Holy Martyrs Church is a vibrant and active Roman Catholic community in Medina, Ohio. Their mission is to Encounter Christ, Grow in Faith, and Make Disciples. With an average attendance of 500, Holy Martyrs has several ongoing ministries and activities.
Janet Payton, Pastoral Associate, has been with the parish for over 17 years and has a heavy background in business and law. She is a generalist and, in a way, the pastor’s right-hand person. When Janet joined Holy Martyrs Church, she was astounded to have thousands of people using very rudimentary tools in their books and set out to find a program that better met their needs.
In the fall of 2020, when COVID prevented Holy Martyrs from having Mass, Janet decided it was a good time to move forward with a new system, and they selected MinistryPlatform. In addition to training sessions, staff had weekly meetings to discuss what they needed, how they would integrate MinistryPlatform with other solutions, and how to make it work best for their specific needs. These meetings ensured everyone was informed, invested, and on the same page.
Janet uses MinistryPlatform for event registration and loves using the event widgets on their website, which pull events directly from MinistryPlatform. Holy Martyrs recently started using Opportunity widgets on their website to help people sign up for volunteer opportunities and have also identified ways to improve their group engagement.
“We have had people sign up for small groups but are very intermittent in their attendance. We have been able to flag that and then follow up. Did they have a hard time with the group dynamic? Would they like to try a different group, or how can we help them?” – Janet Payton, Pastoral Associate
Skip McQuate is another MinistryPlatform power user at Holy Martyrs. He has been the Middle School Youth Minister for approximately five years. He works with seventh and eighth-grade kids in his two-year program that integrates teaching about Confirmation in preparation for when they are confirmed in their ninth-grade year.
Before moving to MinistryPlatform, Skip used spreadsheets to manage groups and registration, which required significant manual work. MinistryPlatform has allowed him to automate some of these processes. One of his favorite features in groups is the ability to write an email when he thinks about it and schedule it to be sent to his students at the end of the week so the information is fresh for their Sunday class.
“Because of MinistryPlatform, you can put things like email reminders out of your mind, you know what’s taken care of, and then you can concentrate on whatever else needs to be done .” – Skip McQuate, Middle School Youth Minister.
Janet and Skip both leverage Milestones in the Ministry Platform to understand engagement. It is one thing to interact with parishioners in person, but to be able to track the statistics of how they are doing is an excellent addition.
“I think it helps us to understand where our parish is: how our parishioners are doing, who isn’t being engaged, and what we can do to get them engaged. Maybe they’re always talking to us, but are they doing anything with us? What are they actually doing? How are they engaged?” – Skip McQuate, Middle School Youth Minister.
Janet says she is not one to push products, but with MinistryPlatform, it is worth it in the long run because it can help reach more people and do real faithful ministry. Through tracking group interactions and using Milestones and communication tools, Janet and Skip are making a difference in the lives of their parish and community with the help of MinistryPlatform and ACS Technologies.
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