How have you measured success in your roll-out of The City to your congregation?
We look at adoption rate. We started in August and right now we're at just under 5,200 users. Across our 4 campuses, we have around 13,000 people in our congregation, so about 40% total are on The City and over 50% of our adult population is on The City. Our momentum has been picking up too. We're seeing 100-150 new adopters each week now, so we're still growing.
Have you seen a specific impact on small group participation?
I oversee our small group ministries and The City has been a huge thing for us. I could see the potential when Pastor Kerry first started talking about moving to The City. When we first started, we had 200 small groups and now we're up to 700.
What positive outcomes have you been able to measure for your church based on using The City?
Communication is a challenge in a large church. Our people can get on The City, join certain groups, find out what's going on, and talk about it. We see people answering each other's questions before the staff can even get to them.
We have a family in our church with six foster children that needed an addition to their home. They needed to get approval from every member of their homeowner's association before they could build. They posted a need for a notary on The City, but soon were getting volunteers to help with other parts of the project, like going door-to-door to get the approvals. They got all of the 100+ members to sign off on the extension. We see stories like this happen every day!
About Woodlands Church
Woodlands Church is a non-denominational church in the Houston, TX area. Woodlands Church is one church in many locations with their main campus in The Woodlands, TX, satellite campuses in Tomball, Katy, and the Humble/King- wood/Atascocita area, and a Church Online internet campus. Their mission is to help people experience Christ's, rather than man's, creation of religion, so they can grow strong in Christ and take the Christ experience to the world.