At 105 years old, Friends Church in Yorba Linda, CA has spent decades committed to becoming a community of Christ-followers dedicated to changing the world.
That commitment comes into practice in their efforts to plant churches to reach lost communities. Friends Church has already planted 2 churches and has set the goal to plant 10 churches total by 2029, five English speaking and five Spanish speaking.
“We have two main focuses for our community outside of the church,” Joy Espinosa, Volunteer Development Director, says. “Our goal is to ensure that every foster child in Orange County is in a home by 2020. We also have a great focus in India, particularly with the underprivileged, with the Dalit people.”
The desire to create a community of believers starts with connecting people on a personal level. Friends Church needed a reliable church management software that would allow them to connect members, visitors, and staff in a meaningful way.
“When I watch a person walk in, I want them to know that we want to connect with them,” Senior Pastor Matthew Cork says. “If we don’t have good data, and we don’t have good systems and we don’t have good technology, we miss out.”
That’s where Realm® comes in. Espinosa adds, “One of the benefits we saw with Realm when we started looking at new databases was that through the app and through online, it’s very easy for our church to connect. Everything that you need is in one place so all of our congregants don’t have to go to multiple places to be connected.”
Cork says that without good systems in place, congregants very easily get disconnected from the church. Realm changes that by providing a simple, quick way for members to be communicated with, connected to, and prayed for.
“In a large church, to become community, sometimes that can be difficult, but we work really hard to match our name ‘friends.’ We want everybody to be a friend. We want them to come in and feel like in this large place that they have a name and there’s a God who loves them.”
