Episode 93

This episode of the Removing Barriers podcast is a little different in that we are interviewing Tommy Wakefield. He is one of the creators of the Soul-winning App, or SWAPP for short. SWAPP is an outreach management application that churches can use to help keep track of outreach in their areas, follow-ups, prayers, needs, and ministry opportunities as a result of witnessing door to door. This episode features an in-depth introduction to the people behind the app, the history of its development, what it can do, and how it might be used as a management tool in your local church, or perhaps for your personal use. Join us on this episode; perhaps you’ll swap your current outreach tracking methods for SWAPP.

So if the Soul-winning app had a mission statement, what would it be? Equipping the church to fulfill the great commission.

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG, and we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross.

This is episode 93 of the Removing Barriers podcast and in this episode we will be sitting down with Tommy Wakefield, one of the founders of the Soul-winning app. Tommy, thank you for joining us and welcome to the Removing Barriers podcast. Well thanks for having me. It’s an honor to be on this with you and I’m looking forward to it. Great, well thank you for putting us in a busy schedule. I know you’re a family man, so you’re quite busy I would imagine. Yes, we got lots going on all the time, lots of screaming children running around. Right, well same here for me.

Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself, your family, your calling, whatever you feel comfortable sharing. Okay, so right now I’m pastor of a smaller congregation, a smaller church, and I come from Michigan, so I grew up in Michigan and my calling kind of came from there. It came from growing up in church and was called into the ministry and then came out to Bible College. I’ve kind of just going over it really quickly and it was actually at Bible College where I was saved and born again and then of course the Lord kind of leaded along the way and thing after thing came up and me and my buddy started the Soul-winning app and I began pastoring a small church and just kind of step by step along the way, the Lord is guided and directed our way and we just kind of followed him every step of the way and that kind of leads me to where we are today. So in a nutshell that’s who I am and where I’m from and my calling and stuff. Great.

Do you by chance have a software engineering background? No, so I don’t have a software engineering background but pretty well versed in just software in general and technology and what it’s capable of, what it can and can’t do. And so we hire a lot of the actual developing and the coding and so that’s kind of where we’re at. We manage it, give it the insight and the direction it needs and then just have it developed and built and that’s just kind of where we’re at. But I don’t just lots of tinkering with computers as a child and picking them apart and putting them back together and sometimes unsuccessfully putting them back together, you know what I mean? Yeah, definitely have done. My quite share of tinkering with computers.

So tell me, what is the Soul-winning app and kind of dive a little bit deep and how it got started? So the Soul-winning app kind of came out of the general idea that I think wasn’t really unique to ourselves. This idea that we all go soulwinning, we all do this door to door outreach ministry. There’s a lot of churches that do that. And I can’t say that we’re unique to the fact that we were the original ones that came up with this idea because plenty of people have had this idea, we need an app to do this, I’m sure, and we’ve ran into lots of people that have said, yeah, I thought about building an app to be able to do this, but here it is. We’ve built it. It’s just we had the idea with a few of us together had this idea and we just decided we were going to tackle the idea. So we worked really hard at trying to tackle the idea and it ended up being a lot harder than we anticipated. It seems like a really simple solution. It’s like, Oh, I’ll just track our door to door stuff. But it ended up being a lot harder than we anticipated. So that’s where we started. We started in I want to say it’s actually coming up really close. I think in a couple of days we’ll be right at the five year anniversary of when we launched it. So that’s kind of where we started. We launched it and it was just a disaster when we launched it, it just barely worked. It’s this beta app that was in this test flight that barely work, showing people, look, you can do this. And since then, we’ve rebuilt it numerous times. We’ve just had to completely throw everything out, rebuild it and to the point where it is now. And I would say it’s very functional where it’s at now. And we really think it’s very helpful to churches. And we’ve kind of even restructured the way we think about even building software for churches, just kind of restructuring that, rebuilding that in our minds, rather than just trying to solve a little problem, actually focusing on the whole church as a general and why we even built software for it. It’s gone through lots of blood, sweat and tears, but here we are. Yes, as a software engineer, I can imagine, because a lot of folks think the simplest of apps will be a quick thing to do. But once you start doing it, all the little things that you didn’t think about comes into play. Then you reach out to your software engineering team and they tell you, well, that’s going to take three days and end up going to take two weeks. I definitely can understand that.

So if the Soul-winning app had a mission statement, what would it be? Equipping the church to fulfill the Great Commission would probably be the mission statement of it. There’s a lot of different ways we could say that, trying to make it efficient, the church being efficient at the Great Commission. And sometimes I think where we error even when I say that mission statement. Sometimes I think when we air the way we think about church because it’s like we’re going to equip this group of people with the tools they need for the Great Commission. But really the church includes a collection of individuals and oftentimes we fail. Even a lot of church software that’s out there, you’ll notice it’s very like staff heavy. Mostly the staff use it or the pastor uses it and the church members are just completely hands off with any of that. And so a lot of software that’s been built for churches completely fails at giving the actual church tools they need to do the things the church is supposed to do. And so I would say that would be the mission statement. But that’s kind of like a little deeper than meets the eye, right? That makes sense. Yeah, definitely.

So I’m the coordinator of the someone in ministry at my church. I’ve been doing that for probably nine years, nine and a half years now or so. And one of the things that my wife and I have spent a lot of time doing is going to Google Maps, taking a screenshot, put it in Publisher. Actually. First we put it in paint and use the paintbrush or the bucket and actually color or highlight each home that we want to go knock on. Then we take that from paint and put it into Publisher and make it all fancy in whatever case maybe. And then print it. And sometimes that become a pain. Sometimes we are at the church for what, three, 4 hours, just printing maps, creating maps and printing them. And what makes it even more difficult, we need to print it front and back. You know, the map is on the front and there’s a small survey at the back. But because it’s Publisher, we can’t necessarily say print all and just leave it. We have to actually open each file and set up the printing properties or whatever case may be and then we can print it, go to the next one, print it. So tell me, what barriers does the Soul Winning app removed for pastors and for people like me who may coordinate Soul Winning in the church? OK, yeah, that’s a good question. The barriers that it removes are the disconnect between a church member engaging in the Great Commission as done by the church collectively as a team. Right? So there’s of course, the individual command we each have for the Great Commission. Witness to the person we just met at the cashier checking out, the cashier we just met checking out, and then whoever else we meet our neighbor. That individual responsibility we have. But then there’s also like church corporate team efforts that we have where we as a team reach out together. And that involves a lot of times the door to door efforts or like park Ministries or things where we’re all together, working on something. And so the barrier it removes is the disconnect often times between the member and their ability to engage with that team outreach, that team centric Great Commission involvement. And it does that a lot of ways because it gives them an app. Every member can have an app that they’re connecting with their church and getting access to that outreach. And then people they meet along the way during that outreach, they can follow up on, and then they can take that stuff that was done collectively or corporately, and then engage, follow up and engage with it personally, take those things personal. And so at face value, that’s probably the biggest barrier it removes, is that sometimes that disconnect between the member and their ability to engage with the team corporate outreach that the church might be trying to do. And I would say there’s even more barriers it removes. But that would probably be the biggest one, I would say to a pastor, speaking to a pastor, probably one of the biggest, like, philosophical barriers it removes is giving your members the tools they need to engage with the Great Commission and take it personally. And to me, I think that that’s been a really big disconnect in churches, even with our door to door stuff like show up, do this program, then go home, you’re good. It’s like you can check it off your list. I’ve done my part in the Great Commission this week, I don’t got to do it anymore. And then we can check it off. But giving them the tools that of course they can engage with it, but they can also save the prospects, follow up on them, pray for them and so much more, that kind of gives them the tools to be able to see, oh, well, I should be doing this, right?

Yeah, that’s a good point, because what would be done at my church is that when I give out the maps on the Saturday morning and Thursday evening when we go out, when they’re done with those maps, they will bring it back to me. And I’m the only one who has the names and the contacts and the follow ups and the prayer list or whatever the case may be. And then I’m also tasked again, we distribute those out again to folks. So it seems like the app would allow folks to personally open the app and see these follow up list and see the prayer list or whatever the case may be. And that kind of make life a little bit easier for the sole winning coordinator or the pastor. Yeah, because you really think about it, that’s the way it ought to be anyways. Now, whether or not some members are going to do that, it’s kind of up to them. And it’s not like the app forces that on them, but it at least gives you as church leadership the necessary means to say, hey, go follow up on them. Here’s how. Because you already saved their prospect. You should pray for them. You should go follow up on them. And it’s not like you’re trying to tell them, write it down on a list to keep that list and don’t lose it and write down this address. It does give them the tools. So that then I think it would be easier for people like you and other pastors and leaders to be able to train them, easier to follow up because there’s going to be that transitional phase where the church members have kind of not done it for so long. There’s got to be that transitional phase where we’re going to have to train them. We’re going to have to teach them, go back and follow up and do the Great Commission. Because inviting people to me is borderline not fulfilling the Great Commission. Well, I would say it’s not borderline. It’s not fulfilling the Great Commission. I don’t believe that inviting people to church is the Great Commission. We don’t see that in the Book of Acts. Yeah.

So tell me, you talk about training. How easy is this app to use and kind of give us an overview. If a church wants to take up the Soul Winning app and start using it, how easy it is to use and what would someone like me need to do to stop using it? Okay, so I’ll answer those questions backwards to start using it since one of the biggest misconceptions we’ve actually had about so winning app is a lot of people think it’s just an app. I go to the App Store, I download it, and that’s all I need to do. And part of that is our fault, our marketing efforts. We call it the Soul-winninging app swap, swap, whatever you want to call it. And a lot of people think it’s just an app and I’ll download it and use it and they’ll do that. But there’s more to it than that. In fact, if you do that, you won’t even be able to use it. Right now we’re working on something that will kind of change that and let the solo people kind of use it by themselves. So what you have to do to use it is actually register your church, and your church will sign up pay for the subscription, which is $40 a month, paid monthly, comes out to like 30 a month, paid yearly. And the church will register pay for that subscription. And then once they’ve registered, anybody can download the app and an unlimited amount of people can connect their app with the church account. So they both kind of are really separate things, but the app needs the church account to exist. So then the church members can download the app, connect with their church, get access to that outreach, and the church has to, of course, create all of the outreach areas and the maps and do a lot of the hard work upfront. I can’t say it’s necessarily that hard, but it’s more work. So then the app though now I kind of explained it that way and it might kind of push people away and think, oh, that sounds too complicated, but it really isn’t. It’s pretty simple. Sign up your church so you can start using it in your church, then get your members to download the app, connect to your church. It’s simple. In the app, we’ve worked very hard and we still work hard as hard as we can to try to make it very easy to use because it’s not easy to get people to download an app, no matter how convenient it might be for them. Even with gas prices the way they are, people would rather drive to the church, spend sometimes $10 in gas, driving to the church, getting a map, driving back out and then driving back to the church and dropping the map off, then downloading an app. And sometimes it’s just like, why? So because of that, like mental hurdles so many people have, they don’t want to use an app. It is very easy. You just put in your phone number during the sign up process, if your phone number is not in the system, takes you through the sign up form, you fill it out really quick and then boom, you sign in, search for your church. And then right there on the home screen, once you get in, is all of the outreach areas visually displayed and you just click on them. It’s just a matter of click on that area, click on that map, and if that’s the one you want to do, you just view it and check into it. It’s very visual and easy to use. It’s not like clunky and very necessary things hidden in really complex menus. We try to keep it simple because not only do people have that mental hurdle of using an app, a lot of people going out door to door sometimes are even older. So if they use an app, it’s got to be simple.

Yeah, definitely. I’m speaking for myself though, because as the coordinator of the soulwinning ministry at my church, a lot of the folks that go there much older and some of them probably would not want to use the app in a sense like that. But let me kind of walk back what you said and I’m going to come back to that, but let me just walk back what you said and see if for someone like me. So my church will register for the Soul winning app. We log in under our computer, link our church and all those things. Then I start creating maps, creating areas that I want to go sold within. And then the folks that will go out with me, they will download the app to their phone and they will search for the church and they will see all the areas that we want to go. And so we’re in for that week or that month or whatever. Is there any validation process? Let’s say, for instance, I don’t want someone in, let’s say, not decoder, be able to see the areas that we’re looking at? Is there a validation process that I can say, okay, yes, I know that number, I know that number, or that name, and they can see the maps, but I don’t want anyone else to see? How does that work? Yeah, so you can set a password so as people are connecting with your church, they need your password that you’ve set to log in and see your outreach areas. So there is a password to that, and you would either give that to your church members or just right there while you’re launching it, you’re getting people on board with the app, which would probably be very hands on. There’s very few people that would just do it at their house on their own time. Probably have to be hands on. You could just type in the password if you don’t want anybody to have it and get them in. And we don’t really roll out updates that boot people out of the login phase, so they have to log back in all the time. And so if you get them in, they’re pretty much in for good. And it’s rare scenario where you’ll have to get them back in again. That makes sense, but yeah, there’s a password for that.

Yeah, definitely. And we talked about the nail that they won’t want to use the app. Does it have like, a print feature where I can revert to paper maps if they don’t want to put it on the phone? I have at least one person on my solvent team that still have a dumb phone, so there’s no way that person could put an app on their phone. Yeah, so printing is available. And in fact, there’s actually people that completely use the software, the sole winning app, and nobody in their church uses the app. They just use the printing function. And that’s still easier than screenshotting. Google pulling out the paint. Yeah, because you map it out once and then you have a database, you have a list of maps and they’re on the website, and you just go in when you’re ready to do that area and you print. And that’s actually the best way to begin to phase it into your church. Sign up your church, make the maps, start printing them with the system, and then slowly, maybe one by one or group by group, you can kind of introduce the app to people and you can kind of have that slow roll out is a lot easier than just like, slapping them with this jump off this bridge and hope your parachute goes out. It’s a lot easier to roll it out that way. So printing is there, and there’s even like a little QR code on each map. It says, scan the QR code if you want to download the app. So those that are like techy enough and they’re like, I’m sick of paper maps, they can jump on board right away and you’ll be able to even see that on the website. If people are doing it on their own, you’ll be able to see those people. You can approach them and say, I’m glad you download the app and maybe give them a few pointers or something. Great. Yeah. Talking about pointer, do you provide any training, maybe YouTube videos people can go to and kind of maybe show their church or show the folks in the soul when the ministry how they can use this app? Yeah. So as they sign up on the website, there’s pop ups along the way. As they go to the mapping page, it will pop up and say, Learn how to map. As they go to the prospecting page, it will pop up and say, Learn how to manage the prospects. And so there’s tutorials along the way, some YouTube videos, some pop ups, also some training instructions and videos that get emailed to them as they sign it up. There’s a process along the way and of course we work to improve that because it’s something we just got to keep constantly teaching people because it’s a process, whether they say repetition is the key to learning. We can tell somebody how to map, but we found that we actually have to tell them like ten times inside of map.

Yeah. What about the individual soul-winner? I’m thinking about missionaries, someone like me, if I want to go soul-winning outside of my church, would the app help me in that situation? Or even the missionary who kind of knew in the field trying to establish stuff? How would that work for missionary? And also talking about missionaries, does the app actually work outside of the US? Let’s say I’m in China or in Japan and you want to use the app. Yeah. So it does work. We don’t have the language translated elsewhere, but Google Maps works. So as long as Google Maps works where they are, they can click on the map and it’ll drop a pin and pull the address. Not every country’s addressing is the same, but the pins and the relative position, you’ll get directions to that pin and it’ll be still where that pin is. And so I would say it does work. I can’t say I’ve practically used it in another country, but I know there’s others that do. So if Google Maps works there, then it works is what I would say. But we just haven’t translated the language into any other language. So for the individual, missionaries can sign up their church. At this point, we don’t have like a solo functionality for the app. It is something we’re working on and we are bringing to the table so that individuals can just download the app and then jump right in as a solo sole winner where they can drop pins and save prospects and follow up on those prospects. But there’s no mapping functionality. You can’t track your streets and whatnot. You would just kind of remember where you’ve been and save prospects and follow up on them. So that kind of would be the solo functionality. But everybody can sign up to church. I would say even a small church that just has one pastor is kind of just out there knocking on the streets by himself. He can sign up his church and just himself using it is still useful enough for him to sign up and even pay the $40 a month so that he has a place he can save his prospects, follow up on them. The solo person can use it, but right now, as of now, they have to sign up to church to use it by themselves. And that’s a feature that’s coming, I assume. Yeah, we’re working on the solo functionality. So what would happen in the app when you sign up? When you get to the connect with your church phase of the sign up process, there would just be a solo option. You would hit solo and you’d be brought right to the home screen in the app and you could just from there see a map and you just drop pins and save prospects as you’re going out door to door.

You’re listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. We’re sitting down with Tommy Wakefield, one of the cofounders of the soul-winning app. We’ll be right back.

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Pastor, how can a church switch their soul winning management to the soul winning app? Especially if they’ve already established, perhaps paper means or whatever means that they were using initially? How can they switch their full winning management to the sole winning app? Yeah, that’s a good question. So as of now, we still have not found anybody that uses anything other than Paper to do something like this. If they don’t do door to door, there’s a chance they have some sort of prospecting system they use. But if they do door to door, they still use paper. And so the easiest way would be to take your existing mapping system you have and throw it in the trash, sign up your church on the swap IO and just start mapping those maps digitally. And then from there you would just print them and you could replace those paper maps. So it’s not like your members would really even know the difference. In fact, they might realize, wow, these maps look a little more polished than they did before. And then from there, you can of course, introduce people to the mobile app and say, hey, if you don’t want to use the paper anymore, download the app. It’ll give you the tools you need to follow up on people and pray for people and whatnot. So the easiest way, really, for a church to switch is and you don’t have to throw away your existing system, you could just sign up on the website, sign up your church on the website and then start playing with the mapping, creating maps in your outreach areas on the website and then working on a rollout phase.

The idea of putting in all of the hours to make an app so that people can have a more streamlined and more efficient way to knock on doors, that takes a lot of dedication. It must be coming from the heart of a desire to see people saved. Can you tell us about your heart for Soul Winning? How was that developed? I almost want to say it’s probably two fold. We like solving problems, really complicated problems, I guess. And then we built this because we really wanted people to be saved. And there was just such a need to equip the members in a church to be more effective and have the tools that were needed to reach people. But more than that, build relationships with the people, follow up on them. And I would say that desire, I guess, and that passion to see people saved was really cultivated. While we were at college, me and my buddy that made this, we both went to the same Bible college and just the spirit and the attitude at this college, the focus really is on reaching people. And really that’s what it’s all about. The cliche way it said is keep the main thing. The main thing. And the main thing is Soul Winning. It’s reaching people. You really kind of stripped down every single church down to the absolute bare necessities, and all that matters is people. Not VBS, not programs, not even like the way we structure our church services in the morning. Like there’s so much that’s not necessary. But what is reaching people, that’s the main thing. It’s really well taught there and so we hear it a lot. And like I already said, repetition is the key to learning. Takes 3400 times a year and that all of a sudden, one day it’s like, oh, it is the main thing. Yeah, that’s great. Passed. I’d like to hear your hot, dear. Because so much churches have moved away from the main thing. They tend to organize and they get a lot of people together and do stuff, but a lot of Christians. Sadly, don’t, Evangelize. And if this app would make that step a little bit easier, or at least free up my time so I don’t have to be creating all these maps as I did before, I think that’s a good thing. Definitely.

Tell me, if folks want to learn more about the Soul winning app, where should they go? They can go to our website. You can go to theSoulwinningapp.com or theSwapp.io. TThesoulwinningAPP.com is easier to mentally recognize, so you got to type in the thdfoningapp.com so you can go there and learn about it from there. You can find our social media accounts down in the footer and stuff. I’m sure you can chat with us on the website, and it’ll go to our phones so we can respond. And our cell phones, we blast through our cell phones all over everything. It’s not like a business phone that leaves you on hold and sends you through this loophole of stuff. It’s just our cell phone. So if you want to get a hold of us, just call. And it’s always the quickest way to learn something is just call. You’re stuck on something or stumped on something, it’s like, well, this ain’t working. Just literally call us on our website. There’s a way to schedule a demo. We need a demo via Zoom or something. So we try to put it everywhere, make it easy to connect with us. And it seems like it’s not going to a call center some place. It’s going directly to you guys. Yeah, it goes to us. Oh, wow, that’s brave. It’s easier, really, to answer people’s questions ourselves and try to train somebody to learn how to answer questions for people, and then those answers end up being subpar anyway, so it’s easier for us to do that.

All right, Tommy, so we want you down to the end here. Give us your best pitch for a church to switch to the full winning app. The best pitch that I got is think about your church members. They have an individual command for the Great Commission in fulfilling it. And really, as leaders, as church leaders, it’s our responsibility to train and equip them to really even cultivate that desire. And the soleny app gives you, as a church in church leadership, the means to be able to cultivate that desire easier without them having to also juggle and learn how to manage and build a system on their own with three by five cards, and where do they put those? So if they’re trying to juggle on how to manage the system and also how to reach people, it can damper that flame. So I guess that would be my pitch. Just think about your church members. Great.

All right, Tommy Wakefield, thank you for joining us and the Removing Barriers podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Thank you for listening, to Get a hold of us, to support this podcast, or to learn more about removing barriers, go to removingbarriers.net. This has been the Removing Barriers podcast. We attempted to remove barriers so that we all can have a clear view of the cross.