For pastors of small and mid-size churches
Somebody visited last Sunday. They filled out the card. Nobody called by Wednesday. Most churches don't have a growth problem they can see — they have a leak between one Sunday and the next. Ekklesia is the follow-up system that closes it, built by a pastor who runs it in his own church every week.
Enrollment is currently closed. We built this at four churches first; the first open cohort of ten starts when they graduate, and the waitlist hears first.
The card gets filled out every Sunday. The follow-up is the part that doesn't happen. That's the leak.
Running every week at the four founding churches
None of them are about the preaching. All of them happen between one Sunday and the next — and you've probably watched every one of them happen.
A text on Monday says "we saw you." A call the following Sunday says "we finally noticed." The longer the silence, the more it says.
You collected the name, the number and the prayer request. Then it sat in a folder in the church office with last month's cards.
When the deaconess who handles it travels or gets sick, follow-up stops. A system shouldn't depend on anyone's memory — including yours.
Texts in one app, email in another, giving in a third, the website somewhere else. The guest falls through the gaps between them.
Separate subscriptions for membership, email, texting, giving, a website and an app add up to more than $2,200 a month for the pieces — and nobody on staff has time to run them all.
A first gift is one of the clearest signs a guest is becoming a member. In most churches it triggers a receipt and nothing else.
When you're the one remembering every name and every follow-up, the church can only grow as far as your energy on a given week.
Every one of these is fixable in six Sundays. That's what a cohort is for.
Join the waitlistMost church platforms were designed for large suburban congregations with a staff of twenty. They don't know what a church anniversary is, why first Sunday matters, or what Pastor's Aide does on a Saturday morning. So you end up bending your ministry to fit the software.
Ekklesia is Black-owned, built by a Black pastor for the Black church. It was designed inside a working congregation, around the way our churches actually gather, give and grow — and it runs at the founder's church every Sunday before it runs at yours.
We understand your church because we are your church.
The framework
Ekklesia T.E.C.H. stands for Track, Engage, Connect, Harvest. It's not a slogan; it's the sequence every church has to run to keep a guest, and skipping a step is why guests slip away.
The card creates the contact and assigns the follow-up before anyone leaves the building. Nothing goes in a drawer.
Somebody reaches out before Wednesday, every time. Every reply lands in one inbox.
From "visited once" to "belongs here" — one pipeline, and volunteers scheduled without a phone tree.
Membership, baptism, serving, and a first gift that starts a conversation instead of just a receipt.
Track is the one most churches skip — and it's why the other three fail. Here's what running all four as one system looks like, instead of eight subscriptions that don't talk to each other:
Everything the follow-up depends on lives in one place. A guest who fills out a card on Sunday is texted, prayed for, invited back and known by name — without anyone having to remember to do it.
What we build for you versus with you depends on the level you choose. Details are on the pricing page.
I built Ekklesia at my own church first, then at three more, before opening it to anyone I hadn't sat across a table from. Every church in a cohort is on a call with me every week, and every Lift and Launch build gets 45 days of guided onboarding — six Sundays. I can do that well for ten churches at once. I can't do it for a hundred, and I'm not going to pretend I can.
So when the founding churches graduate, ten seats open, we build together, the cohort graduates — and the next ten seats open. If you're reading this before the doors open, the waitlist is how you get the first text when they do.
Dr. Terrence L. Vandiver, Sr.Founder of Ekklesia · Senior Pastor, Thankful Missionary Baptist Church
Four churches, including my own, built one at a time before the doors open. Graduating [Month day].
Ten seats, offered to the waitlist first, by text, in the order people joined.
[Two or three sentences from one of the four founding pastors — what was broken before, what changed inside six Sundays. Their words, not ours.]
[A second quote, ideally about the weekly calls or what it was like to have a pastor build it with them.]
Ten seats open when the founding churches graduate. The waitlist hears first — by text, in the order you joined.
When seats open, the first thing you'll get is a text from Ekklesia. Keep an eye on your phone.
Because Ekklesia was built at four churches first — Dr. Vandiver's own and three more — and those builds are being finished before ten seats open to churches he hasn't met. When the founding churches graduate, the first open cohort starts, and the waitlist is offered the seats first. Ten at a time is how the personal attention stays personal.
You get a text and an email with a link to apply. Seats are offered to the waitlist in the order people joined. Applying is a short form and a discovery call, so we can confirm Ekklesia fits your church before you pay anything.
Three levels. Leap is the full platform with training, office hours and support, from $197 a month. Lift adds a seven-page church website, branded funnels, core automations and 45 days of guided onboarding. Launch is fully built for you: a fifteen-page site, integrations and the complete automation suite. Your monthly rate is locked for as long as you stay.
Full details are on the pricing page.
No. There's nothing to install; you log in and use it. Leap comes with a training library and open office hours. With Lift we build the foundation together, and with Launch we build it for you.
No. It was built inside a Missionary Baptist church, and it fits the rhythms of the Black church across denominations: Baptist, Pentecostal, AME, non-denominational. If your church gathers the way ours does, it was built with you in mind.
You do. Your members, guests and donors are yours, and Ekklesia never contacts them or uses that information for any reason. If you ever leave, you can download all of your contacts as a CSV file.
Yes, from inside your account, without calling anyone. Download your contacts first; once an account is closed, the data in it becomes inaccessible, as with any software subscription.
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