An update on what I've been building. PewHQ has grown into one modern system for the whole church — a member app people actually open, a Bible in seven languages, giving with fees at cost, and AI that does the busywork. Here's the tour.
Most churches run on a stack of five tools that don’t talk to each other: one for the directory, one for giving, a group-texting app, a website builder, and a spreadsheet holding it all together. Every one is a login, a bill, and a place your data can drift out of sync.
I’ve been building PewHQ to be the opposite of that — the whole back office and the front door, built to work as one. A lot has shipped recently, so instead of a changelog, here’s a walk through what it can actually do.
A member app your congregation actually opens
The back office only matters if your people ever see the front door. PewHQ includes a real member app — installable on a phone like any other app, no app store required — where members give, join groups, RSVP to events, request prayer, pledge to a campaign, confirm their serving slot, and watch the service live.
Two parts I’m especially happy with:
A built-in Bible that works fully offline once downloaded, with search, highlights, notes, and bookmarks that sync across devices. You can read two translations side by side to compare them verse by verse — and the two columns can even be in different languages. On a phone, you turn the page with a swipe, like a real book. Reading plans (a book, the Gospels, the whole Bible in a year) keep your place.
Seven languages, end to end. The entire member experience and the staff dashboard are available in English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Portuguese. Each person picks their own, and the Bible switches to a matching translation automatically. For a lot of congregations that’s not a nice-to-have — it’s the difference between a member app that gets used and one that doesn’t.
AI that does real work — not a chatbot bolted on
I didn’t want “AI” to mean a chat box in the corner. In PewHQ it does specific, useful jobs:
Social posts, drafted for you. Pick a sermon or an upcoming event (or start from scratch) and PewHQ writes a ready-to-post caption — hashtags and an image idea included — that you tidy up and post to Facebook, Instagram, or X. Your church’s social handles live in settings so they’re always on hand.
Ask your data in plain English. Type “How many people joined this year?” or “Who visited three times but isn’t in a group yet?” and get an answer from your own records. It only ever reads your data, and only your church’s.
A hand with the tedious stuff — mapping messy spreadsheet columns on import, drafting a warm first-time-guest follow-up, suggesting fund matches.
The rule underneath all of it: AI proposes, deterministic code disposes. The AI reads intent and drafts language. It never sums money, never has the final say on a merge, and never writes to your database on its own. People and money are too important to hand to a model’s confidence.
Giving, with genuine fund accounting
Giving is the part that has to be right to the penny, so it gets the most care. Members give online — one-time or recurring — and can cover the processing fee so your church receives the full amount. You can also count the offering plate: record a batch of cash and checks, and everything, online and in-person, flows into your totals and each giver’s year-end tax statement.
Behind it is real fund accounting — funds, budget-vs-actual, fund transfers, and a reimbursement (accounts-payable) flow — so you’re not reconciling your church software against a separate accounting tool by hand. And the economics are the whole point: processing is passed through at cost (~2.2% on cards, ~0.8% on bank transfers, no platform markup), with money settling straight into your church’s own account through Stripe.
The communications your church actually sends
All in one place: email to everyone or a filtered group, two-way SMS with an inbox, urgent push alerts, pinned announcements, designed newsletters, and church chat groups. Plus the outward-facing front door — a clean one-page website builder (service times, sermons, events, a give button), forms and paid registration for events and sign-ups, and a sermon archive with a podcast feed and live streaming.
Bring your existing data in — reversibly
You shouldn’t have to start from an empty database. PewHQ imports your people, giving history, group membership, and attendance from a spreadsheet, lines up the columns with a little AI help, and shows you a full preview before anything saves. Re-run the same file and it won’t create duplicates; if anything looks off, one click undoes exactly what that import added. It’s a feature, not a services engagement.
Built to be trusted
Some of the most important work never makes a good screenshot: strict tenant isolation so one church’s data can never touch another’s, payment webhooks verified against the exact account they came from, careful handling of money formats and edge cases, and a human in the loop for anything that touches people or funds. That’s the plumbing that decides whether a church can trust the system with its congregation and its offering — and it’s the whole job.
What’s next
Connected social publishing — posting straight to your linked Facebook and Instagram pages — is built and waiting on app review. On the giving side, a treasurer-grade reconciliation report is next: a clean, printable “here’s your data, matched to the cent.”
PewHQ is in early access. If you’re tired of paying enterprise prices for software nobody enjoys — and stitching together five of them — join the waitlist at pewhq.com. I’d love to have your church among the first.