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A Church in Need

Inglewood Baptist Church has a wide-ranging age group in their congregation.

“Our church - We’re a midsize church based in Nashville, Tennessee with roughly 500 members,” explains Chris Erlanson, who is part of the Audio Ministry Team for Inglewood Baptist. “The church is approaching the 100 year mark and believe it or not we have folks that have been a member of our church all of their lives.”

The church has long reached its congregation in more than one way, but was still missing an older less technical group of members.

“We’ve actually been involved in broadcasting our church services for well over 20 years. For many years it was based on television. However, as we’ve gone through different economies we’ve gone in and out of television broadcasts just simply because of cost. The last three years we seriously focused on YouTube and have benefited greatly because of course there are no costs. Even though we were broadcasting on YouTube, we discovered that we were still missing a segment of our congregation simply because they don’t have access to modern technology.”

Isolation

Covid-19, or the Coronavirus, further expanded an already existing problem. Many elderly church members suddenly were on their own. Those that depended on the church for social and spiritual support found themselves in the dark.

“What really kicked this project off was the Covid-19 pandemic and a conversation with my grandmother. My grandmother had never missed a day of church unless she had a health excuse. When the Covid-19 pandemic kicked off and churches began shutting down, I quickly noticed how, not only my grandmother but, many other grandmothers across America were completely socially isolated and cut off from any contact. For people like my grandmother and many members of our congregation, church is the thing that they do for social contact. We have many church members that come to three different services a week and that is the majority of their social outings, their social contact. And when the pandemic hit, all of a sudden we see that isolation began. Truth be told, it broke my heart and it made me want to find a solution. Thank goodness Voxtelesys was able to provide us a solution to where we can reach those who are maybe forgotten.”

Enter a Custom Solution

Since the church was already a Voxtelesys customer, Chris reached out to us to see if we could help. After some information gathering and brainstorming, we were able to set up an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system to broadcast the church’s weekly services. Once the details were figured out, it was an easy set up for Inglewood Baptist.

“The thing I love about this product is I had it set up in a phone call. Voxtelesys asked the right questions, cared about our congregation, and quickly provided us with a solution that I never imagined we would be able to have.”

“I’ve tried to utilize other products in the past and there was a lot of downtime, a lot of server issues, a lot of confusing PIN numbers and things that frustrated our congregation. This product made it very simple and very easy to plug and play into what our congregation was trying to accomplish.”

A Benefit to the Members and the Church

After about a month of use, Chris says around 10% of their members have benefited from Worship IVR and that number is continuing to grow with each week.

“Not only have we seen church members be reached through this program, but we’ve also seen our giving increase. I believe it has been a result of using this product and people seeing how they can stay connected to our congregation.”

So does Inglewood Baptist Church still see a need for Worship IVR in the future after the pandemic?

“Absolutely. A resounding yes. We still see the residual benefit even from other shut-ins who aren’t able to make it to our church.”