Since its birth in 1959, Lutheran Church of the Ascension in Northfield, IL has been creating faithful servants of God. The church’s vision is to be a vibrant, progressive church that welcomes all who want to work in Jesus’ name.
Its members are united in that vision, and they live out that calling by serving the community.
Rev. JoAnn Post, Senior Pastor, says, “We participate in something our national church calls ‘God’s Work. Our Hands.’ This year, we had a group painting a food pantry and a group assembling care packages for inner-city school children. It’s really focused on a day of service to the larger community.”
Ascension was thriving through their community outreach program, but they were having some difficulties effectively reaching their church body and bringing people in. That’s when they found Realm.
With Realm, Ascension’s staff and congregation are able to stay connected throughout the week. It also provides a vehicle for tracking attendance and the overall health of their ministry, all in real time. “We can very quickly pull up the dashboards in Realm to see who showed up and what their interests are,” says Post.
But something else happened when they moved to Realm. They noticed their giving started growing substantially. Ami Frick, Office Manager says, “Our eGiving has increased immensely in the last year. Once our people saw how easy it was to give online, especially to set up scheduled payments, it spread like wildfire. We really noticed this with last year’s pledge campaign and we expect another increase this year as pledges come in.”
Plus, right away, they noticed the benefits of having eGiving integrated with Realm. Ami says, “It’s awesome to have eGiving integrated with Realm. First, the information we want to see is already there. Just a couple clicks away! Versus waiting for checks to be entered into Realm and credited to the correct giving fund. I love how easy it is to be able to pull up a giving account and track the incoming funds or to be able to show someone what their giving is and how to get to it. Talking to other churches that are just getting ready to roll out eGiving, I would definitely encourage them to use inFamily Giving as a resource, especially a Giving Coach,” says Ami.
