MARTINEZ, Ga. (AP) – At the Stevens Creek Community Church, God takes credit cards.
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(Photo: AP)Kiosks in the atrium of Stevens Creek Community Church in Augusta, Ga., allow parishioners to give money using their credit or debit card.
Debit cards, too.
Two “giving kiosks” sit just outside the church’s chapel, next-generation collection plates that allow churchgoers to swipe their credit or debit cards and instantly send donations to the church.
Pastor Marty Baker likes to call the black terminals “ATMs” – “automatic tithe machines.”
“We’re just trying to connect with the culture,” Baker said. “And that’s how the culture does business. It’s more than an ATM for Jesus. It’s about erasing barriers.”
Baker came up with the idea three years ago when his east Georgia church was preparing for a fundraising drive. He realized that, like many in his 1,100-member congregation, he rarely carried cash; he hired developers to find a way for his flock to pay with plastic.
Eventually, they cobbled together a prototype that he set up at his church in early 2005.
Since then, the evangelical church has seen an 18 percent bump in donations – and an average gift of more than $100 each time a card is swiped.
The results encouraged Baker and his wife, Patty, to form a for-profit company, called SecureGive, that sells the terminals for between $2,000 and $5,000 apiece and charges a $50 monthly subscription fee. By the end of the year, they expect to have terminals in 15 spots across the country.
The kiosks are fairly simple to use. After typing in a phone number and pin number, users swipe a credit or debit card. The terminals allow users to give to a specific fund, such as a building drive or a mission. Afterward, it spits out a receipt.
At Stephens Creek, where services begin with flashy light shows and an in-house Christian band jams out salvation songs, the embrace of technology has helped foster a sense that this congregation is on the cutting edge.
“We’re real. We’re in today,” said church volunteer Dorna Adams. “We’re here where society is at.”
Baker compares his technology to the days of the Old Testament when people stopped offering sacrifices and started offering coins. “It’s the same now with bringing plastic,” he said. “It’s an evolution – and this will take root.” And to placate churches concerned that parishioners will donate money they do not have, the company offers to build machines that only accept debit cards.
At the Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, it was the price that was galling, not the concept. The church considered buying the kiosks before deciding to build a homemade version for a few hundred dollars, said Jeremy Turgeon, the church’s information service manager. “It’s still a theory whether we could do it or not, but other churches have, so we know it’s possible,” he said.
In some ways, the rise of the kiosks are a natural extension of the online donations that many church Web sites now accept. Phill Martin of the National Association of Church Business Administration said he expects even some of the most resistant churches to eventually offer some sort of credit-based donations.
“Whether we’ll have an offering plate with a card reader one day, who knows,” Martin said. “But we’re certainly not far from that.” Continue >>
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