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Elevation Church is known around the world for its inspiring teaching, powerful worship, and vibrant church community. But what you might now know is how focused they are on keeping a large church small and intentionally caring for their people.
Elevation Church sought to enhance engagement among its members. They faced a challenge common to many churches: maintaining active participation in giving, serving, and attendance.
At the same time they were experiencing growth in many categories, many members were drifting into "at risk" status, meaning they were disengaging from church activities.
And while they knew this problem existed, they didn’t have a clear way to see who was “at risk” and align their team around pastoral care strategies to minister to those people. This is a problem many churches face: while new people are coming in the front door, others are exiting out the back before you can catch them.
As part of their engagement strategy, Elevation implemented Nurture to help their teams at every location get clear on congregant health and pastor more effectively.
Before using Nurture, church leadership knew a significant portion of its community was becoming "at risk" or fully disengaging, but they didn’t have a system for catching early signs of disengagement in real time. They had all of the data they needed, but it wasn’t presented to their teams in a way that empowered them to take action in the exact moment action was needed.
attendees were at risk of falling away.
volunteers were at risk of disengagement.
donors were categorized as "at risk."
If no action was taken, the likelihood of these members reconnecting with the church was low. For instance, if personal contact was not made, the re-engagement rates were alarming:
of attendees began attending again.
of volunteers began serving again.
of donors began giving again.
Nurture enabled their team to move beyond the numbers to the people.
Like many churches, Elevation’s team already had many tools they were using. It was crucial for Nurture to seamlessly integrate with their existing tech stack in order to enhance their workflow, not complicate it. And that’s exactly what we did.
Nurture was fully implemented across Elevation’s locations in four weeks, with staff trained in just two sessions.
Their team immediately made Nurture a core part of their
pastoral care efforts.
Six weeks after beginning the process, their CFO said
“This is the first system we’ve not had to remind our team to start using!”
Without Nurture’s notifications, the team would not have known to reach out, and they would have missed the opportunity to minister to these people in their time of need.
By Elevation’s team using Nurture every day from October 2024 through January 2025, they achieved incredible results. The following pages detail what they accomplished.
The Active Community Meter is a measurement within Nurture that shows how many of the people in a church database are active in at least one of three major categories.
Elevation’s team wasn’t satisfied to just know their numbers - they wanted to take action and pastor their people even more intentionally than they already did. So they leveraged Nurture to give their team the tools they needed to increase engagement.
After just four months of using Nurture, 56,069 of 79,478 tracked members were actively engaged in at least one category, a sign of a thriving community!
*These numbers reflect all campus locations as well as their online community.
Giving is one of the engagement metrics that every church pays attention to. However, it’s often difficult to see at a glance what the health of a church’s giving trends are. Using Nurture, Elevation Church could see it in an instant. Below are the results on the first 503 at-risk donors contacted.
“At-Risk” donors were contacted
Donors began giving again, representing 178 households
The total amount given by re-engaged donors within the case study period was $203,611 (which would equate to around $610,833 annually)
Re-engagement Success Rate
(When someone moved beyond “at risk” to fully “disengaged” the percentage that gave again on their own was only 16.2%)
Serving is another key metric that all churches track. While there are amazing platforms for rostering volunteers, it’s often hard to see warning signs before someone fully disengages. Elevation used Nurture to gain deeper insight. Below are the results on the first 220 at-risk volunteers contacted.
“At-Risk” volunteers were contacted
Volunteers began serving again
Re-engagement Success Rate
(When someone moved beyond “at risk” to fully “disengaged” the
percentage that gave again on their own was only 24.9%)
Attendance is often the easiest metric to get a bird’s eye view of, but knowing exactly which of your people are attending and how regular they are is another story. Nurture helped Elevation Church go beyond the numbers to the people. Below are the results on the first 184 at-risk attendees contacted.
“At-Risk” attendees were contacted
Attendees began attending again.
Re-engagement Success Rate
(When someone moved beyond “at risk” to fully “disengaged” the
percentage that gave again on their own was only 14.9%)
If you are looking for a clear way to know the health of your church, empower your staff to reach the people who are easy to miss, and finally close the back door, then schedule a demo now.
Within 30 minutes, we’ll show you exactly how Nurture can become the cheat sheet for your staff, the scoreboard for your senior leaders, and the catalyst to church health and growth.
Nurture enabled their team to move beyond the numbers to the people.
