilities in the platform, it first wanted additional safeguards and accountability measures in place.
“We weren’t ready to jump on board until Subsplash did that,” Joshua recalls. “And they knocked it out of the park within about a year, which, again, is unheard of.”
And although Calvary Church uses Subsplash for livestreaming, messaging, life groups, paid and unpaid events, charitable giving and other functions, the church has yet to adopt Trends AI. This new automated AI intelligence hub and reporting tool consolidates fragmented church data into daily-refreshed, real-time dashboards.
“We haven’t turned that on yet, but I’m sure there are numbers in there that would be interesting,” Joshua says. “We’ve just been doing analytics our own way for a long time, and Trends is brand-new.”
MEASURING THE REACH — AND LOOKING AHEAD
Calvary’s commitment to cutting-edge digital ministry has clearly resonated. Subsplash reports nearly 425,000 unique users launching the Calvary Church app platform and more than 209,000 for its Grace FM radio ministry platform. The two platforms have recorded a combined 2.1 million media plays, a figure Joshua confirms.
But the work is far from over. For Joshua, the next priority is maximizing the Subsplash Groups function, a feature that connects small groups, service teams, and ministries directly to Calvary’s church management tools.
Additionally, the Workflows feature is likely to be a big focus, as it is designed to help church teams organize, automate and track repeatable ministry processes.
QUICK FACTS ABOUT CALVARY CHURCH COLORADO:
Year established: 1999
Staff — 27 full-time / 5 part-time
Weekly Attendance: 2,500 – 3,000
“If there’s anything that we’re most excited about, it’s probably the addition of this piece,” Joshua points out. “Every year we’re excited. Every year we’re asking, ‘What’s the new feature that they’re going to release so we can adopt it?’”
Sound familiar? If not, it’s pretty much to be expected.
For his part, Joshua acknowledges that Calvary Church’s mindset is an outlier. He frames the operational challenge in a way that’s relatable for any busy church leader: embracing change translates to more work. When staff members are already at capacity, even a worthwhile initiative can feel like an additional burden.
“But what I love about Subsplash is that the change is worth it,” he clarifies. “If you can get through it, on the other side, it does make life a lot easier. The centralization will eventually make it so simple to navigate your congregation and your effectiveness, that it actually inspires more work to be done than hinders it.”
