Churches invest heavily to get people in the doors. But that’s just the first step. Once people are in the building, you need to connect with them, often through experiences that blend the physical and the digital. 

That’s why the next era of church engagement involves systems that go beyond basic engagement. They need to build genuine connections.

Apollos Tap is a new kind of mission-driven tap technology that lowers friction and helps churches turn in-room moments into real, intimate connections. It facilitates “seat to connection” action. 

When someone in your church decides to act, Tap technology makes it as easy as possible to take that next step. It creates a clear and dependable path after your pastoral effort ends in an invitation to discipleship, connection, and to take the next step. It helps you go beyond engagement and genuinely get to know your people. 

Let’s look at tap technology, the synergy of combining it with App Clips technology, how Apollos is using this combination to rewrite the church engagement experience, and how your church can benefit from it.

What Are NFC, App Clips, and Tap Technology?

Tap technology is a hybrid blend of physical and digital experiences. On the one hand, it uses near-field communication or NFC technology, which requires a deliberate physical action. In most cases, this looks like tapping a phone on near-field communication tags (physical cards with an embedded antenna made of copper, say, on the back of a seat in the auditorium). 

From there, the church technology takes over, leading to a digital prompt, such as a notification or a link to a website. This is better than other options, like Bluetooth low energy (BLE). BLE proactively broadcasts a signal, which can feel spammy and is less secure than a direct, one-on-one interaction initiated by the user.

Combining NFC With App Clips

While the concept is simple, NFC technology, on its own, doesn’t get you very far. Traditional NFC applications that we’ve seen in church trigger a tiny notification on your screen. This is easy to miss. Even if you see it, often it does nothing more than take you to a URL that you could have typed in on your own.

App Clips is an iPhone native user experience that allows you to interact with an app without installing the app itself. It launches an app-like experience that takes up the bottom third of the phone’s screen. It can be branded and is visually prominent. 

The best part about App Clips? It integrates with NFC tags. This allows your people to interact with digital connect cards and other online initiatives with minimal friction. All that’s required is a single step: tapping the phone on a tag. 

Hardware Choice Matters With Tap Technology

When we launched Apollos Tap, no one was using NFC technology combined with App Clips technology. This led to a number of “aha moments” from the churches we work with. 

On the digital side, much of this came from the impressive bottom-third look of the App Clips digital experience. Using App Clips also meant the first thing a user sees is a white-labeled experience that feels safe and generates trust.

In the physical world, it was also influenced by the simple (but to us, obvious) choice of using quality hardware.

In the case of an NFC tag, this meant a better antenna. Often, NFC tags for churches come with tiny antennas. This leads to people smashing their phones into the contactless cards on the pew backs in front of them in confusion and frustration as they try to pick up the signal.

When that happens, it’s a point for abandonment. 

Apollos intentionally chose a larger antenna. It works from 2–3 inches away, reducing that failure moment and helping people launch their App Clips results without a fight.

Going with the higher-quality Tap hardware was a critical point in Apollos Tap development. As a company run by people who understand what it means to be in church, we knew that the goal wasn’t a fun piece of technology. It was building seamless connections with visitors. If those connection points were weak thanks to faulty hardware, it undermined the whole point.

By investing in better equipment, we made sure our Apollos App users could spark interactions every time someone made that first step. 

Beyond the Technology: What Is Apollos Tap?

Understanding NFC and App Clips technology is great, but those are just the tools. When you use them to get the right outcomes, though? That’s when it becomes a meaningful part of your discipleship strategy.

With Apollos Tap, we’ve combined NFC and App Clips to create a mission-driven digital tool that makes it organic and easy for churches to connect with people in person. 

Mission-Driven Tap Technology

When you use Apollos Tap, it can lead to multiple outcomes. If you tap, and you have an Apollos app downloaded, it pulls up the experience in your Apollos app. If you don’t have an app downloaded, it gives you the third-screen option for a guest experience. Only when the experience is over (and value is proven) does it suggest downloading your Apollos-backed church app for future connections.

Either way, Tap makes anything faster and more engaging, from answering questions to visiting event pages, registering, providing feedback, and giving. With every action, the goal is to remove friction, reduce steps, and make it impossible to miss a call to action.

Why Friction Matters

Why the focus on reducing steps and lowering barriers to engagement in church? Because friction makes a difference. Too much friction leads to missed opportunities.

That’s why, at Apollos, we don’t just talk about engagement. Initial connection is great, but you want to go further. The goal is to know your people. You want to draw them into more than a sterile digital form or web page. You want to lead them into a rich, relevant experience that you own, that you’ve designed, and that brings them closer to God and to your church. 

Your church technology shouldn’t waste the deeper moments your team has worked so hard to create. Next steps should be as smooth as possible. So smooth, you don’t even notice.

The Benefits of Using Apollos Tap

So, what does all of Apollos Tap’s innovative technology and purpose mean for your church? How can it help you achieve your vision and make the work more effective and less overwhelming? Let’s count the ways.

1. Instant engagement: Apollos Tap gives you an immediate app-like interaction, no download required. When you consider something like a QR code vs NFC tags, the latter removes steps and streamlines the experience.

2. White-labeled ownership: Your tap tags are branded, as is your native, half-screen experience.

3. Secure hybrid experiences: We don’t passively broadcast with Bluetooth. Everything is a secure, intentional one-on-one interaction.

4. Real-time data: You can’t pastor unknown people. Learn who your people are, see how they are engaging in the moment, improve church visitor follow-up, and benefit from enriched profiles  with every action. (Who engaged where, and what did they do?)

5. Dynamic, updatable content: Redirect and reassign tags online at will, without the need to reprogram or swap the physical versions already in place in your facility.

6. Integration within the Apollos ecosystem: If you have an Apollos app and you’re already investing in digital discipleship and daily spiritual habits, use your Tap tags to reinforce that experience with targeted prompts.

7. Church analytics that leaders can act on: Every Tap tag is numbered. Use them to build your own data warehouse that tracks clicks, interactions, and user journey flows. Heat map your auditorium. Equip your congregation to connect with you through both data and spiritual experiences.

Why Apollos Is the Best Giving Option

The other advantage that comes with Tap is that it gives you access to the fastest giving experience on the planet. One of the hiccups with digital giving is the number of steps it takes to give a gift online.

Our NFC + App Clips technology creates a truly seamless tap-to-give experience that is a perfect option for mobile giving for churches. A guest doesn’t need to download anything or access a web form. They just tap and use the branded third-screen experience to utilize secure, pre-approved contactless giving options directly from their digital wallet.

While we knew this would be a dramatic improvement for most churches, our team has been impressed by the reports we’ve received so far about how fast attendees are using Apollos Tap to improve the giving experience. One church told us it saw a significant bump in its giving come through the app-less tap experience within two weeks of rolling it out.

What Apollos Tap Can Do for Your Larger Vision

While the practical, individual benefits of Apollos Tap are great, there is also a “don’t miss the forest for the trees” element involved here. This revolves around the impact this kind of church technology can have on your mindset moving forward.

For instance, hybrid tools like Apollos Tap naturally create a technology vision check. Is your long-term digital ministry tied to your in-person rhythms? If something like Tap isn’t in the discussion yet, it might be time to shift from an “all or nothing” pandemic-based digital mindset. Maybe it’s time to start exploring post-pandemic strategies for how a hybrid church model can proactively support your ministry rhythms and daily activities.

That was the case with Liquid Church. Coming out of the pandemic, the church’s Digital Director, Lauren Bercarich, had to make the case that digital church wasn’t a backup option. It was part of the equation moving forward. (Now Liquid Church has a thriving digital ministry.) 

Other churches are catching on, too. In fact, when asked, 80% of church leaders say they plan on continuing hybrid worship experiences five years from now. The digital/physical church is here to stay. 

Hybrid church equipment, like Apollos Tap, gives you a pulse check to see if your technology is aligned with your long-term vision. It gives you inspiration to see where you can not just save dollars but time, energy, and effort as you look for more effective strategies to reach your people and your communities.

The impact also trickles down to the day-to-day stuff. Administrators, volunteers, IT staff — everyone benefits from the deep insights that come with the Apollos admin dashboard.

The key is understanding that tools like Apollos Tap aren’t the flashy, forward-thinking tools of the future. They’re the critical pieces of effective ministry right here. Right now. Ministries are already using Tap to make an impact because it fits right into most churches’ long-term digital and hybrid strategies.

Apollos Tap Use Cases and Examples

If you’re struggling to see how Tap spans the gap between the physical and the digital worlds, here are a few examples. Use them to visualize how this kind of tool can reinvent how your church operates more effectively on a daily basis.

Weekend Services

Tap technology makes it possible to track what people are saying and who is new by offering tap tags for easy initial engagement.

You can also streamline in-person giving. The frictionless Apollos Tap experience makes it easy for those who have a love-hate relationship with their technology to give more easily. It also helps those who don’t carry cash (which is over half of Generation Z, now) give in the moment, even if they don’t have anything but their phone.

Events and Outreach

Trying to spread the word about an upcoming event? Throwing together a last-minute outreach effort in response to an unexpected crisis or community need? Tap tags make it easy to engage with people in the moment. 

Reassign existing tags for a specific initiative. Then, make the ask (sign up, volunteer, say you’ll bring something), ask them to tap, and let the process take it from there.

Data and Analytics

Wondering how your congregation is engaging? Tap tags make it possible to see detailed user data, from specific interactions (filling out a survey) to journey flows (where did they go on your site and what actions did they take).

You can even generate heat maps of your auditorium to see who took an action where. 

The Future of Tap Engagement

The exciting thing about a digital tool like Apollos Tap is the possibilities that it opens up. At Apollos, we love coming alongside churches to empower vision and mission. We’re always looking for ways to blaze that trail, and Tap is a big part of the future of digital church. 

The local church is behind this vision, too. Churches are spending a lot of money to get people back indoors. But, they’re aware that digital church is here to stay. That means looking for crossover connections between the two “halves” of the church experience is a natural next step.

The need for effective hybrid tools is there, as well. Loneliness has reached epidemic proportions in America, and as people feel increasingly siloed and disconnected from one another, the need for effective community-building tools is at an all-time high. 

As churches pursue rebuilding community in a post-pandemic, digital-friendly world, tools like Apollos Tap offer an effective path forward. It streamlines digital interactions and goes beyond engagement to foster connection and build relationships. 

What does this progression look like for the coming years? At Apollos, we expect the use of seamless, secure, in-room digital moments to grow. Pastors and senior church leadership will look for more digital tools that go past the practical and drive retention and known-person discipleship.

In the same way Uber and Yelp sought to shape physical choices through digital touchpoints, we will continue to invest in tools that churches can use to shape and design the in-room journey. 

We are always working to refine how Apollos Tap and the rest of our digital discipleship tools can help churches be welcoming, clear, and actionable in their digital and hybrid strategies.

One Tap, Real Connection

Apollos Tap is a major step in the hybrid church experience. It takes existing technologies and leverages them in new, synergistic ways that align with and support churches, their leaders, and their missions. 

By reducing friction and lowering abandonment rates, our platform helps pastors engage more easily, follow up more effectively, and connect more deeply.

Balance and timing are critical for any church technology initiative. If you’re considering Apollos Tap, ask yourself and your staff: 

• What one in-room step do you most want guests to take this weekend? 

• Where would a Tap tag remove friction? 

• How could the experience and follow-up improve your community, your ministry, and each person individually?

If you want to learn more about Apollos Tap, let’s explore it together. Our mission-minded digital experts are great sounding boards. Together, we can talk about what Apollos Tap can look like in your context and the potential our mission-focused tap technology has to amplify your church’s impact.