The Grove Church in Bartonville, Texas, has centered its mission around “reaching people where they are and helping them come alive in Christ.” From their inception, The Grove Church has looked for ways to make a difference in their community.
Their Challenge
Pastor Ben Scheck was brought in to lead the congregation in January 2021 during a season when the number of positive COVID-19 individuals began to spike. Unfortunately, this resulted in limiting The Grove’s opportunities to get to know people in their community in person.
“What Gloo did was bring about another venue for us to reach people that we probably would never see or even notice otherwise,” says Pastor Ben.
Activating Volunteers
With Pastor Ben leading the congregation, he saw an opportunity to partner with Gloo to reach and connect with people in their rapidly growing DFW area. “Within Gloo is a love for Jesus and a heart for the lost. That’s what I want for my family, for our congregation and for the community,” says Pastor Ben.
As Pastor Ben began receiving Explorers, he quickly realized that he needed help responding, and began activating the spiritual gifts of his congregation to minister to the needs of Explorers by building a team of ‘first responders.'
The Solution: The Explorer Inbox
Pastor Ben needed an easy and safe way to manage connections to Explorers and assign ‘first responders’. The Explorer Inbox made it easy to have all the important Explorer information stored in one place—a single source of truth that gave the whole team a level of transparency and urgency to meet Explorers needs.
The Results
With Gloo’s help, The Grove has already connected with 89 Explorers. Because of how simple it was to assign volunteers to Explorer Connections, Pastor Ben isn’t overwhelmed with too many Explorers at one time, and volunteers have time to reach out and dig in with Explorers, all through texting within the Gloo platform.
Building a ‘First Responders’ Team
Beginning with a spiritual gifts test, Pastor Ben pinpoints people in his congregation who have different backgrounds and life experiences that could be shared with Explorers who are going through similar situations. “When an Explorer is matched, I look for folks on my team who have dealt with relationship issues or have dealt with depression or anxiety over the years and have insights on how counseling has helped them out,” says Pastor Ben.
If you want to be as effective as Pastor Ben's team, here are a few more resources you can check out: