Faith Promise Church was in the digital world, but its app had fallen behind. Its website was unfocused and outdated. Their streaming options were disorganized and lacked uniformity. 

Apollos helped the multisite ministry in Tennessee go all in on this pivotal digital investment as a way to amplify their outreach, cultivate their church community, and pursue their vision of reaching and equipping 1% of the people in Tennessee.

The Client: Meet Faith Promise Church

Faith Promise Church was founded in February 1995. The 30-year-old ministry has experienced significant numerical growth over the years as it has expanded across the East Tennessee region. In 2010, it launched a multisite component of its ministry and currently has seven campuses, three of which are located in prisons through its partner God Behind Bars.

In 2023, Faith Promise Church went through a big transition as Pastor Chris Stephens passed the baton to his son, Pastor Zac Stephens. This happened as the church was focused on one of its primary missional elements: trying to reach 1% of its home state (about 77,000 people). 

The vision is about more than church growth. Faith Promise Church wants to be a place that equips tens of thousands of God’s people to impact the people around them. They wanted to do this by creating a network of churches that exist in all 95 counties of Tennessee through church planting, campus creation, and house churches.

To achieve this ambitious goal, they needed to set up the tools to scale, which is where digital church comes into the picture.

The Challenge: Setting Up Two-Way Digital Tools

A multisite church requires strong digital tools and online church infrastructure. Faith Promise had pieces of that in place, but its church app was lagging behind. Before Apollos, the church’s app was a one-way tool. There was no interaction, just giving content to people.

For Faith Promise, though, they wanted their app to be a touch point, not just on Sunday but Monday through Saturday, too. They also wanted to use it to know who was praying, interceding for the community, and developing spiritual practices in their life. 

They realized that digital tools were the key to understanding if their people were:

• Engaging with the Bible

• Journaling

• Praying

• Expressing gratitude

In addition, the Faith Promise website was overstretched. It was outdated and lacked strategic vision and purpose – even as it was doing too many things at once as a digital front door, connection tool, resource space, sign-up spot, volunteer hub, and so on.

Faith Promise’s content also lacked uniformity across various platforms. It needed a branded, cohesive look that was missing.

The desire to address these issues and create a more strategic approach to digital church was the heartbeat that led them to the Apollos app.

The Apollos Answer: A Comprehensive App Solution

Nathan, founder and principal at Ministry Solutions Group, helped Faith Promise Church connect with the Apollos team. They quickly realized that we could bring a solution at the size and scope they needed.

Tyler and the Apollos team started with listening conversations. Beginning with this learning approach was key to understanding where Faith Promise was, where it was trying to get to, and how to make decisions to get there.

From there, Apollos laid out a clear process. The strategy was thoughtful and detailed. It included consistent meetings and touchpoints. Weekly emails provided honest updates about what had happened and how much closer we were to the end. If something was off or behind schedule, we communicated what was needed to get on track and what each team needed to do. 

In the final stages of implementation, in mid-2024, the Apollos team was clear about how to get to the finish line, and after things went live in August, they remained in a responsive support role.

As for the app that launched in August 2024? It was a game-changer for Faith Promise’s entire ministry. Rather than a one-way content delivery system, it was a two-way network and digital community hub. 

The leadership team could use it for resources, training, and checking people in. They could house curriculum, connect people to events, and communicate through groups. 

Every January, the church would traditionally build a thematic focus for the year (2025 is Acts 1:8, walking in true Holy Spirit power). They would print over 5,000 copies of a themed devotional book and everything. With the new app, they digitized the entire process. PDFs were still available, but they encouraged the online option, not just as a way to save money and reduce waste (although those were benefits). It was primarily a way to bring everyone into the same digital space every day.

Apollos rounded out other areas of Faith Promise’s digital footprint, as well. It relaunched the church’s website, consolidating over 100 pages into a dozen essentials designed to maximize effectiveness for those interested in engaging with the church. A new TV app also helped unify the look and content of features across all platforms.

The Result: A Central Digital Space for a Massive Mission

Faith Promise Church used the Apollos app to bring together its sprawling church network and create a central online space for Christians across Tennessee. The two-way communication channel opened up the door for a plethora of impactful benefits.

For instance, digitizing the annual devotion book allowed them to shoot a video devotional for each day. They were then able to see who was engaging as they read through each chapter of Acts. There were times when engagement peaked at 2,000 within a single day.

The ability to get and track people’s engagement applies elsewhere, too. Through the app, they saw:

• 500,000 prayers in 4 months. (They’re on track to break a million within a year of bringing the app in)

• On average, people were prayed for 13 times by 13 different people.

• Each person was prayed for in under 5 minutes.

The church leadership can also see things like app logins, popular content, and what is helping people the most. They are also able to create content focused on the weekend message every week. Even better? This is often content that was left on the cutting room floor during sermon prep.

The app integrates into in-person Sunday church, too. For instance, they can add QR codes right into a message for additional resources, such as an “Identity in Christ” reminder or “I am” statements.

The Faith Promise IT team also pointed to the sandbox aspect of the Apollos app build. While the cutting-edge infrastructure was there, they could take the basic shell and create whatever they wanted. From the back end to the end user, the app brought the church together in a new way that uniquely equipped them for their shared mission.

The new, targeted, and streamlined approach to the website had an impact, as well. TOS (time on site) has gone up since the redesign. Their team shifted things like volunteer resources to more appropriate spaces, like the church’s app. 

The more unified feel of the TV app has created clarity. Digital visitors are able to understand the site better, and next engagement steps (like QR codes, Next Steps volunteer classes, visit pages, and giving) are more visible.

“Most apps are only about consuming content and giving to the church. Apollos was unique. They went beyond the basic giving function and helped align people’s hearts and actions. [...] We actually gave people habits that we want them to focus on.” – Josh Whitehead, Senior Executive Pastor of Scale

“At the end of the day, it’s been helpful not just to give people content, but to help people align on them.” - Justin Petrowski, Pastor of Marketing and Communication.

The Faith Promise staff and leadership have loved the digital church journey with Apollos. They plan on continuing to invest in this critical part of their everyday church work moving forward, and we will be there to support them for every update, every initiative, and every step.