ChurchApps Onsite
Residency
Micheal and Kari Byrd travel by RV to churches that use ChurchApps. Invite them, and they'll live onsite and serve like staff: setting up every ChurchApps tool, training your volunteers, hanging the TVs, and encouraging your leaders. It costs your church nothing but a 30-amp plug and a water spigot.
Apply for a ResidencyAvailability is very limited — we can only say yes to a small handful of churches, in the right region at the right season.
Here's the deal, in plain terms
You invite us
Apply below. If your church is a fit for one of our travel windows, Micheal sets up a call with your senior minister.
We move in
Our RV parks on your property (or a nearby RV park) for a minimum of two months. We're there every day, working as part of your team.
We get to work
Church database, check-in, giving, website, mobile app, classroom TVs, worship software — set up, installed, and your people trained. All free.
Two months. Two ministry veterans. One church: yours.
Most consultants visit for a day, hand you a report, and leave you with a to-do list. We do the opposite.
We travel by RV to churches that use ChurchApps — or want to get serious about using it. When a church invites us, we park onsite (or nearby), plug in, and go to work as part of your team for at least two months. Long enough to actually understand your church. Long enough to build systems, not just recommend them. Long enough to train your people until the systems run without us.
Then we drive away — and everything we built keeps working, because that was the point all along.
Eight churches and counting
From New Hampshire to Florida to Wyoming — churches of every size have hosted a residency. Tap a pin to scroll through photos from our time there.
References from these churches are available on request.
Think your church could be next?
Apply for a ResidencyHow a residency serves your church
Fresh eyes on everything
When you serve at the same church year after year, things go unnoticed. We walk your entire Sunday as a first-time guest would — parking, signage, welcome, kids check-in, service, follow-up — and give you honest, kind, specific feedback on what visitors are actually experiencing. Plus a complete NextGen evaluation: curriculum, classrooms, safety systems, and your volunteer pipeline.
The full ChurchApps toolkit, implemented end to end
Not a demo. Not a webinar. We set it up, load your data, and train your people:
- Your church database (B1) — records migrated, attendance, groups, forms & workflows
- Secure children's check-in — stations, printers, guardian matching, physically installed
- Online giving — set up, tested, connected to your bookkeeping
- Service planning & volunteer scheduling — the end of the weekly scramble
- Your mobile app — launched with push notifications, plus a real adoption push
- Your website — built or rebuilt, maintainable by your own people
- Lessons.church — free curriculum scheduled for every classroom
- FreePlay — classroom TVs that play the right lesson automatically
- FreeShow — free worship presentation, with your operators trained
The physical work that makes technology stick
Hanging TVs. Building check-in stations. Running cables. Untangling the sound booth. Most churches don't lack ideas — they lack hands. We bring the labor and the know-how; your church purchases any materials. The software is free. Always.
Your people, poured into
We train staff and key volunteers on everything we build, and we leave written processes behind so it all survives after our taillights disappear. Because we've lived the discouragement that comes with local church ministry, sometimes the most valuable thing we do is simply sit with your leaders and remind them they're not alone. And after we leave — your church keeps a direct line to us for remote support.
Ready for two months of momentum?
Apply for a ResidencyHere's the part people don't believe
The residency is free. The software is free. Our time is free.
Your church provides exactly one thing: a place for our 26-foot RV to live while we serve you. That means either:
- A flat spot on your property (35 feet is comfortable) with a 30-amp hookup and access to water — a sewer cleanout on the property is a nice bonus, but a nearby dump station works fine
- Or a site at a nearby RV park or campground, covered by the church
- Or a member's land with the same hookups
If you take on physical projects with us — TVs, check-in stations, cabling — the church purchases the materials. We supply everything else.
A plug and a spigot. That's the whole ask.
Apply for a ResidencyWhy would anyone do this for free?
Fair question. Here's the honest answer.
ChurchApps is a nonprofit, and we volunteer with the team. We onboard churches remotely every single day — but software gets better when the people behind it live inside real church life. Every residency teaches us how these tools perform in actual ministry: what works, what confuses volunteers, what a rural church of 80 needs that a suburban church of 800 doesn't.
What we learn at your church directly shapes tools used by thousands of churches. You're not receiving charity — you're partnering with us to make ministry software better for the whole Church. That's the trade, and both sides win.
Micheal & Kari Byrd
Micheal and Kari have spent more than twenty-five years serving in local churches of every size, with a deep focus on NextGen ministry. Their experience helped shape the children's ministry systems inside ChurchApps that now save churches around the world money and man-hours every week.
Today they spend much of the year on the road as ministry resource partners with ChurchApps — onboarding churches online most days, and serving onsite through the residency when the invitation, the region, and the season line up.
They don't need hand-holding, office space, or housing. They need a senior minister who will point them at the work and trust them to run — and a 30-amp plug.
The churches where residencies work best
We're a great fit for churches that are ready to invest in getting better — not necessarily churches with big budgets, but churches with the will to change what isn't working.
The senior minister champions it
We work best alongside a senior minister who treats us like trusted staff. We take direction, we give honest counsel, and we don't need managing.
The church is ready to act
Two months goes fast. Churches that get the most from a residency come in with real problems they genuinely want solved.
Leadership is on board
Elders and key leaders knowing why we're there — and what it costs (almost nothing) — makes everything smoother. Download the one-page overview (PDF) written just for your board →
Sound like your church?
Apply for a ResidencyInvite us to your church
We read every application personally. Because we can only serve a few churches each year, saying “yes” to one means saying “not yet” to others — so tell us honestly where your church is and what you dream of getting done.
Step 1
When can we come to your area?
We travel in an RV, which makes us honest about weather. We head home every year from December 1 to mid-January, we can't park anywhere that drops below freezing, and we'd rather not melt in July or dodge hurricanes on the coast in September.
Step 2
Tell us about your church
Can't wait? Email mike@churchapps.org and tell us about your church.