Church Health Solutions Preferred Partners

A Series of Improbable Events

By: Pastor Bill Lorman

In July of 2021, I was a Director at Chick-fil-A while my wife was a Children’s pastor at a local church. Additionally, we were leading a small group fellowship in our home twice a month and life was good! Then, in August, I got word that a church in our area had an abrupt pastoral resignation. At the time, it had been about 12 years since I was last in ministry. After receiving a call from one of the elders asking if I would be interested in filling the pulpit until the church was in a position to have some stability, I immediately accepted the offer to help. 

Considering I didn’t have any responsibilities on Sunday mornings as Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays, my wife and I agreed to serve and help in any way possible.

When the previous pastor resigned from the position, he really left the church in a very bad position. While leading the church, he had control of all the digital assets (website, social media, online advertising, etc.), including exclusive control and access to all the usernames and passwords for all the churches’ virtual accounts.

Once I began serving as pastor, we were left with around 25 members on Sunday mornings with most of them being senior citizens. Knowing the church had a growing online social presence, which we needed to attract young families, new members and those in the community who were looking for a church to call home, I knew it was time to implement numerous changes to help revamp the church. It was at this point that I was introduced to Charles Kaelin and his marketing agency, Summit 7 Agency. Despite out relatively small budget to help us rebuild our website, social following, and help us with S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimization), Charles and his team were more concerned with helping us solve our problems and position us for success going forward regardless of what we had to offer for a budget to help resolve these issues.

After several very fruitful discussions, we were ready to move forward with Charles’ team. Along the way we realized the previous pastor still had all the existing login information pertaining to all our virtual assets and social media platforms. At the time, we were about to lose all the SEO value we had gained from the past 20+ years pertaining to our domain name among numerous other assets we thought we wouldn’t have an opportunity to recover while also trying to accept the fact we would have to start completely over regarding our virtual assets. However, Charles told me he has worked with more than 500+ clients and he not only didn’t panic with the mess we handed his team, he took our problems head on while instilling confidence the problems could be handled.

Whenever we needed Charles (or access to his team), he always seemed ready to help us answer any questions or with whatever we needed. On one occasion he took my call while on ladder hanging Christmas lights and gave us the time we needed for help. On a second occasion, minutes before a major tornado would imminently strike close to his home, he personally reached out to me that a particular issue had been resolved on our new website before we were set to go live in a few days. If you can find people who are willing to serve at this level, they are few and far between. Could not have been more thankful or impressed with his effort to help position us to succeed. 

As my wife and I came to the realization that Peninsula Community Church would become our full-time home, we also decided to follow Charles’ advice to go all-in on our website and social media platforms to help us spread the word about our church and about God. Even with an effective social following, we were sending prospective visitors and members to a dull, outdate website. However, Charles and his team changed this reality and gave our church a platform that would not only have a chance to attract new/younger membership, but would be positioned to work with our social media platforms while having the best chance to be found on search engines. Not only did we have a new website we could be proud of, we would finally have a chance to establish credibility with potential new membership while significantly upgrading the experiencing for our existing membership.

Once the new website had been completed, Charles then voluntarily offered additional advice on how to us best use the new platform along with several strategies to help us grow. Following the advice offered to our team, I began sending out numerous Facebook invitations and offered people the opportunity to visit our new website. About a week ago I received a FB message from an old work acquaintance who decided to give a FB page “Like” and then decided to watch the previous weeks Sunday service. This individual then proceeded to message me to thank us for posting our previous sermon, but then something very interesting happened. He then proceeded to open up to me about that he had previously contemplated taking his own life. However, after listening to a the message centered around hope, he believed someone still cared for him and has now decided to take a different direction in life. Praise God!!! When I read his message, it struck me very hard and I was deeply touched at the possibility we had possibly helped to save someone’s life. You just never know what God might use your social presence to accomplish and this is just another example of how he works in mysterious ways.

To conclude, I have come to value Charles, his team and my friendship with him. On behalf of myself and our entire church staff, please allow to place our stamp of approval on both Charles Kaelin and his entire Summit 7 Agency team. We couldn’t be more happy with the new website, the effective marketing strategies he offered to our team and the rebranding consulting his team successfully implemented to help position our church to successfully begin reaching new and younger members. We 100% recommend Summit 7 Agency to any church regardless of size or if you’re just getting started. Please consider reaching out to them with any questions relating to websites, hosting, branding, marketingk, etc.

Bill Lorman

Pastor of Peninsula Community Church

Selbyville, Delaware