Church Embraces Hobnob to Connect Amidst Covid-19

Pastor Rizz Hillner and his wife Zoe moved to Hawaii in 2017 with their two young children to plant a new church. Originally from Carpenteria, California they felt called to move to Honolulu and plant a church as part of the Reality Family of churches.

Things started out small and the initial group of volunteers who came alongside them were pretty easy to manage in a single group text. But even that got overwhelming quickly and group text limits made it hard to communicate with everyone at once.

At some point, he found himself spending hours managing his staff, leaders and volunteers through multiple text threads, emails, direct messages and more. “It was frustrating and confusing to not have everything in one place”, says Rizz.

As they got bigger, hosting public events because just one more thing to manage. Invites were sent through multiple methods and it was hard to figure out simple things like how many people were coming or how much food they should buy.

Rizz learned about Hobnob through word of mouth and created his first event for a Reality Honolulu Camping Trip. It was a success! Over 44 people attended and everyone knew all the details for the event. If someone had a question, they could just ask in the event chat and anyone on the event could answer. Plus anyone who attended could easily share photos of the camping trip!

\"The — The first Reality Honolulu camping trip at Malaekana on Oahu, Hawaii

Now, Reality Honolulu hosts all their events on Hobnob and uses the Spaces feature to communicate with each of the different groups in the church. Each group or ministry has its own Space where they can chat throughout the week, post important announcements and updates or create their own events limited to the members of each group. Reflecting back, “We realized it was working when there were many people actively participating in events and conversations”. For the first time, there was only one place to go to find out about an upcoming men’s event and post to everyone that someone lost their water bottle.

\”Hobnob has been an essential tool to create the community we desire\”, says Rizz.

Life is simpler with Hobnob as Reality Honolulu’s all-in-one solution to building community. A ministry leader can easily create their own events and invite everyone without needing to personally have everyone’s contact information. A church attendee feels personally invited to Worship Night instead of it just being an announcement to everyone on Sunday. And as a pastor, Rizz can focus on the vision for the church and his weekly sermons instead of doing so much admin.