How serious?
I am wondering how serious Faithlife is about the groups app? It has so much potential as a wholesome and less invasive alternative to other social media. For the iPhone, I noticed that the last version update was in July. We are slowly trying to migrate people in our church to Faithlife groups. Can you share plans for updates to kill bugs and make the product a more and more viable option for us? Thanks.
Elder/Pastor, Hope Now Bible Church, Fresno CA
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Pastor Roger, so great to hear you're adopting the platform. We are very serious about making Faithlife a great experience, and deploy new improvements and bug fixes almost daily. Right now, we're working on speed improvements, calendar additions, group content licensing, and better reading plan support.
Most of our effort goes into the website, making it work well on both desktop computers and mobile device screens. The Apple and Android apps are shells around the website to enable push notifications. (The application only push-notifies mentions, messages, and invitations.)
I'd love to know which features are most important for your church. Calendars, documents, discussions, photo sharing, etc. Where do you see Faithlife having the biggest impact?
Also, I encourage you to follow these groups for some great examples of active dialog.
https://faithlife.com/darrell-bock/activity
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Thanks for the reply. We have a church made up of young people who have been caught up in gangs in the past, but have been changed through knowing Jesus. Most of them are using Facebook and we have a church Facebook page. But the trouble with Facebook is that there are 'haters' in the midst, plus a lot of unseemly content that our people are trying to break away from. They love the interaction that takes place on Facebook, but not the drama.
When I introduced Faithlife as an alternative, and as a closed group where their old friends cannot find them, there was much excitement. Our group is still small (only about 20), but it is growing as I personally invite church attendees to join. I instruct them, when approved for the group, to post anything, just as they would on FB, but ask yourself, "Will this post build up the body of Christ or tear it down?" So far we are seeing positive results with Faithlife.
Most of the people in the group use Faithlife from their phones. Few have computers (which is why phone app updates will be welcomed). We use the Calendar for all church events, photo sharing, and of course discussions.
Here's a wish list (off the top of my head):
Video sharing.
The ability to see who has "Liked" a post.
Faster loading of posts.
Ability to organize photos and choose which one will be the prominent photo on the page.
Thanks for creating and making this app available. It is a blessing.
Elder/Pastor, Hope Now Bible Church, Fresno CA
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Thanks for the feedback! We're actively working on speed improvements and better 'who liked' visibility. Expect to see improvements over the next 2-4 weeks.
Video uploading is a little harder, but will come in time.
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