ChurchApps — Church Meeting Notes

00 — Intro

Introduce yourself: Michael Byrd — one of the founders of ChurchApps and a full-time volunteer serving as a Ministry Resource Provider. Add a personal connection to this church if you have one.

Warm, personal open. You're not a vendor pitching — you're a brother serving the same mission.

01 — Our Why

To run your church effectively you need certain software and curriculum — people, giving, check-in, kids ministry, worship. Until now you've had no choice but to outsource those platforms to for-profit companies which often don't share your mission or values. Every dollar that goes to a software company is a dollar that doesn't go to your ministry — and it makes the Church less effective in its mission.

The thing is — the Church has the people and the resources to build this software ourselves and share it with every church in the world. Instead, the Capital C Church is spending over a billion dollars a year to purchase these resources and making tools in-house they don't share with other churches.

Meanwhile, the poorest churches in the world are going without and the overall mission of the Church suffers. When profit is the motivator, loyalties are to the shareholders — not Christ. The Church needs to stop outsourcing the Great Commission and start modeling the generosity of Christ so the Capital C Church can function at full capacity.

It's really not a technology problem — it's a stewardship problem. We exist to fix it.

Pause after "We exist to fix it." Let it land.

02 — What We Built

A complete, free, open-source software suite — every major tool a church needs, at no cost, forever.

Made for the Church · by the Church

B1 Admin replaces paid church management software — manage people, giving, groups, attendance, volunteers

B1.church church website, mobile app, member portal, giving, and groups — web & phone

B1 Check-In replaces check-in kiosk software — self-service for services & kids ministry

Lessons.church replaces paid curriculum — free, open-source video lessons from preschool through adult

FreeShow replaces paid worship presentation software — lyrics & slides on Sunday

FreePlay replaces paid classroom curriculum TV apps — delivers lessons to classroom screens, plays offline, no tech skills needed

03 — What God Has Done

15,000+ churches now using ChurchApps every day — all free, and growing
Churches we've helped are now sponsoring and helping other churches — the multiplication effect is growing
Igniting fires in people in other countries to get involved and carry this forward
Better tools → more effective disciple-makers → more people coming to Christ

Story — Southside Christian Church, Fort Pierce FL

Pastor Paul Hugenbart was about to spend money on ProPresenter, Planning Center, and paid curriculum. He agreed to try ChurchApps first.

FreeShow replaced ProPresenter. B1 Admin replaced Planning Center. Lessons.church replaced their paid curriculum.

He told us ChurchApps moved them forward two years. No budget debate. No anxiety. And now Southside is paying it forward, helping another church get on their feet.

That's one story we know about. What really excites me is the ones we don't know about.

Swap in a story about a church they know if you have one.

04 — Your Questions & Pain Points

Open it up: What questions do you have? What pain points are you feeling with your current software?

What tools are you using today — management, check-in, presentation, curriculum, giving?
What's the biggest frustration with them day to day?
What are they costing you each year?
Is there anything you wish your software did that it doesn't?

Listen more than you talk here. Every pain point they name is a chance to show where ChurchApps fits.

05 — Dream Big

As churches grow, they need more customization — off-the-shelf software makes you fit its mold, and the bigger you get, the worse that fits. Most vendors' answer is "that's on our roadmap." Ours is to just build it.
Show an example of something custom we've built for a church — with AI, we can build custom tools for your church in days, not months
This is the new model: open source + AI means ideas go from conversation to working software almost immediately
Then flip it to them: "So dream big — what would be really cool for your church? If you could have any tool, what would it be?"

If you've built anything on their site or for a church like theirs, have it loaded in a tab before the meeting starts. Write down whatever they dream up.

06 — Core Strengths

We are a small team that moves fast — backed by a world of developers

Pull up github.com/ChurchApps and show them the real numbers:

23 open-source repos — every major product, all public, nothing hidden
55+ developers have contributed code directly — B1 Admin alone has 27
430+ forks — the wider circle of developers who've taken our code to build on it
Nearly 1,500 stars — FreeShow alone has 1,200 and is our most-loved project
Everything is active — nearly every repo has commits within the last week

Open source means our team is bigger than our payroll — and anyone can verify it. That's the answer to "what's the catch?"

Mission-Driven, Not Revenue-Driven

Because we're not driven by billing tiers or feature upsells, we're free to focus on what actually helps churches make disciples — not what increases subscription revenue. Everyone on staff or volunteering with ChurchApps — full-time or part-time — sees this as a mission field, not a job. That changes everything.

07 — Biggest Challenges

Awareness

The greatest barrier is simply that churches don't know we exist. Getting ChurchApps in front of the right people at the right time is our number one growth challenge.

Skepticism (Why is this free? What's the catch?)

Churches naturally ask, "Who's behind this?" Building credibility through trusted church partnerships and visible ministry impact is one of our biggest needs right now.

Capacity

Demand is growing faster than our team can scale. We need developers willing to contribute their skills, donors who believe in the mission, and organizations willing to invest in keeping this free for the Church.

Natural close: "That's part of why conversations like this one matter so much to us."