A few times now, churches have asked for my advice or quotes to build an app for their church. Some churches elect to pay for expensive sort-of-white-label solutions, while other larger churches are able to bring in someone or use volunteers to build something custom.
I get the appeal - apps are glamourous to have. Every major brand out there has an app right now, so surely people in your church will love an app! It's totally worth it. The app stores will bring our church more exposure, because folks browsing the app store will see our app and download it! It will keep our congregation engaged and connected - they'll communicate with each other through our cool, new app!
The truth is, unless you're a major media brand like MLB, HBO Now, DirecTV, or NHL, an app is going to lose you a bunch of money. These incredibly costly projects are usually financed through the monthly fees of content (HBO Now), or through adds with a high rate of exposure (Facebook and Instagram).
Your favorite apps are initially built by a team of a half-dozen developers (or more, depending on size) over several months. These developers work full-time on the project at an average cost of $17,000/month per developer. A typical feature that you might consider tiny often takes a week or two to build with just one developer. The smallest app usually has a starting budget of $100,000. In fact, I'm probably low-balling that figure. Oh, and that's just for iOS - you can't forget about Android, and that's going to be a similar budget for that platform, separately.
The mobile operating systems move quickly, pushing out massive yearly updates to remain competitive. These updates often contain major API changes requiring maintenance updates from third-party apps. For instance, iOS 7, 8, and 10 all had significant UI updates requiring changes on some apps. iOS 10 brought big changes to networking and security, and any apps not updated for these changes will soon break.
Apple has also been purging their store of old apps which haven't been updated lately. You won't be able to rest long before you'll need to do another big push to your app.
Have you ever used an app that was clearly a web site wrapped in a thin app? These are cheaply-built apps. It's obvious on both iOS and Android - it doesn't "feel" right to use, and eventually you give up and use something else. Even if they build a different site for that wrapper, you can still tell, can't you?
It's no different if you try to do the same. It looks bad and will reflect poorly on you.
The first day your app is on the app store will be the biggest day of its life, and it's all downhill from there. You won't see a lot of engagement among your regular attenders, since they won't check it except when they need the rare schedule changes (which they can just get from your web site). A few of them might use it for whatever social features you have, but that will quickly die off when you don't hit critical mass. Even mainstream apps targeted at wider audiences fail when they try to compete with Facebook or Twitter.
When people are looking for a church, they don't check the app store. They search Google. They find your web site, they look for an idea of your church's beliefs, engagement with the community, worship style, typical dress, and service times. They might even check out your podcast to get a feel for the sermons, so having a podcast is a nice plus. But they're not looking in the app store to find your church - at best, they might look for a church-finder app, but your church's app isn't going to appear in their search results, because app store search doesn't work that way.
Your church's approach to technology should be as passive tools for members, and special tools for making your staff's job easier. Your staff can and should make use of apps that save them time, but don't expect your members and volunteers to sign in to your church's social network or Planning Center account. Don't push volunteers too hard to use these tools - you'll ruin any engagement, and they might find it more hassle than it's worth. These are tools to make your life easier, but your members and attendees probably couldn't care less.
Offer a nice, responsive web site with photos and information to answer these questions: - What is worship like? How should I dress? - What time and where do you meet? Is there childcare? - What does your church believe? What sets you apart from every other church? - Can I hear some of your sermons right now?
Make sure your web site is "responsive" - that is, it should look great on both desktop computers and mobile devices, with the same page scaling up and down.
Make sure your web site has all of the proper metadata to show up in Google and offer helpful data in search results.
A podcast is easy to produce, if you're already recording your sermons. There are many inexpensive podcast tools, so it's easy to share that media. Add the written sermon notes to the podcast episode descriptions, too.
Some churches have tried to set up "social networks" or "community builder" sites for their members. These don't work for a number of reasons; mainly, they feel fake/forced, and they're trying to replace a multitude of other tools which already work fine. Don't try to compete with Facebook or Twitter; they work full-time to keep their hooks in your people, so you simply won't win. Even wide-reaching church-specific apps like YouVersion have a very shallow engagement pattern - they simply can't get people to return to them. Don't expect that you can do any different.
Instead, take your message to where your people already are. Make sure they're following your Facebook page or Twitter account. Blast precise, concise news from those outlets. Use it sparingly, when it's needed most. Use analytics on all of your media investments; focus on the ones with the best engagement, and stop doing the ones with very little engagement.
Don't expect your existing members to "check in" on Facebook or Foursquare - these things aren't usually at the front of their mind, so don't push it.
People visiting your church will look at your messaging, and will build an idea of what matters to your church based on what you say the most and what you focus your time and efforts on the most.
At least two of the most recent new visitors and now-attenders I've talked to at my church told me the same thing: "we started showing up and getting involved because we saw your involvement in feeding the hungry and serving the kids at the community center". They weren't talking about our Facebook page or fancy new web site. What mattered to them was how we helped people - we showed our love of Christ through how we served people.
At best, an app is an expensive marketing push to make you feel good. But it doesn't demonstrate anything about Christ's love to your community. Keep your technology and marketing simple, so you can focus resources on what truly matters.