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Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Tyler Vance, the COO of Apollos, a digital platform designed to help churches thrive by using technologies for personal growth.

Despite being more digitally connected than ever, people lack deep, meaningful relationships. Gen Z has often been called the loneliest generation in history. However, churches are uniquely positioned to solve this problem. Tune in to learn how you can leverage technology to foster authentic community in your church and help people grow in their faith.

• Daily habits that drive discipleship. // Healthy habits are a necessary part of growth. Apollos prioritizes daily time with God, prayer, and gratitude. These three habits are the most transformative for a person’s spiritual development. When consistently practiced, they not only strengthen individuals’ faith but are also leading indicators of increased church engagement, generosity, and attendance.
• Prayer connects the church. // One of the most impactful features of Apollos is its ability to facilitate prayer within a church community. The app allows users to submit prayer requests in about 60 seconds and receive immediate prayer from others in the congregation. Prayer connects the hearts of believers in a powerful way and this real-time interaction fosters a deeper sense of belonging and community.
• Leveraging data for ministry impact. // Church leaders often want as much data as possible, but many struggle to effectively use it. Apollos not only collects data but also helps churches interpret it to guide ministry decisions. For example, understanding common prayer requests can help pastors equip the church by developing sermon series, courses and other resources to address their congregation’s needs.
• Be customer-centric. // Tyler emphasizes that a great digital product is not the solution, but rather churches need a comprehensive strategy to integrate digital engagement with their overall mission. By encouraging profile creation, the app functions as the new connection card, helping churches identify felt needs and track engagement. But churches must provide real value to members rather than just using apps as donation portals. Just because you think something is valuable doesn’t mean that your congregation will. Be customer-focused and demonstrate how the app benefits your people.
• Apollos as a strategic partner. // Rather than merely providing a platform, Apollos functions as a team behind the scenes, ensuring that churches have a seamless, high-quality digital experience. Unlike many church apps that are merely content repositories, Apollos integrates engagement, community, and discipleship. With a white-label approach, churches maintain their own branding while benefiting from the expertise and support of Apollos’ team of developers and strategists.

Visit apollos.app to learn more about how they can help your church thrive. Plus, listen to the episode Beyond Sundays: Liquid Church’s 24/7 Ministry Model with Lauren Bercarich here.

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, you are in for a real treat today. Super excited for today’s conversation. It’s a follow-up conversation, which you know, that’s like us double clicking, getting a little bit deeper, peeling back the onion on a conversation that we had last spring. And we’re going a little bit deeper today and talking with Tyler Vance.

Rich Birch — You might be saying, who is Tyler? He is the COO of an organization called Apollos. Apollos is a digital platform that helps churches thrive. They’re working to reverse the trend of disconnection and help people flourish. Apollos believes that strong community and healthy habits are necessary ingredients for personal growth. And they leverage technology to make those realities happen literally for millions of people. Prior to, or at least you know in in kind of a part of his past life, Tyler was also a part of Life Life.Church. You might’ve heard of them before. He was both a pastor and technology leader over there. Tyler, welcome. So glad you’re here.

Tyler Vance — Thank you for having me, Rich. Man, that’s quite an introduction. And yeah, I have spent many years as a pastor in a local church. And ah so I I get the opportunity to have a different lens when it comes to technology. I don’t approach it as a technologist first, but as a pastor first. And I love that. And I’m I’m super grateful for that.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it. Declaring my bias upfront, leaders, you should be leaning in and listening to today’s conversation. Cause I think you’re going to be, you might be a little bit surprised and you might look at some of your current technologies and be like, Hmm, I feel like they weren’t designed by a pastor. So, uh, we might challenge you a little bit today, which is good.

Rich Birch — Now you make this bold claim about the, well, first of all, fill in the picture, give us anything else there, kind of your background, anything that I missed or kind of just from a general open report of you that you want to make sure we talk about.

Tyler Vance — Well, I I always assume, but I don’t I don’t want to make the assumption. Apollos is a name that, um you know, depending on your historical background, you might think, oh, this Apollos mission, we’re going to the moon. But it’s actually from the writing of Paul, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. I just don’t want to miss the connection for what the heartbeat of Apollos is. We firmly believe in the work of what pastors are doing, the the thing that God has called them to. We want to come alongside and water the things that you are planting, pastors.

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Tyler Vance — And we trust that God does His work in the midst of that. So I just don’t want to miss that.

Rich Birch — No, that’s good.

Tyler Vance — As ah as it’s nothing to do with the moon.

Rich Birch — Yeah. No, that’s good though. And I appreciate that. That’s, uh, yeah, that’s, I love that. That’s what a, what a, what a vivid picture for sure. Well, you guys make this strong claim about the fact that you believe in strong community and healthy habits, and which is a lot for a technology company. I’d love to take a step back and talk about why it seems more than ever community is like a big deal. Why is that? Why are we facing this need for community? And then, you know, we’ll narrow down into specifically how technology can help with that.

Rich Birch — But it just, I think people agree, but kind of unpack that problem for us a little bit.

Tyler Vance — Yeah, I think, Rich, I mean, if you go back to and the the first model we have of the early church in Acts, community is the the driver of it, right? And so I think the local church, yes, to empower the gospel, yes, to um to make disciples, but that happens in this context of community. And so you look at the the vision, the picture that that Jesus gives us of the early church, and then you compare it to the statistics that are overwhelming in our society is, you know, this has been coined as the loneliest generation in history.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tyler Vance — And we have the answer, we we have the model for that as the local church…

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Tyler Vance — …to be the solution to the largest problem our generation is facing.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I was gonna say I love that. I don’t love that we’re the loneliest generation, but I think that’s a good thing for us to point out. A friend of mine, Jeff Brody, says that, ah hey, at the time, at the very moment when the world seems to be the hungriest that it’s been in decades, and I think in generations…

Tyler Vance — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …for what we do as a church, there are a lot of churches that are kind of turning inward and not, you know, even solving like this, helping to solve problems that are in the real world, which is this idea of, you know of loneliness. How do you think the church is good at that? What is it about ah but what we do that drives community, that makes community work in you know in people’s lives?

Tyler Vance — Well, it’s a fabric of ah being a disciple of Jesus, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Tyler Vance — It’s confess your sins one to another. It’s it’s it’s this tangible, deeply connected tissue of doing life together, having community that you can be engaged with, that you can grow with, that you can cry with. My wife and I, for example, Rich, we ah live many hours away from our closest family, you know. How many times has our small group been there on Christmases where we got snowed in and we couldn’t be there, right?

Rich Birch — So true.

Tyler Vance — Where Thanksgivings, the birth of our children, our small group was the first to the hospital because our families were… this is the this is the fabric of the church when done well, when leaned in. And yeah, we have a loneliest generation. That’s that’s a that’s a ah ah title that has been applied to to that, but we have such opportunity to come in and rewrite that story for people.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.

Tyler Vance — And and it’s very odd juxtaposition because we are probably the most connected…

Rich Birch — Right.

Tyler Vance — …generation ever.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tyler Vance — But those connections aren’t deep in in the things of God. They are not spiritual in nature. And we know intuitively that that they become lacking for what they produce. And so if if there’s ever an institution to be able to solve that is the local church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And then, you know, the other side of of what you’ve talked about, and and I want to get to what Apollos does, but I I wanted to try to lay the framework here a little bit more at kind of a philosophical level. You talk about healthy habits are a necessary ingredient for personal growth. So when when you say that, unpack that a little bit more. I think people would agree with that, but what how how are health, why are healthy habits a critical piece of, you know, a disciple’s journey?

Tyler Vance — Yeah, I I mean, so the the healthy habits, what we we would say is our are the daily habits that are core to what we do, and and I will lean in a little bit to to the product of what we do.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.

Tyler Vance — They are ah daily time with God, prayer, and gratitude.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tyler Vance — And those aren’t ah those aren’t by accident. We didn’t just you know come up with some great thing. The the history of our of our product is is deeper than 10 years old and it’s built on trying different habits. And so the data overwhelmingly shows that those are the three habits that move the needle most in an individual’s daily spiritual kind of, maybe maybe a different way to phrase it would be their spiritual fitness, or their discipleship, right? And also they become ah leading indicators of weekend attendance, of generosity, of these other things that historically in the church we have counted as the ah the measures of success.

Tyler Vance — And so that’s what our data is showing ah in in and that. And so we’re making very data-informed decisions. One of the things we used to say as I led data at Life Church was, um data has a seat at the table, but the Holy Spirit is still the head of the table, right?

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good. Yep.

Tyler Vance — And and so like we want to make sure that we’re making data-informed decisions by allowing God still to be the final say in the direction and and the things of what we’re leaning into.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So um friends, we back it’s about six months ago, we had Lauren from Liquid Church on and and we were talking about their app, Apollos. And she mentioned this on there. Apollos is the provider behind ah what they’re what they’re doing at Liquid. And so we’ll link to that that episode if you want to kind of talk and hear about a specific church’s application of Apollos. There’s a bunch of churches across the country that are benefiting from this.

Rich Birch — But um but but let’s let’s unpack those three habits. So ah prayer, scripture reading, gratitude, help help us unpack, what does that look like ah at an app level? And and then and layer on top of that community, because this to me is, I think, a part of what makes what you’re doing so unique, that these are really, they so those seem to be ah woven together in a really beautiful way. So talk us through that.

Tyler Vance — Yeah, um so I’ll actually use some stories to illustrate how how this functionality works.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Yeah.

Tyler Vance — First off, as a pastor, I believe in the power of prayer. And um as ah I was in a situation, an environment where we received prayer cards, like many of probably the pastors that that are listening. And you’d go through and as a staff pray for those prayer cards. And then you know probably most of us would have a prayer team that we give those prayer cards to. And you you know that that would kind of be the it. We wouldn’t be able to hear the final story or follow up. I mean we just we were kind of at the mercy of that being the the end of the story. One of the great things that we found by allowing prayer to happen in an app experience is, first off, it takes about 60 seconds for someone to submit a prayer, and then someone else in the church to respond to that prayer, right?

Tyler Vance — So we have cut down the time for the church to really become the church together. We’ve actually empowered this thing to happen that is independent of a pastor, not meaning that a pastor can’t engage in it, but that we’re allowing the church to be the church. And actually Lauren from Liquid shares one of the most powerful stories of this. She was actually on her way to a doctor’s appointment for her kid and shared a prayer in the app. By the time she got to the doctor’s appointment, she had people praying for her.

Rich Birch — That’s amazing.

Tyler Vance — She got to the doctor’s appointment, had a great appointment. She’s checking her kid in the next weekend. And one of the ladies helping her check her kid in says, hey, I was actually one of the people praying for you this week. A, I want to know how your appointment was. But also, if you didn’t know, I spent 20 years in that very specific field of industry.

Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah. Wow. Amazing.

Tyler Vance — And I would love to help you out in a very tangible way. Prayer connects the heart of believers together in such a powerful way. And we’re seeing that across the board. Faith Promise Church in Knoxville, their XP shared a story with me of you know a kid, same similar story: parent praying as they go to a doctor’s appointment, kid had a concussion, and they were really looking for how extensive the brain damage was.

Tyler Vance — Church surrounds them on their way to the doctor’s appointment in prayer. Ends up no no brain damage. And the the kid says to the doctor, as a three-year-old, I know why you can’t find brain damage because my church is praying for me.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Tyler Vance — All of that is not, that’s not from a prayer card on a Sunday to a Sunday.
 
Tyler Vance — That is real time, the church being the church. That’s that’s a power of what we’re seeing when you put prayer in an app. That is the context of your church body.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love I love that. And I um so I’m you know I’m lurking on the Liquid app. I’m you know and I’m you know friends with some folks on there. And it’s amazing how, you know as a user, just as a person on the app using it, like that’ll happen. A friend will come up and a prayer will come up and I’ll stop and pause and pray.

Rich Birch — And it doesn’t, you know, and and people are sharing things of you know all different kinds of stuff. And as a as a just a person using this app, it really does draw me in towards them, obviously towards you know what’s what’s going on in their life. So those are vivid examples at kind of the personal level. I remember you you know for years an executive pastor when we would do prayer on a Sunday with prayer cards, we would do exactly that. We would have you know we would take the cards, and we would ensure that they’re getting prayed for by our prayer team. We take that very serious. We’d have, you know, hand them out to people. We would divvy them up and like, we’re going to make that happen.

Rich Birch — But then there was another part of this, which was about frankly, looking at data from people in our church and trying to get a sense of what’s happening in their lives to help us as we’re speaking for the future. Is is there an opportunity through Apollos to leverage data in that way, in a way that’s elegant and, you know, non creepy, obviously, but talk to us about that.

Tyler Vance — Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Data is a big, a big thing. And I think in my time leading data specifically at Life Church and the whole initiatives around that, I think pastors have the the tendency to want to get what I call data drunk. It means that they want all the data in the world. And they have no clue what to do with it. They just want it.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tyler Vance — And so to to your point, we want to be very strategic. We have opportunities to provide whatever data you need. But we want to be strategic in the use case, the purpose of it. Not that we can’t get it, but what we really want is we are we are more strategy than we are a product. And…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tyler Vance — …we just really want to help you understand what it is you’re trying to do, what… to to your point, Rich, that such a great example of if I knew what people in my church were praying for, I’d teach differently on the weekend. Yeah. Or I’d create courses or the felt needs, you know, articles or blogs that I’m putting out would would reflect that. Yes, absolutely. We want to equip the church ah in in ways like that. And so absolutely everything is possible there.

Tyler Vance — One of the one of the things that um I think I will highlight is just the, since we’re talking about communication cards, the opportunity for profile creation. And a lot of pastors are missing this, and I wish that they understood this more. An app profile creation is the new communication card. And so what we also are trying to do is we’re also trying to give unknown people in your congregations a known voice and entity, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Tyler Vance — As a pastor, it’s really hard and you stand on stage and you look out and you go, I can identify maybe 20, I know the names of maybe 20% of these people, right? How do we begin, as a church, to know the names of more people?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tyler Vance — And really profile creation in a digital experience is, is a new way to do that, and we need to be looking at digital experiences, ah not just for the digital experience they offer but for the profile creation and the ability to know people – that they exist, that they then we can understand demographics, we can understand who our church is reaching, we can really listen in for the heartbeat of where God is moving in our individual churches instead of, and I’m going to hit a soapbox item for me, instead of trying to predict or create a space for God to move, we can listen to where he’s already moving and just move with him.

Rich Birch — That’s “Experiencing God”, Henry Blackaby. That’s great. Where’s God at work? Move towards that. That’s fantastic. Let’s double click on that. When you say profile creation, give us the kind of, give us some free coaching here. We’re taking advantage of the fact that you’re on the call. If you’re thinking of a church that’s you know that wants to ensure that we’re getting, you know, we’re we’re kind of fully taking advantage of this kind of profile creation idea and then management of that. What would be a few of the kind of best practices we should be thinking about on that front?

Tyler Vance — Sure. Well, let me let me actually start off with some real-time data here.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s perfect.

Tyler Vance — Two two weeks ago, ah we launched a brand new app in a church near Orlando. In that timeframe, in two weeks, they push the app from stage and they did a great marketing strategy around it, and they did a lot of great stuff that was outside of the digital product, right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tyler Vance — And so free coaching number one is a great digital product is not the solution. A comprehensive strategy is the solution.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good.

Tyler Vance — 20% of their church created a profile. And you think, man, that’s great.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tyler Vance — But what is ah what if as a pastor I could tell you through a great strategy, you could know an additional 20% of the names sitting in your auditorium?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing.

Tyler Vance — That’s crazy. And so um the the double click on that is, I mean, you have to have a great place for them to go. We believe at Apollos that our app is world-class and it’s a great place for people to go. But you have to have a great way to get them there. And we don’t think about this enough, but the fact that we believe something’s valuable as a local church doesn’t mean that the people sitting in our seats think it’s valuable. So we always have to be customer-centric, right?

Rich Birch — That’s so true. Yeah, that’s so true.

Tyler Vance — And and that we miss that as pastors. I know you you laugh at that, but um we we so oftentimes miss that as pastors because we are used to developing the strategy, creating the vision, doing the weekend message, and people show up for it.

Tyler Vance — And we now live in a society where there has to be a branded value. There has to be some reason why I would want to engage in that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Tyler Vance — And it has to be customer-focused and customer is not like the the sexy thing to say when we’re talking about church and it’s a different way to say it, but we need to be customer-focused.

Rich Birch — Yeah, okay, so yeah, you’ve hit on a, I would say as, again, an observer, someone who’s been in this space, I feel like there’s a lot of, and you’re not talking down about other apps. So this is me saying this, not you. But I feel like there’s a lot of churches out there that have apps that really are just a shortcut to their revenue. They’re like a, you know, it’s ah it’s essentially just a wrapper around a webpage that says, please give us money. And there isn’t really any other reason for people to use the app. And so then we roll this thing out thinking, oh, like, you know, everyone’s going to want to do this. This will be so easy. Well, no, like that isn’t what happens. And there’ll be, there’s low adoption rates. But it seems like to me, Apollos’ focus on these daily habits, bringing people back time and again, for things that actually help them…

Tyler Vance — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …man, that’s like beneficial for us as a church. It’s we’re seeing more as a platform than just like, ah it’s not just one more thing to kind of bother them in their in their lives. Is that Is that kind of the strategy behind it from it from a church and from a you know user point of view, from from your point of view?

Tyler Vance — Absolutely, Rich. And and I I will I will say this and I will say it sensitively. There are a lot of strategies that are solely based on content distribution. And that’s great, but everywhere else in our society, you have content distribution wrapped in community, right? And and the local church has not embraced that to the level that the rest of the world has. And so we really aim to do that. And and to go back to some feature set…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tyler Vance — …and not to highlight feature set, but to highlight strategy here, we talk about communities. One of the things that we’re seeing in communities is, you know, five years ago, we might have put a felt needs article on our website and understood that that might get someone to engage. We’re seeing incredible traction from taking those felt needs articles and creating short-term experiences and groups around them.

Tyler Vance — An example of this…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …a church in Dallas ah did a 21 days to a better marriage, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah, wonderful.

Tyler Vance — $100 Facebook ad spend, ah sign up of like 980 people,

Rich Birch — Wow.

Tyler Vance — 23% of those people had never walked in the door of their church.

Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing.

Tyler Vance — And they stuck around for 21 days. So we track that over the course, 12 months later, 17% of those people were still engaged with their church, of of the new.

Rich Birch — Wow, that’s amazing.

Tyler Vance — It’s incredibly sticky because they offered something that no one else offered, and it wasn’t just content…

Rich Birch — It’s community.

Tyler Vance — …it was community around content.

Rich Birch — Well and that I think is a good insight that we that I think a lot of churches haven’t embraced. We know that intuitively that it’s not the content, that content’s a core a core part of what we do on the weekend, say, in our in-person experiences. It’s critical to what we do. You’ve got to have great preaching. You have to actually say something. But it’s a it’s a community-rich experience. The reason why people come back, the reason why they join teams, the reason why they connect in small groups is because of the relationships.

Rich Birch — But it’s like we get online and we forget that. We forgot that you know that that port that part of what we do um which is you know… And then we’re just like, how come we we we look at it like a giant megaphone. Let’s just keep broadcasting. And we’re all screaming online as opposed to saying, hey, let’s try to create a community around that. That’s powerful.

Tyler Vance — Yeah.

Rich Birch — Did they, so are you saying in this example from Dallas with the 21 day kind of marriage tune up or whatever, did that drive ultimately to their website, to their app? How did that all work? How did, like, what, what did that look like?

Tyler Vance — It was all experienced through their app. It was an app-driven experience. So…

Rich Birch — Wow. Okay.

Tyler Vance — I mean, in order to to get into that, their their app is set up to where you had to create a profile, you had to log in.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Tyler Vance — That’s how we knew to go back to your data point of these were new people. The next 20%, this is what I didn’t share, the next 20% were people that were sitting in the seats, but had never done anything in their church.

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Tyler Vance — Right?

Rich Birch — Disengaged. Yep.

Tyler Vance — And so the it just became this incredible experience. And actually, Rich, to go back to your point, this isn’t new.

Rich Birch — Right.

Tyler Vance — Like to to to To your Henry Blackaby nod earlier, the church has been doing this since I’ve been alive, right? We’ve been connecting people around needs in small groups, but we’ve been asking them to come to buildings. And we’re really comfortable still asking them to come to buildings. And all we’re doing is taking those similar experiences that we know to be ah integral to a discipleship journey. And we’re saying you can do them asynchronously via your phone and still have the same level of discipleship and community.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Okay. Let’s talk a little bit about the, from my perspective, the fit and finish of what Apollos does is industry leading. It’s ah fantastic. Your apps are, they’re snappy. You push a button and it actually works. Like, which should not be the benchmark for apps, but you’d be amazed.

Rich Birch — I was joking with another member of your team where I was, I do these visits where I did 22 of them last year, where I’ll be on site at the church and where they’re Sunday, Monday, and we’re looking at stuff and trying to help them, I’m trying to help them find some actionable insights, things that they could apply.

Rich Birch — And I was standing in the lobby at this church, large church, 10,000 plus person church, and they were trying to check their the person who I was with, who’s on staff, was trying to check their kid in to their kid’s thing and they were doing it through their app and like the app was totally broken, did not work. It was not an Apollos app – don’t worry. You know and the and they were joking and they didn’t know that I you know was thinking about these things. They were like, oh yeah, that just happens all the time. like it’s just It’s a piece of junk. And and they just kind of were resolved to like, that’s the way it’s like, that’s just the way it is. It just is like it’s broken. It’s always broken. That’s the way it is.

Rich Birch — How are you ensuring at Apollos that you’re keeping on top of, you know, the fit and finish side of this, that this feel like your app’s—and that’s like kind of a weird question, because it’s like a broad… “how do you be good” is kind of the question. But what are you doing to ensure that the app continues to perform? Because to me, that seems like a differentiator as a person looking in at what you do.

Tyler Vance — Yeah, ah well, um I would say strategically, we are we are a scalpel. And so from leading technology within the local church, I would say one of the hardest jobs I had to do was say no to good ideas.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good.

Tyler Vance — Right? And we, I mean, gosh, how many leadership talks have been on that concept? But when we when it comes to technology, it seems like we lose that perspective that if if it’s an app, if it can be done digitally, it should be done digitally. And it’s like, no, we actually, not everything in your church needs to reside on that.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tyler Vance — That is a lack of strategy. We wanna bring strategy to the why and the what.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tyler Vance — From a really tangible standpoint, Apollos is a white label app, meaning when you buy Apollos, you get a whole team of developers behind you, supporting you. We brand it like your app. No one in your church will ever know Apollos exists. It is your church app, but you have a world-class team behind you that is making sure everything works great. We’re building new features. We’re listening to community. We’re we’re doing everything behind the scenes for you.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. When you kind of think to the future, so give us a kind of a poke up over the horizon. One of the things I’ve noticed is it seems to be the churches that are benefiting from Apollos, it’s not like a tack on, it’s not like a bolted on kind of thing. They’re trying to figure out how to um make it central to their experience.

Rich Birch — The example I’ve used in other contexts has been, I still like Starbucks. And I like the Starbucks app. It doesn’t, but I don’t get coffee from the Starbucks app. I don’t press a button and coffee comes out. The Starbucks app helps my Starbucks experience be better. It seems like the churches that are using Apollos or are leveraging it are thinking about it in the same way. It’s not just like this we, you know, we’re, we’re a church and then, oh yeah, we also have this app thing. They’re trying to find ways to integrate it.

Rich Birch — How are churches doing a good job of that? What would be and maybe another example or two of that? And then what does the future look like? How where is the kind of future up over the horizon with Apollos look like you know as you as you dream a little bit about the future? Obviously knowing things change.

Tyler Vance — Well, first off, the higher level strategy decision-maker you can get that’s thinking about all of the things, the the better you get. What what we find on a lot of churches is the technology gets buried at best three or four layers deep in decision-making, right?

Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Yeah.

Tyler Vance — So by the time you’ve planned your weekend sermon, and you’ve got your production team and your marketing team, and then someone underneath them, two or three layers is thinking about, oh, we should probably also blank with the app. And so the higher up you can you can get that decision making. The concept, and we say this as like a tagline, but seven days not just Sundays.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tyler Vance — The senior pastors and the the executive pastors that understand I have the ability to have 10x the number of touch points. They they get it. And so that that’s one thing.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Tyler Vance — Leaning into a future, golly, Rich, it is so ripe. The harvest is plentiful, um is what I would say.

Rich Birch — So true.

Tyler Vance — And and digital um is never a replacement for in-person church experiences. And so the better we get at creating digital experiences…

Rich Birch — Yeah, so true.

Tyler Vance — …that pull people to in-person, I think the more we win.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Tyler Vance — And so if if that is not our aim from day one, I think we fail. We want to see the local church grow. I want to see my church adding services. I want to see my church you know growing exponentially, but I understand that digital is a tool to make that happen.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Well, friends, I really strongly recommend, highly endorse your ah reaching out to Apollos and connecting. Maybe you’ve got an app that’s not working well. Maybe this is an area that you’ve been thinking about, hey, we got to take some new steps. I would strongly recommend that you need to take some steps toward them. You know, it’s interesting because You talk to pastors and we all know that the phone in the grand scheme of things has done a lot of not great things in people’s lives. Like we, you know, we see that, we see that. But a part of what I love about Apollos is again, you may not like it that I refer to it like this, but I’ve said this behind your back. I’m like, I feel like you guys are like the Robin Hood of the technology world. You’re like taking the riches of all these, like, “how do you engage people” that we know lots of other apps do that, and they’re they’re trying to mine money out of that. They’re trying to mine, you know, they’re they’re taking my attention and turning it into cash, where you’re using the same kind of learnings, but you’re trying to use that ultimately to drive a deeper community connection with my church, trying to drive a deeper prayer life, scripture reading, gratitude, man, like that’s all amazing. Like, I just think that’s incredible.

Rich Birch — So as we wrap up, kind of final thoughts you know that you’d say before we wrap up today’s conversation?

Tyler Vance — Man, Rich, thank you for the conversation. Anytime we have a chance to to reshape or just to continue the conversation around what does digital need to look like versus what it has looked like, and we’re game. And so thank you for the opportunity to come and and you’ve been gracious with that. I appreciate it.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Nice. If people want to track with you or with Apollos, where do we want to send them online? Where’s the best place to send them?

Tyler Vance — Yeah, you can go to apollos.app. You can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. You can find me @atylervance and I’m I’m out there as well and love to connect with you. Love to hear the stories of what God is doing. We also want to learn. You know, if you have something that’s working really well, ah share it because we are big “C” Church people and we want to make sure other people know it too.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate you being here today.

Tyler Vance — Thank you, Rich.