Manage Your Media Like a Pro

Don’t you wish you could publish your sermons to all of your media channels with just one click? City On A Hill Church found themselves wishing for that exact thing not too long ago. We sat down with Russell Korets, one of their founding pastors, to chat about what goes on behind the scenes once their sermons are ready to publish online.

The Problem

City On A Hill desires to have their content available online so that more people can hear the good news of Jesus. But like many other churches, they had volunteers uploading their sermons to each channel (website, app, podcast, Facebook, etc). And also like many other churches, City on a Hill found that their volunteers were very busy throughout the week. Finding time to get the media files prepared and uploaded to all the proper channels became a daunting task. Often times, it would take multiple days to get Sunday’s sermon published everywhere.

The Solution

Fortunately, there is a solution for one-click media publishing, and City on a Hill did not have to look very hard to find it. The Subsplash Platform allows you to upload your sermon file one time, and publish it to your website, app, and podcast with just one click! This ended up saving tons of time for the church’s volunteers, and they even have young teens leading the charge of managing media content within the Subsplash dashboard. “If a 15-year-old kid can use Facebook and Instagram, then he can definitely do this...it’s that easy,” says Russell. In addition to saving time for your staff and volunteers, Subsplash’s media player also provides an improved experience for end users...you can cast a video to your TV, scrub through the sermon with no lag, seamlessly switch between video and audio, share with friends in just one click, and the sermon will continue to play when you lock your device. These features keep people coming back to your app and help increase long-term engagement.

Are you interested in getting one-click media publishing set up for your church? Good news: if you already use the Subsplash Platform, then this feature is readily available to you at no extra charge! And if you’d like to learn more, we’d love to help! You can chat with someone on our team right now by clicking the little box at the bottom right of this page. You can also give us a call anytime at 206-965-8090. 

The Dangers of Donation Envelopes

Do your church donation envelopes have the option for someone to write down their credit card number or bank account information? If so, then you’ll definitely want to keep reading. Collecting donor information on your envelopes is actually extremely dangerous. Here are three big reasons why you shouldn’t collect information on your donation envelopes.

Your church takes on extreme financial risk

“Extreme” is not an exaggeration here. One simple (and even accidental) mistake could cost your church big time. Collecting credit card and bank account numbers via your donation envelopes poses the opportunity for multiple types of financial risk:

It allows for the possibility of a fraudulent gift.

Even people with the best intentions have the capacity to make a small mistake. If someone accidentally writes even one wrong number (or if your bookkeeper accidentally enters the number from the envelope incorrectly), your church could be pulling money from the wrong person’s account. When this happens, your church is the one held responsible to pay the damages, not the card or account owner.

It opens the door for bookkeeper fraud.

Nothing against your bookkeeper here, but the unfortunate reality is that collecting written account information opens the door to fraud. One person holds sensitive financial information for your entire congregation.

It exposes your church to the possibility of theft.

Even if both your congregation and bookkeeper are kind-hearted and extremely meticulous with copying down information, collecting information via donation envelopes puts your church at risk of theft. If someone breaks into your building and finds a pile of envelopes with credit card and bank account numbers, they’ve just hit the jackpot. Lakewood Church in Houston had over $600,000 in cash and checks stolen from their building, along with written credit card information just three years ago. 

It voids the security your online giving provider offers

Subsplash Giving is fully PCI Compliant. This simply means that we have been independently audited and are certified to offer the highest level of security and data encryption for sensitive information such as credit card or bank account numbers. When someone gives through their Subsplash account, the information they provide doesn’t even touch our servers. Your congregation can rest assured knowing that their bank account is safe. The same cannot be said about simply collecting written information.

It discourages giving

When was the last time you simply wrote down your bank account information and handed it to someone? Hopefully never. Simply put, people would rather use a secure system that they can manage on their own. It is safer for all parties involved and gives the donor more control of managing their money. On top of that, collecting account information on envelopes limits the amount of ways people can give. It is much easier for both your staff and your congregation to set up recurring giving. Setting up a recurring donation online or from a mobile device saves time for your bookkeeper and the donor, and it helps your church budget correctly.

What’s the remedy?

Do these things scare you? They should. Collecting credit card or bank account information on donation envelopes (or in any way that is not PCI Compliant - this includes via email as well) exposes your church to a world of financial risk with deadly consequences. But fear not! There is a way to clamp down and make sure you have a system that protects both your bookkeeper and your congregation. Can you guess what that system is? Yep, secure online giving! If your church already has a secure online donation system set up, you’ll want to steer all of your traffic there. It is safer for everyone and saves time for your bookkeeper. And if you haven’t made the plunge into the world of online and mobile giving just yet, we’d love to assist you! Subsplash can get you set up for free, and we’d love to answer any further questions you have about security. Give us a call at 206-965-8090.

Church of the City: Embracing a Culture of Storytelling

Over the last few years, Church of the City has seen God do some amazing things. They successfully merged with another congregation. They've seen thousands of new faces become a part of their church. And they've heard countless amazing stories of redemption throughout the city of Nashville. 

While we were at Dave Ramsey's Stewardship Conference earlier this month, we got a chance to hang out with Jameson Runnels, who is the Creative Director at Church of the City. He shared some insight with us on their creative strategy and how they use the Subsplash Platform. Two things stuck out to us while we were hanging with Jameson. First, he is a super cool guy. And second, we loved hearing about Church of the City's culture of storytelling. Instead of trying to market their church to the local community, they have decided to take the approach of simply sharing amazing stories of what God is doing in Nashville, and invite others into that. Church of the City uses their app as a platform to broadcast these stories of God's grace, and during this season of exponential growth, they've racked up two times more app downloads than people in the congregation, which has afforded thousands of people around the world the opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus. Check out the video above to hear more about Church of the City and their creative strategy. 

Do you have an awesome story about how your church or ministry is using the Subsplash Platform? We'd love to hear about it! Drop us a line at hello@subsplash.com.

2017 Stewardship Conference Recap

Our trip to Nashville was a success! Subsplash was proud to be the official app and giving sponsor for Dave Ramsey's Stewardship Conference. During our time there, we got to meet tons of amazing people, hear some amazing messages about stewardship, and we definitely ate way too much Chick-fil-A....if that is even possible. Here are our three biggest takeaways from the conference:

We are managers, not owners

Dave Ramsey and Louie Giglio both had awesome messages about the heart of financial stewardship. Both rightly pointed out that we are not owners of our finances, but managers of it. Everything we have - our health, wealth, and material possessions, belong to God. He has given everything to us as a gift and it is our privilege to wisely manage what he has given to us while we are here on earth (we wrote more about this here). Subsplash is super thankful for our partnership with Dave Ramsey and EntreLeadership. His financial training has benefitted so many people (including Subsplash...we've gone through many Dave Ramsey trainings as a company!) and it was awesome to see so many pastors there to learn how they can be the best stewards of the resources God has entrusted to their ministries. 

We love meeting our clients

There's nothing more fun for us than meeting pastors and leaders who use the Subsplash Platform and hearing them share stories of how God has used it to bless their congregation. We got to hang out with a handful of clients during our time in Nashville, and it was so cool to hear what they had to say (and to actually meet them face to face!). We got to spend some extended time with Jameson, the Creative Director at Church of the City. He shared some awesome stuff about what God is doing there and how they utilize their app, and we will be sharing that with you soon! As Brady said in the video above, the eternal value of what we get to do is something special. The fact that we get to create software that God will use to draw people closer to him is absolutely mind-blowing! Getting to meet our clients in person is a great reminder of that.

We also love southern food

Seattle is heaven on earth for the foodie. Every neighborhood is fully loaded with a plethora of incredible restaurants. But one thing we don't have here is real southern comfort food. Good news: Nashville has lots of it, and we got to partake in the blessings of bbq chicken, cornbread, banana pudding, baked beans, and more at Edley's Bar-B-Que. After the first bite, we all agreed that there will be an Edley's in heaven. Trust us, though, you don't want to wait until the afterlife to experience this goodness. Praise the Lord for comfort food!

Make sure to check out our video above to see a small glimpse into our time in Nashville. We hope to be back soon!

Protecting Your Church in the Digital Age

One of the hallmarks of the Subsplash culture is care. Care for employees, care for our city, and care for the customers we serve. That care isn’t just confined to the products we create or services we deliver; the holistic success of our church partners is what makes us tick. That’s why we’re taking the time to address an area in which the church’s collective guard has been let down: digital security.

Many churches have spent decades drafting best practices for ensuring the physical security of their buildings and the emotional security of their relationships. But digital security has caught many off guard. We understand that you may not be able to devote the time and attention that faultless protection requires. But these three basic guidelines can go a long way in establishing a culture of digital vigilance among your staff.

Email is not secure

Consider these events: Sony’s scandal-ridden premiere of The Interview, the 2016 US Presidential Election, and the 2017 French Presidential Election. The common denominator? Radical disruption from simple email mistakes. The bottom line: email is not a secure mechanism for sending personally identifiable information. Here are a few of the cards you should keep close to your chest:

• Social Security Numbers

• Dates of Birth

• Bank Account Numbers

• Credit Card or Debit Card Numbers

Think of your next email as a handwritten note, one left of the bus for all to read. What would you write in that note? Rather than sending sensitive information over email, use the secure web portals established by trusted vendors like Subsplash. If that’s not possible, go old school: make a call.

Pause before clicking on an attachment

If email is a note left of the bus, an attachment from someone you don’t know is a mysterious package left on the sidewalk. Only open attachments from people you know and are expecting to receive information from. Hackers sometimes use hacked accounts to send virus-laden emails to contact lists, in hopes that the recipient will open the mysterious attachment based on the sender’s name. Listen to your gut. When in doubt, send your contact a text to make sure they’re actually behind the attachment.

Protect your passwords

In the wrong hands, a single password can open more doors than your building’s master key ever could. Bank accounts. Confidential communications. Contact lists. The prevalence of passwords doesn’t make them inconsequential. It makes them integral to your security. Here are our four tips for password mastery:

• Use different passwords for different accounts.

• Create a strong password by using a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numerals, and characters ($&@!#>), or use password management software to generate and store passwords.

• Change your passwords every six months.

• Use two-factor authentication whenever possible.

• Don’t give out your password; no reputable company will ever ask for it.

• Don’t write passwords down where others can view them.

There you have it: three simple tips for establishing a culture of digital security among your church staff. At Subsplash, we’re dedicated to keeping your information secure. To learn how we safeguard our digital assets, check out our Giving Security page.