Journey Church is a vibrant, growing church in Orlando, Florida. Focused on reaching the lost and the unchurched, the ministry has seen explosive growth in under a decade.

While growth is good, the team at Journey felt their technology wasn’t keeping pace with their mission. They needed a sophisticated and comprehensive tech stack that helped them break out from a Sunday-only mindset. Apollos helped them use technology to amplify their ministry impact.

The Client: Meet Journey Church

Journey Church launched in 2016. This was two years after God gave Pastor JJ and Pastor Liz a dream to plant a church that would serve Orlando with love and purpose. 

Its primary mission? To make Jesus accessible to anyone — especially those who don’t usually go to church. From day one, Journey Church has been a place for family, neighbors, and anyone looking for hope.

The first service took place at Winter Park High School, and the team never looked back. While growth has become synonymous with the Sunshine State ministry, leadership has prioritized staying on mission regardless of size or growing pains. This is what led to the initial problem.

The Challenge: Keeping Technology on Pace With Growth

As Journey Church grew, it started to feel limited by its software. Its platform was old, and while it had been helpful during those years of early growth, it was starting to fall short when it came to keeping a larger congregation connected.

Leadership wanted to find a new platform — one that could amplify digital ministry and keep everyone together by:

• Providing easy-to-access information in predictable places.

• Encouraging people to grow in their faith through more than just updates.

• Make church an everyday experience, not just one for the weekends.

A brief search online led them to Apollos. They reached out and brought us into the loop…

The Apollos Answer: Upfront Investment and Updated Technology

When Apollos came onto the scene, our team did what it always does. We started with the people. Church technology only works if it serves the right people and facilitates their ministry. As the providers of that technology, we knew we had to get to know the people we were serving.

The Apollos team took the time to invest in Journey Church. We made sure we understood its mission and needs. We connected with key staff members to make sure we could maintain open and effective communication.

From there, we got to work creating an app that could support both community and spiritual growth on the scale Journey Church needed — not just now but in the future.

We thought bigger than Sunday, looking for ways to implement church engagement throughout the week. We helped the Journey Church staff bring their main outreach strategy to life through specific tools.

For instance, they used Studio C to connect with specific groups for events and updates. Community Group chats helped attendees stay connected and cared for as part of a community that buzzed both in person on Sunday and online throughout the week.

Improvements like these brought a degree of accessibility and flexibility to the table that empowered the staff for the foreseeable future, giving them the technology they needed to make church feel more personal and impactful every day of the week.

The Result: Everyday Technology, Empowered Individuals, and Amplified Ministry

The partnership with Apollos had a huge impact on Journey Church’s activity. Apollos’ new platform helped its team break out of the weekend rhythm, empowering the church to engage with its growing audience daily. 

Since the launch, over 2,800 users have joined the in-app community. Journey saw over 1,300 new Planning Center profiles added in the first month (around a quarter of their weekend attendance).

As far as interaction and engagement are concerned, the platform has facilitated 20,000 bible readings. In addition, there were over 50,000 prayers shared in the first month alone, showing healthy adoption and a willingness to engage with the new church technology.

The app is still creating everyday impact through prayer and connection. It is helping staff and volunteers support people in real time and giving everyone a sense of real and continual community.

Along with this initial impact, Journey church’s technology is positioned to scale with future church growth. The Apollos platform has made it possible for Journey Church to continually amplify and improve its engagement with the larger Orlando community.

At the end of the day, as is so often the case with Apollos clients, Journey Church’s feedback was not just about our industry-leading tech but how the team went about implementing it into the Journey ecosystem.

Journey Church looks forward to a continuing partnership with Apollos (it’s a mutual feeling) and hopes to continue working with us in the future as it continues to carry out its vision of making Jesus accessible to anyone and everyone across the greater Orlando community.