Forest Hill Church: Growth Blueprint
A communications audit, a sharpened message, and a 12-month plan to turn the reach Forest Hill already has into real next steps. Prepared by Ministry Builders for greater Charlotte.
Bringing Heaven to Greater Charlotte, One Person at a Time.
Who this is for
Everything here serves one person: the spiritually open but unconnected guest in greater Charlotte, often 25 to 45, busy, and one clear next step away from showing up on a Sunday. Forest Hill is the guide. The guest is the hero. The shared villain is disconnection, intimidation, and no obvious next step. Two more audiences ride along: the Spanish-speaking community served by Casa Viva and South Boulevard, and the members and leaders already moving along the discipleship pathway.
How to read this blueprint
Three beats: what we audited, what we recommend, and what happens next.
01 What we audited
An honest read on where Forest Hill stands today: the data, the channels, the website, the platform stack, and the team. The headline gap is an owned audience of 65,000 contacts with only about 18,000 actually reachable.
- The owned-audience gap, named as Priority One
- Website and findability, including the missing guest front door
- Social reach without a spine, scored channel by channel
- Team and creative capacity, strong horsepower limited by workflow
02 What we recommend
A message a first-timer can step into, plus the strategy and systems that make the next step obvious. The guest is the hero. Forest Hill is the guide.
- A StoryBrand message and a Warm, Rooted, Sending brand voice for all five campuses
- Three flywheels: Reach, Assimilation, and Leadership
- Systems that connect: CCB, email, text, social, and an app
- Custom AI workflows and one unified website
03 What happens next
The audit and blueprint become a calendar: a quarter-by-quarter plan, clear roles, the engagement packages, and a Blueprint Review where Forest Hill decides.
- A 12-month plan seasoned to the August 26 social consolidation, Easter, and Christmas
- Three Ministry Builders engagement packages and the phase ladder
- The Blueprint Review meeting, roughly two weeks out
The 12-month plan at a glance
The year moves in four phases. Forest Hill stays the hero: your voice, your people, your ministry. Ministry Builders is the guide: the systems, builds, and heavy technical lift.
| Phase | Focus | When |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | Get the database, consent, and tracking right. Unified website rebuild plus brand. | Q1 (Jul to Sep 2026) |
| Engine | Turn on weekly content and capture: list-building, the lifecycle engine, and the central content engine live before the August 26 consolidation. | Q1, ongoing monthly |
| Scale | Social consolidation and content production: merge accounts, weekly clips, and TikTok, so consolidation grows reach instead of shrinking it. | Q1 to Q3 |
| Advanced | Custom AI workflows plus church-app discovery and scoping. A production app build is scoped and quoted separately. | Q4 (Apr to Jun 2027) |
The Communications Audit
Website scorecard
| Dimension | Score | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Brand & Messaging | 68 | Medium |
| Visitor Journey / CRO | 56 | High |
| Search Visibility | 44 | Critical |
| Social & Cross-Channel | 55 | High |
| Technical & Performance | 74 | Strength |
| Accessibility | 64 | Medium |
00 · The Bottom Line
Where Forest Hill stands today.
Forest Hill has the hard parts handled: a clear mission, five campuses, a logical next-steps ladder, an active social following, a deep in-house creative team, and a fast, secure website. What's missing is the connective tissue: the front door for guests, the metadata that makes you findable, and the integrations that tie a ~65,000-person database and an 18K-plus social audience back to the place they take a next step.
What's costing the most
1 · An audience you can't fully reach. Church Community Builder holds roughly 65,000 contacts; only about 18,000 live in Mailchimp, and the two systems don't talk. You hold ~65,000 phone numbers with unclear texting permissions. You reach people at record numbers but can only disciple the ones you can contact. This is the gap your team named as priority one.
2 · No front door for guests. /plan-your-visit, /next-steps, and /im-new all 404. The single most important page a church can own does not exist.
3 · Invisible to search and shares. Zero meta descriptions and zero Open Graph tags site-wide, so every shared link renders as bare text and Google can't read your service times.
4 · Social reach without a spine, and you're already fixing it. 14+ related accounts (~18K combined followers across all channels) and a sermon-rich YouTube, none linked from the website. An official TikTok at @foresthillchurch exists but is disconnected from the site and not yet running as the short-form engine. You're sunsetting the campus Instagram accounts by August 26, the right call. Put a central content engine behind that move so consolidation grows reach instead of shrinking it.
01 · The Owned-Audience Gap · Priority One
65,000 contacts, only 18,000 reachable. From the June 2 working session: your team named building a reachable, owned audience as the single most important gap, and the numbers explain why.
Critical CCB and Mailchimp don't talk: most of your people are unreachable by email
Church Community Builder holds roughly 65,000 contacts. Mailchimp holds about 18,000. There is no integration between them, so when someone takes a next step in CCB they never flow into the list you email. Roughly 72% of the people you know are invisible to your primary nurture channel.
Why it matters: you cannot disciple, invite back, or re-engage someone you cannot contact. Every event, series, and giving campaign launches to a quarter of your real audience.
Fix: Build a one-way sync from CCB to Mailchimp (or move email into a platform that integrates with CCB natively), then run a re-permission and welcome flow to safely activate the gap between 18K and 65K.
High ~65,000 phone numbers, unclear texting permissions
You have roughly 65,000 phone numbers and Growth Method for texting, but the team is not sure which numbers are opted in. A large, high-intent channel sits idle behind a compliance question.
Fix: Audit consent status, then run a resource-led opt-in (a series devotional or reading plan, not a direct ask) to rebuild a clean, permissioned SMS list, the same play that grew a comparable church list from ~1.5K to 10K.
Medium Engagement isn't tracked well, and the seat-back QR codes go nowhere measurable
The team flagged that response is "not tracked very well currently." QR codes on seat backs and sermon-series scripture print pieces drive action, but no analytics loop tells you what's working across Activate, Easter, Next Gen Summer, Awaken, and Christmas.
Fix: Route every QR and print CTA through a tracked short link to a campaign landing page, with the opt-in writing straight back to CCB so print finally becomes measurable.
02 · Website & Communications
A fast site that is hard to find and hard to act on. The headline findings driving the 62/100.
Critical No "Plan a Visit / What to Expect" page
Checks for /plan-your-visit, /next-steps, /im-new, and /visit all returned 404. The nervous first-timer (parking, kids, dress, service length) has nowhere to land.
Fix: Build one flagship visit page (60-sec what-to-expect video, parking, kids check-in, "come as you are," soft "let us know you're coming" form) and make it the primary CTA site-wide.
Critical No meta descriptions, Open Graph, or structured data, anywhere
Homepage, Give, and Connect ship with no meta description and no OG/Twitter tags, so shared links look broken and search snippets are scraped. There's zero Church/LocalBusiness schema, so Google can't surface service times, address, or events.
Telling detail: the homepage title is just "Forest Hill Church", no city, no keywords, even though subpages prove a title template exists.
Fix: Add OG + Twitter tags and a branded share image site-wide; write meta descriptions for the top 15 pages; add per-campus schema with service hours.
High Thin content engine & pinch-zoom disabled
Only 3 blog posts are indexed (vs. roughly 440 events), with no sermon recaps feeding search or social. The mobile viewport sets user-scalable=0, a WCAG 1.4.4 failure that blocks zoom for low-vision guests, pointed given the Disability Inclusion ministry.
Fix: Publish a weekly sermon recap + transcript page (50+ assets/yr at near-zero cost); change the viewport to allow zoom.
Strength Fast, secure, well-structured
~0.13s time-to-first-byte (edge-cached on Flywheel), HTTPS enforced, valid sitemap, all images carry alt text, and a memorable mission line: "Bringing Heaven to Greater Charlotte, One Person at a Time."
03 · Technology & Platform Stack
The tools running Forest Hill, confirmed by the team. The first three groups were fingerprinted from page source, headers, and DNS; the groups marked "confirmed in session" come from your team on June 2. The headline: a capable but sprawling, loosely-integrated estate of 20-plus tools, and still no church app.
CMS & Build
- WordPress 7.0 (CMS)
- Salient (premium theme, ThemeNectar)
- WPBakery (page builder, js_composer)
- EventON (events calendar, roughly 440 events)
Hosting & Delivery
- Flywheel (managed WP hosting)
- Fastly (CDN / edge cache)
- AWS Route 53 (DNS)
- Apache (campus microsites, separate)
Giving & ChMS
- Pushpay (online giving)
- FreeWill (planned / estate giving)
- Church Community Builder (ChMS, foresthill.ccbchurch.com)
- fhcnextsteps.com (next-steps funnel)
Email & Texting Confirmed in session
- Mailchimp (email, ~18K of ~65K)
- Growth Method (texting, ~65K numbers)
- Microsoft 365 / Outlook (staff email)
- Focus Growth (web forms)
Ops & Project Mgmt Confirmed in session
- Planning Center (services / people)
- Monday.com (project management)
- Microsoft Teams (staff chat)
- eSpace (facilities scheduling)
- Zoom (video meetings)
Data, Files & Finance Confirmed in session
- Church Community Builder (ChMS, ~65K)
- Box (file sharing)
- Airtable (databases)
- QuickBooks + Ramp (accounting / cards)
- Proliant (HR / payroll)
Creative, Video & AI Confirmed in session
- Canva (design)
- Frame.io (video storage / review)
- Vimeo (video hosting)
- Carrd (micro-sites)
- ChatGPT + Claude Pro (AI, moving to enterprise)
Production & AVL Confirmed in session
- Resi to Sardius Media (streaming, transitioning)
- AVL, all 5 campuses (each campus has a PD)
- YouTube (live + sermon archive)
- Google Maps, Jitsi (site embeds)
Keep, integrate, or replace: the verdict
No tool is the problem on its own. The problem is the seams: CCB doesn't sync to Mailchimp, the 65K text list isn't permission-clean, response isn't tracked, and there's no church app to give members one place to give, watch, read, and take a next step. The highest-leverage technical investment is integration, not replacement.
| Verdict | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Keep | Pushpay + FreeWill + Church Community Builder (giving and membership backbone), Planning Center, Microsoft 365, Teams. A credible, widely-used church stack in good shape. |
| Integrate | CCB to Mailchimp sync (priority one), the ~65K Growth Method text list (permission-clean it), tracked response across QR and print. Strong systems that aren't wired together: the data backbone is solid but siloed. |
| Replace / consolidate | The 12-plus separate campus and school domains splintering SEO and brand, the dead blog.foresthill.org subdomain, and the gap of "no church app" to fill. |
Critical Every campus runs its own separate website domain
Beyond foresthill.org, there are at least five standalone campus sites (fhcsouthpark.com, fhcballantyne.com, fhcfortmill.com, fhcwaxhaw.com, fhcsouthblvd.com), plus two school domains (foresthillacademy.org, preschoolatfhc.org), a dead blog.foresthill.org subdomain that no longer resolves, an app subdomain (w.foresthill.org), and fhcnextsteps.com. These campus sites are on separate Apache hosting, not the main Flywheel install.
Why it matters: a dozen+ domains means duplicated maintenance, splintered SEO authority, inconsistent branding/security, and a confusing path for guests, the same fragmentation seen in the social accounts, now at the domain level.
Fix: Decide deliberately: either consolidate campuses into foresthill.org/locations/<campus> on one platform (best for SEO + brand), or, if local autonomy is the goal, enforce a shared theme, security baseline, and analytics across every property. Audit which domains are still maintained vs. abandoned.
Medium Front-end weight from the page builder
The Salient + WPBakery + EventON combination loads 27 external scripts and 21 stylesheets. TTFB is excellent, but this much render-blocking CSS/JS drags Core Web Vitals (LCP/INP) on mobile.
Fix: Add a caching/optimization layer (asset combination, critical-CSS, deferred JS), prune unused plugins, and lazy-load below-the-fold media.
Strength A mature, well-integrated giving & data backbone
Pushpay + FreeWill + Church Community Builder is a credible, widely-used church technology stack. The financial and membership infrastructure is in good shape, and Planning Center, Microsoft 365, and Teams indicate a real internal operation. The session caveat: these strong systems aren't wired together, so the data backbone is solid but siloed. Fix the connectors and this becomes a real advantage.
04 · Social Channels, Scored Individually
14+ related accounts, ~18K combined reach, no main account holding them together. Each account scored on reach, posting cadence, content quality, brand consistency, and strategic role: a strong main Instagram, fragmented campus duplicates, an underleveraged YouTube, a neglected Facebook, an official but disconnected TikTok, and a dead blog subdomain. From the session: you're sunsetting the campus Instagram accounts by August 26 (youth accounts stay separate), so read the campus scores below as "what we're consolidating away from."
| Score | Channel | Role | Reach | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 74 | IG @foresthillchurch | Main org account, the hub | ~7,600 followers, ~1,780 posts, active | Strength: largest audience, consistent posting, clear brand. Gap: not linked from the website; limited Reels/short-form play. |
| 66 | IG @foresthillsouthpark | South Park campus | ~2,980, mid cadence | Strength: healthiest campus account. Gap: overlaps heavily with the main feed. |
| 62 | IG @foresthillfortmill | Fort Mill campus | ~1,450, mid cadence | Strength: active local presence. Gap: reposts org content; no clear campus voice. |
| 60 | IG @foresthill_waxhaw | Waxhaw campus | ~1,390, mid cadence | Strength: steady engagement. Gap: handle uses an underscore: inconsistent naming hurts discoverability. |
| 55 | IG @foresthillsouthboulevard | South Blvd (bilingual) | ~810, low cadence | Gap: smallest reach despite serving a distinct Spanish-speaking community; little Spanish-language content. Opportunity: own the underserved bilingual niche. |
| 58 | IG @foresthillballantyne | Ballantyne campus | ~1,000, mid cadence | Strength: established presence, linked from the campus microsite. Gap: not linked from foresthill.org; duplicates the main feed and adds to the sprawl being consolidated. |
| 58 | YT Forest Hill Church | Main YouTube, sermons | Weekly uploads, full sermons, subs n/a* | Strength: consistent full-message library (Pastor Doc Hanberry series). Gap: long-form only, no Shorts/clips; not embedded into indexable on-site sermon pages. |
| 48 | FB /FHCcharlotte | Main Facebook page | ~1,100, low cadence, older demo | Gap: only ~1.1K followers on the main page badly underperforms the Instagram hub and the church's size. |
| 45 | FB campus pages x5+ | SouthPark, Ballantyne, SouthBlvd, Eastland, Preschool | 5+ pages, fragmented reach, mixed upkeep | Gap: reach split across many small pages with inconsistent naming and upkeep; dilutes brand and confuses search. |
| 40 | YT @ForestHillFortMill | Fort Mill campus YouTube | Low volume, small reach | Gap: a second YouTube channel splits sermon views and subscribers from the main channel for little gain. |
| 25 | blog.foresthill.org | Legacy blog subdomain (dead) | Dead subdomain, SEO liability | Gap: the subdomain no longer resolves (NXDOMAIN), yet legacy blog and sermon content tied to former leadership can still surface in search. A dangling subdomain plus orphaned legacy URLs is a trust and SEO liability until redirected and cleaned up. |
| 20 | TT @foresthillchurch | Official TikTok, "Forest Hill | Church in CLT" | Exists, disconnected from site, under-leveraged | Critical gap: the official @foresthillchurch TikTok is small, not linked from the website, and not running as the short-form engine, while third-party content (including critical/"leaving" themes tied to the leadership transition) shapes the narrative. The opportunity is activation and integration, not account creation. Follower and video counts to confirm on the live profile. |
| 55 | Portfolio average | Weighted across all channels | ~18K total reach, 14+ accounts, 0 on-site links | Strong raw audience, weak architecture. The whole is worth less than its parts because nothing connects: no unifying content engine, no website cross-links, a TikTok left disconnected, reach fragmented across duplicate campus accounts. Combined reach is an approximate cross-channel figure (Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, blog), not an Instagram-only sum. |
On the numbers: follower/post counts above are approximate, pulled from public search snippets and profile previews (June 2, 2026, with the Ballantyne and TikTok lines refreshed June 21, 2026), not from platform APIs. Treat them as directional. YouTube subscriber/view totals (*) weren't retrievable via search; confirm in the channel dashboard. Verifying exact figures in Meta Business Suite / YouTube Studio is a recommended first step.
05 · What the Social Audit Reveals
The cross-channel diagnosis.
Critical Shares produce no preview card: word of mouth is being throttled
With no Open Graph tags on the site, every link shared from these accounts (or in a member's group text) renders as a naked URL. The church's strongest growth channel, personal invitation, hits a broken first impression.
Fix: Add OG/Twitter tags + branded share image site-wide. One-time fix, improves every future share from every account.
High Consolidation is the right call. Build the content engine first, before August 26
Six Instagram accounts (the main plus five campus), 5+ Facebook pages, three YouTube channels, inconsistent handle naming (@foresthill_waxhaw vs @foresthillfortmill), and no shared content kit. You've decided to sunset the campus Instagram accounts by August 26, the right call. The risk is collapsing accounts without a content engine to replace the local cadence, which can read as "the church got quieter."
Fix: Stand up a central content engine before the cutover, one weekly asset pack (sermon clip, quote card, invite graphic) the main account runs and campuses amplify via Stories. Standardize handles, migrate followers with a pinned "we've moved" post, and consolidate the duplicate YouTube channel. Keep youth separate, as planned.
High No active short-form layer = invisible to under-30s
The content strategy is long-form sermons + static Instagram posts. There are no consistent Reels/Shorts/TikTok clips, the exact formats reaching the next generation, and where an unmanaged narrative about the church already lives. The official @foresthillchurch TikTok is not yet operating as that engine.
Fix: Cut 3 to 5 vertical clips from each weekend message; confirm ownership of the official @foresthillchurch TikTok, link it from the site, and post the same clips there consistently. Reclaim the narrative and the algorithm.
Medium Website and social are disconnected in both directions
The site doesn't link the socials, and the socials drive to a site with no clear visit CTA. The funnel has no closed loop.
Fix: Add social icons to the site header/footer and an embedded IG feed; set every social bio link to the new Plan-a-Visit page.
06 · Lead Pastor, Scored Separately
Doc Hanberry has almost no digital presence. Following a high-profile founder transition, the lead pastor's public presence carries unusual weight: it's how a wary community re-anchors trust. Right now that presence is real but thin and disconnected from the church's own properties.
Doc Hanberry, Lead Pastor
Primary platform: Instagram @dochanberry
"Redeemed by Jesus, husband, daddy, Lead Pastor @foresthillchurch." (from his Instagram bio)
Score breakdown
- Reach: 45
- Platform spread: 30
- Discoverability: 35
- Content cadence: 50
- Pulpit / video: 72
- Brand alignment: 62
Critical The church's own leadership page doesn't link him, or anyone
The leadership page lists 20 staff (Doc Hanberry, Lead Pastor) with no bios and no social links for any of them. A guest researching "who leads this church" hits a bare list of names. Post-transition, that's a missed trust-building moment.
Fix: Give the lead pastor a real bio block, short story, a sermon embed, and a link to @dochanberry. Do the same for campus pastors.
High Single-platform and under-scaled
His ~2,900 Instagram followers trail the church's main account (~7,600) and the combined ~18K social reach. No personal X/Twitter, TikTok, site, or newsletter was found. For a multi-site lead pastor, the personal "face of the church" channel is smaller than it should be and resting on one platform.
Fix: Treat the lead pastor as a content channel: weekly short-form devotional clips (repurposed to IG Reels + a personal TikTok), cross-promoted from the church accounts to transfer audience to him.
Strength Strong, consistent pulpit presence on video
His sermons are well-represented on the church's YouTube as a recurring, recognizable teaching voice ("Unlikely Heroes," "Faith Over Fear," "Two Masters"). The raw teaching content to fuel a personal-brand engine already exists; it just needs clipping and distribution.
Leadership note: public sources show Forest Hill recently moved through a founder transition (an interim three-pastor structure was referenced before the current model). The live leadership page today lists Doc Hanberry as Lead Pastor, which is treated as the source of truth here. Follower figures are approximate public snapshots as of June 2, 2026. The "Riverland Hills" reference that surfaces in search appears to be a prior or separate role/namesake and should be confirmed, not assumed.
07 · Team & Creative Capacity
You have the team; you are missing the system. From the June 2 session: under Natalie Shepard (Communications & Events Director) there's a real in-house team. That changes the shape of any outside help: the job is to multiply this group with systems and an engine, not replace it.
Design
- Sammie, graphic designer, 4 yrs
- Lilly, graphic designer, 1 yr
- Audrey, creative project mgr, PT
Video & Production
- Tanner, production / editing, 7 yrs
- Trevor, production / editing, new
- John, Production Director, 9 yrs, AVL x5
Social & Comms
- CaliGrace, social contractor, 30 hrs/wk
- Natalie Shepard, Comms & Events Director
- Open role, video production lead, FT
High Output is limited by workflow, not talent
Two designers, two video editors, a 30-hour social contractor, and a part-time creative PM is real horsepower for a five-campus church. The team named a clear path for growth, and the read is that output is limited by workflow, not talent: no central content engine, response that isn't tracked, and tools that don't hand off to each other.
Fix: Wrap the existing team in a repeatable system: one weekly content pipeline (sermon to clips to posts to email to print), a tracked intake on Monday.com, and AI-assisted production (discussion guides and clips from sermon transcripts) so the same people ship multiples of what they ship today. Fill the open video production lead role into that system, not around it.
Medium The weekend has a content gap right where stories belong
The service flow your team walked us through (call to worship, two songs, prayer, straight into Doc's message, response song, then campus-pastor next steps) is clean, but there's no story moment between worship and the message, the highest-conversion piece of content a church produces.
Fix: Build a lightweight story-video pipeline (one baptism / life-change story a month) the production team can run, doubling as next-steps fuel for social, email, and the giving case.
Team note: the snapshot above (names, roles, tenures, and the 30 hrs/wk contractor figure) is from the June 2 working session and should be confirmed at the review. A capacity snapshot to inform how outside support is structured, not an HR record.
08 · Full Account Inventory
Every related property in one place.
| Platform | Handle / Page | Role | ~Reach | Linked on site? | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| @foresthillchurch | Main hub | ~7,600 | No | 74 | |
| @foresthillsouthpark | South Park campus | ~2,980 | No | 66 | |
| @foresthillfortmill | Fort Mill campus | ~1,450 | No | 62 | |
| @foresthill_waxhaw | Waxhaw campus | ~1,390 | No | 60 | |
| @foresthillsouthboulevard | South Blvd (bilingual) | ~810 | No | 55 | |
| @foresthillballantyne | Ballantyne campus | ~1,000 | No | 58 | |
| YouTube | Forest Hill Church | Main sermons | n/a* | Indirect | 58 |
| YouTube | @ForestHillFortMill | Campus (duplicate) | Small | No | 40 |
| YouTube | @FHCMusic | Worship music, South Park | n/a* | No | 38 |
| /FHCcharlotte | Main page | ~1,100 | No | 48 | |
| /ForestHillSouthPark | Campus | Mixed | No | 46 | |
| /ForestHillBallantyne | Campus | Mixed | No | 45 | |
| /ForestHillSouthBlvd | Campus (bilingual) | Mixed | No | 44 | |
| /ForestHillEastland | Casa Viva / Eastland | Mixed | No | 44 | |
| /foresthillpreschool | Preschool | Small | No | 42 | |
| Blog | blog.foresthill.org | Legacy subdomain (no longer resolves) | Low | Subdomain | 25 |
| TikTok | @foresthillchurch | Official, disconnected from site | To confirm | No | 20 |
| Pastor | @dochanberry | Lead Pastor (IG) | ~2,900 | No | 47 |
09 · The Plan
Prioritized roadmap. Sequenced by impact-to-effort, re-ordered after the session. Priority one is the database: turning a 65K audience you can't reach into one you can, in parallel with the August 26 social consolidation you've already scheduled.
First 30 Days · Quick Wins
Reach & stop the leaks
- Sync CCB to Mailchimp and audit the ~65K vs ~18K gap; start a welcome / re-permission flow.
- Audit SMS opt-in status on the ~65K numbers in Growth Method.
- Build the Plan-a-Visit page; make it the site-wide primary CTA and every social bio link.
- Add Open Graph + Twitter tags and a branded share image site-wide.
- Retire or 301-redirect the dead blog.foresthill.org subdomain to /sermons or a content hub, audit Search Console for indexed legacy blog/sermon URLs, re-enable pinch-zoom.
- Pull true numbers from Meta Business Suite + YouTube Studio.
30 to 60 Days · Foundations
Build the engine (before Aug 26)
- Stand up the central content engine before the IG consolidation cutover; migrate campus followers cleanly.
- Cut 3 to 5 vertical clips per sermon; activate and link the existing official @foresthillchurch TikTok.
- Stand up branded /sermons pages (YouTube embed + recap + transcript).
- Route QR + print CTAs through tracked links writing back to CCB.
- Add Church/LocalBusiness + Event schema per campus; standardize handles.
- Give the lead pastor & campus pastors real bios + social links on the site.
60 to 90 Days · Compounding
Tie the funnel together
- Launch the monthly story-video pipeline (the gap between worship and message) as next-steps fuel.
- Build the lead-pastor channel: weekly short-form devotionals, cross-promoted to grow @dochanberry.
- Add an "I'm New" email nurture triggered by the visit form, writing to CCB.
- Scope a church app (give, watch, read, next steps) to close the "no app" gap.
- Add analytics & goal tracking on visit-form, opt-in, and giving conversions.
BrandScript
In every story, the hero is the person being transformed, and the guide is the one who helps them win. Forest Hill is the guide. The guest is the hero. Below is the StoryBrand 7-part script for each of the three people Forest Hill speaks to, anchored to the verbatim mission: "Bringing Heaven to Greater Charlotte, One Person at a Time."
The shared villain
Across all three audiences the antagonist is the same: disconnection, intimidation, and no clear next step. Real spiritual hunger with no obvious on-ramp. A sense that church is judgmental, irrelevant, or "not for me." The nervous first-timer questions about parking, kids, and what to wear. And even once inside, no obvious way to move from guest, to connected, to discipled, to serving. The villain is never another church and never a person. The villain is the friction that keeps people stuck on the outside.
The bigger rival for a person's Sunday is not Elevation, Calvary, or Transformation Church. It is the non-church default: sleeping in, kids' sports, and "spiritual but not religious." Forest Hill's job is to remove friction at every moment and make the next step obvious, warm, and easy.
Audience 1 · The First-Time Guest Primary
The spiritually open but unconnected person in greater Charlotte. Often 25 to 45, suburban, busy, and either "done with church" or never tried it.
1. Character (the hero)
A spiritually open but disconnected person in greater Charlotte, often 25 to 45 and busy, who wants hope, real community, and a faith that fits everyday life, plus a first step they can take without feeling judged or sold to.
2. Problem
- External: They are spiritually hungry but have no obvious on-ramp, and church feels intimidating to even start. There is no clear "Plan a Visit" door.
- Internal: They feel like an outsider, nervous they will not fit in, that someone will corner them, or that they do not belong because they do not have it figured out.
- Philosophical: Everyone deserves a warm, judgment-free first step toward Jesus. Finding faith and belonging should not require a church background.
3. Guide
Empathy: "We have felt lost and unsure too. You do not have to have it figured out to belong here." "You belong here, exactly as you are. No church background required."
Authority:
- Five campuses across greater Charlotte, plus bilingual reach most churches cannot match
- A real discipleship pathway, not just a big-room show
- A deep in-house creative and production team
- Weekly full sermons from Pastor Doc Hanberry, and a logical next-steps ladder already in place
4. Plan (3 steps)
- Plan your visit and know what to expect, so the first step starts with a simple, low-pressure conversation.
- Show up and come as you are, and we will save you a seat.
- Take one next step into community and growth.
5. Call to Action
Direct: "Plan a Visit."
Transitional: Watch a sermon clip or read "What to Expect" before you ever walk in.
6. Success
- They walk in already knowing what to expect, and feel welcomed instead of watched.
- They find a place to belong "right here in your part of Charlotte."
- They stop carrying life alone and take a clear next step into community.
- They grow into the person God made them to be, and help the next person find the same.
7. Failure
- They stay disconnected and keep carrying it alone.
- They never find the hope and family they were made for.
- The spiritual hunger stays unmet because no one ever made the next step obvious.
From: Disconnected, intimidated, and unsure where to start. To: Welcomed exactly as they are, with a clear next step and a place to belong.
Audience 2 · The Spanish-Speaking Community Casa Viva / South Boulevard
The underserved Spanish-speaking community served by Casa Viva (Eastland) and the bilingual South Boulevard campus, an audience Forest Hill is uniquely positioned to reach.
1. Character (the hero)
A Spanish-speaking person or family in greater Charlotte who wants hope, real community, and a spiritual home where their language and culture are honored, not an afterthought.
2. Problem
- External: Few churches offer a genuine Spanish-language home, and little Spanish-language content exists to even find one. [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: Casa Viva service times, languages offered, and on-ramp specifics]
- Internal: They feel overlooked and unsure whether a church is truly "for us," or whether they will be a guest in someone else's house.
- Philosophical: A Spanish-speaking family should be able to belong fully, in their own language, not pushed to the margins of an English-first church.
3. Guide
Empathy: You belong here, exactly as you are, in your language and your culture. You do not have to have it figured out to belong.
Authority:
- A dedicated bilingual congregation at South Boulevard and Casa Viva (Eastland)
- Bilingual reach most Charlotte churches cannot match
- The same discipleship pathway and creative team behind every campus
- A multisite church planted in Charlotte for the long haul
4. Plan (3 steps)
- Start a simple conversation: plan your visit to Casa Viva or South Boulevard and know what to expect, in your language.
- Come as you are, with your family, and we will save you a seat.
- Take one next step into a bilingual community where you can belong, grow, and lead.
5. Call to Action
Direct: "Plan a Visit." [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: preferred Spanish-language CTA wording, e.g. "Planifica tu visita"]
Transitional: Watch a Spanish-language welcome or message clip before you visit.
6. Success
- They find a spiritual home that speaks their language and honors their culture.
- Their whole family belongs, grows, and serves together.
- An underserved community becomes a thriving, disciple-making one.
7. Failure
- They stay overlooked, with no church that feels truly "for us."
- A community ready to be reached stays disconnected for lack of a clear door.
- They carry life alone, without the family they were made for.
From: Overlooked and unsure a church is for them. To: Fully home in their own language, belonging and multiplying.
Audience 3 · The Member & Leader Discipleship pathway
Members, families, leaders, and volunteers already inside Forest Hill who are moving along the discipleship pathway from connected, to discipled, to serving, to leading.
1. Character (the hero)
A member, family, or volunteer at Forest Hill who wants to grow as a disciple, find a real next step, and be equipped and released to help the next person, not just attend.
2. Problem
- External: Even inside, the next step is not always obvious. People do not know how to move from guest, to group, to serving, to leading.
- Internal: They want to matter and to multiply, but can feel stuck at "attender" and unsure they are equipped to lead.
- Philosophical: Church should be discipleship, not just attendance. Every person should be equipped and released, and the win is a changed life, not a headcount.
3. Guide
Empathy: Growth is a journey, and you are not meant to do it alone. We will help you take the next step and then equip you to help someone else.
Authority:
- A real, defined discipleship pathway from first visit to leading
- A Next Steps team owning the path from guest to connected [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: confirm Next Steps leadership name, e.g. Christina Sloat, against June 2 session notes]
- A sending culture: disciples who multiply, people equipped and released
- Groups, serving teams, and leadership development across every campus
4. Plan (3 steps)
- Start the conversation: take one clear next step and tell us where you are on the journey.
- Get into a group and onto a serving team, so growth happens in community.
- Be equipped and released to lead, and help the next person find the same.
5. Call to Action
Direct: "Take your next step."
Transitional: Explore groups, serving teams, or a leadership track before you commit.
6. Success
- They move from attender to connected, discipled, serving, and leading.
- Baptisms and group involvement grow as next steps become clear and tracked.
- They become a disciple who makes disciples, multiplying the mission.
7. Failure
- They stall at attendance, growth quietly plateaus.
- Leaders go unidentified and unequipped, so the mission cannot multiply.
- The pathway exists but, with no clear next step surfaced, people never walk it.
From: A faithful attender, unsure of the next step. To: An equipped, sent disciple who multiplies the mission.
Messaging
One message, said the same way every time. When the message is clear, the nervous first-timer knows why to come and what happens next. Your mission is already the anchor: "Bringing Heaven to Greater Charlotte, One Person at a Time." Everything below serves that one sentence. The guest is the hero. Forest Hill is the guide. The shared villain is disconnection, intimidation, and the missing next step.
How to use this tab
The One-Liner is what anyone on the team can say in under 30 seconds when someone asks "what is Forest Hill?" The PEACE Sound Bites are the longer talking points for a campaign, a stage moment, or a landing page. The Brand Voice keeps all of it sounding like Forest Hill across all five campuses.
The One-Liner, by audience
Problem, then a place to go, then the outcome. Plain enough that a friend could repeat it. Each one passes the grunt test: a stranger gets what Forest Hill does after hearing it once.
The first-time guest Primary
So many people in greater Charlotte feel disconnected and unsure where to start with faith. Forest Hill is a place to come as you are, find a clear next step, and belong. You can stop carrying life alone and grow into the person God made you to be.
The Spanish-speaking community Secondary
Many families on the south side of Charlotte want a church that welcomes them in their own language. Casa Viva at South Boulevard is a place to worship, belong, and take a next step in Spanish, no church background required. You can find a real spiritual home, right here, exactly as you are.
Members and leaders Pathway
A lot of people come to church to be filled, then stall out in the seats. Forest Hill gives you a clear path from connected, to a group, to serving, to leading. You can stop coasting and start multiplying, helping the next person find what you found.
Confirm The Casa Viva / South Boulevard one-liner is written in English here for the package. The Spanish-language version and the exact ministry name shown to the public should be confirmed with the campus team. [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: confirmed Spanish-language one-liner and the public-facing name for the bilingual congregation]
PEACE Sound Bites, by audience
PEACE is the longer message, built in five beats: Problem, Empathy, Answer, Change, and End Result. Use these on a landing page, in a launch email, or as the spine of a stage invitation. Same story as the one-liner, just room to breathe.
For the first-time guest
| Beat | Sound bite |
|---|---|
| P · Problem | You want hope and real community, but church can feel intimidating, judgmental, or just hard to start. You do not know where to park, what to wear, or whether you will fit. |
| E · Empathy | We have felt lost and unsure too. You do not have to have it figured out to belong here, and no one is going to corner you. |
| A · Answer | Forest Hill is a warm, judgment-free place across five Charlotte campuses, with a clear next step the moment you arrive. Plan your visit, come as you are, take one step into community. |
| C · Change | Instead of carrying life alone, you find people who know your name and a faith that fits your everyday life in Charlotte. |
| E · End Result | Hope restored, belonging found, faith growing, and a place where you help the next person find the same. |
For the Spanish-speaking community (Casa Viva / South Boulevard)
| Beat | Sound bite |
|---|---|
| P · Problem | You want a church that welcomes your family in your own language, but most options ask you to leave part of who you are at the door. |
| E · Empathy | You should never have to choose between your language and your faith. You belong here, exactly as you are. |
| A · Answer | Casa Viva at South Boulevard is a bilingual congregation built for you: worship, teaching, and a clear next step in Spanish, right in your part of Charlotte. |
| C · Change | Instead of feeling like a visitor, you find a real spiritual home where your family is known and your next step is obvious. |
| E · End Result | A place to belong, grow, and serve, and to help the next family find the same welcome you found. |
Confirm [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: Spanish-language wording, tone review by the Casa Viva team, and confirmation of campus details before this is published.]
For members and leaders on the pathway
| Beat | Sound bite |
|---|---|
| P · Problem | You came to church to be fed, but you are not sure how to move from attending to actually growing, serving, and leading. |
| E · Empathy | You were made for more than a seat. Growth is not for the few; it is the next step for everyone here. |
| A · Answer | Forest Hill gives you a real pathway: get connected, join a group, start serving, then lead. Each step is named, and someone walks it with you. |
| C · Change | Instead of coasting, you become a disciple who multiplies, equipped and released to raise up the next leader. |
| E · End Result | A church where leaders multiply across every campus, and where you help the next person find their place. |
The shared story underneath
Across all three audiences the villain is the same: disconnection, intimidation, and no clear next step. The guide is the same: Forest Hill, warm and rooted, offering FOR people rather than asking FROM them. And the win is always the same: one more person, changed, then sending the next. That is the mission in motion, "Bringing Heaven to Greater Charlotte, One Person at a Time."
Brand Voice: Warm, Rooted, Sending
Three words shape every sentence, image, and invitation. Used consistently, they make Forest Hill recognizable across all five campuses. Speak to the nervous first-timer, not the insider. Lead with the guest, keep words plain, and always name the next step.
Warm
Welcoming, judgment-free, come as you are. We speak to the nervous first-timer, not the insider.
- Say this: "You belong here, exactly as you are. No church background required."
- Not that: "Members and regular attenders are invited to..." (insider gatekeeping)
Rooted
Local, faithful, planted in Charlotte for the long haul. We talk like a neighbor, not a brand.
- Say this: "Right here in your part of Charlotte, there is a place to belong."
- Not that: "Our world-class facilities and dynamic experience..." (brand-speak)
Sending
We make disciples who multiply. Every next step points outward toward others.
- Say this: "You were made for more than a seat. Come grow, then go and lead."
- Not that: "Come be fed and filled every week." (consumer posture)
The one guardrail under all three: say this, not that
Speak offering FOR people, not asking FROM them. Lead with the guest, keep the words plain, and always name the one next step.
| Not that | Say this |
|---|---|
| "Join us as we worship and serve together this weekend." (insider-focused, no clear step) | "New to Forest Hill? Plan your visit and we will save you a seat." (guest-focused, one clear step) |
| "Members and regular attenders are invited to..." (gatekeeping) | "You belong here, exactly as you are. No church background required." (welcome) |
| "Our world-class facilities and dynamic experience..." (brand-speak) | "Right here in your part of Charlotte, there is a place to belong." (neighbor) |
| "Come be fed and filled every week." (consumer posture) | "You were made for more than a seat. Come grow, then go and lead." (sending) |
Note The guest profile, the problems named, and the three voice words (Warm, Rooted, Sending) are Ministry Builders' strategic recommendation for your leadership to confirm at the Blueprint Review. The mission line is verified from your live site. [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: leadership sign-off on the three voice words and the audience definitions before these are adopted church-wide.]
Website Strategy
One unified site, one front door, one clear next step. Today a guest who wants to take a step cannot find one: the most important page a church can own does not exist, and the brand is splintered across a dozen-plus campus domains. This tab proposes the architecture, the StoryBrand homepage, and the homepage copy to fix that.
What the audit found
No front door for guests
/plan-your-visit, /next-steps, and /im-new all return 404. The single most important page a church can own does not exist today.
Invisible to search and shares
Zero meta descriptions and zero Open Graph tags site-wide, plus no Church or LocalBusiness schema. Shared links render as bare text and Google cannot read service times or address.
One brand, many domains
Every campus runs its own separate website domain. A dozen-plus domains splinter SEO and brand and confuse a first-time guest about where Forest Hill actually is.
Proposed site architecture
One foresthill.org replaces the splintered campus microsites. Primary nav stays to five items so the guest is never lost, with Plan a Visit pulled out as the single, persistent front-door button.
Primary navigation
Five items, plus the front-door CTA held separate and always visible:
- Plan a Visit, held as the primary button in the header, not buried in a menu
- I'm New, what to expect, kids, parking, come as you are
- Locations, the five campuses plus Casa Viva, each with times and a map
- Messages, sermons with embed, recap, and transcript
- Next Steps, groups, baptism, serving, the discipleship pathway
- Give, generosity, kept simple
Sitemap
| Top-level page | Key child pages | Front-door role |
|---|---|---|
| Plan a Visit | What to Expect, Kids, Times & Directions, per-campus visit form (name, email, phone, opt-in into CCB) | The front door |
| I'm New | FAQ, come-as-you-are, the weekend guide | Feeds the door |
| Locations | South Park, Ballantyne, Fort Mill, Waxhaw, South Boulevard (bilingual), Casa Viva (Eastland) | Routes the guest |
| Messages | Sermon library, branded /sermons pages (embed, recap, transcript), series | Trust builder |
| Next Steps | Groups, Baptism, Serve, the guest-to-disciple pathway | Second step |
| Give | Ways to give, generosity story | Member action |
| About | Mission, beliefs, leadership, our story | Context |
The single front door: Plan a Visit
Audience routing
Different visitors self-select into their own path from the homepage. The guest is always the first and largest door.
The first-time guest
Spiritually open but disconnected, often 25 to 45, suburban and busy. Wants hope, real community, and a judgment-free first step.
Route: Plan a Visit
The Spanish-speaking community
Served by the bilingual South Boulevard campus and Casa Viva (Eastland). An audience Forest Hill is uniquely positioned to reach.
Route: Plan a Visit, en Espanol, to the bilingual campus
The member and leader
Already in the room, ready to move along the pathway from connected, to group, to serving, to leading.
Route: Next Steps
StoryBrand homepage: section order
The homepage is the hub. Audience pages are the spokes. The hero must pass the grunt test in five seconds: what is this, how does it make my life better, how do I take a step.
- Hero. Headline, subhead, the direct CTA (Plan a Visit) and a transitional CTA (Watch a Message), with a short trust bar.
- The Problem. Name what the nervous first-timer feels: church can feel intimidating, judgmental, or hard to even start.
- The Guide. Empathy plus authority. "We have felt lost and unsure too," backed by five Charlotte campuses, bilingual reach, a real pathway, and an in-house creative team.
- The Plan. Three simple steps: plan your visit and know what to expect; show up, come as you are; take one next step into community and growth.
- Locations. The five campuses plus Casa Viva, each routing to per-campus times and the visit form.
- The Success. A changed life: hope restored, belonging found, faith growing, a person discipled who sends others.
- The Stakes. What is avoided: staying disconnected, carrying it alone, never finding the hope and family they were made for.
- Who We Help (routing). Guest, Spanish-speaking community, member and leader, each self-selecting their path.
- Final CTA. One last invitation to Plan a Visit before the footer.
- Footer. Campus addresses and times, repeated nav, mission line, and every social account linked (the site links none today).
Homepage copy preview
Drafted in the confirmed brand voice: Warm, Rooted, Sending. Speaking offering FOR people, not asking FROM them. Headline and copy for leadership to confirm at the Blueprint Review.
Hero headline
Come as you are. Find your place in greater Charlotte.
Subhead
You want hope, real community, and a faith that fits your everyday life. Church can feel intimidating or hard to even start. At Forest Hill there is a warm, judgment-free first step waiting for you, at a campus near you. Plan your visit and we will save you a seat.
CTAs
Direct CTA Plan a Visit Transitional CTA Watch a Message
Trust bar
Five campuses across greater Charlotte, bilingual at South Boulevard, kids and students every weekend. "Bringing Heaven to Greater Charlotte, One Person at a Time."
Section index and copy direction
| Section | Header | Copy direction (StoryBrand element) |
|---|---|---|
| Hero | Come as you are. Find your place in greater Charlotte. | Problem plus solution in one line; direct and transitional CTA. |
| The Problem | New to church, or coming back? You are not alone. | External, internal, and philosophical problem: do not know where to start, fear of being judged, faith should never feel like a closed club. |
| The Guide | We have been unsure too. You do not have to have it figured out to belong. | Empathy quote plus authority: five campuses, bilingual reach, a real pathway, in-house creative team. |
| The Plan | Three simple steps | 1. Plan your visit and know what to expect. 2. Show up, come as you are. 3. Take one next step into community and growth. |
| Locations | A campus near you | South Park, Ballantyne, Fort Mill, Waxhaw, South Boulevard (bilingual), Casa Viva (Eastland); each with times, map, and a visit link. |
| The Success | A life that changes, one step at a time | Hope restored, belonging found, faith growing, a person discipled who sends others. |
| The Stakes | You were made for more than carrying it alone | Honest, not fear-based: what is avoided by taking the first step. |
| Who We Help | Find your path | Guest, Spanish-speaking community, member and leader, each with a routing CTA. |
| Final CTA | Your seat is ready | Aspirational close on the mission, single button: Plan a Visit. |
| Footer | Forest Hill Church | Campus addresses and times, repeated nav, mission line, all social accounts linked. |
SEO and metadata foundations
Fix what makes Forest Hill invisible to search and to shared links, the moment the new site ships:
- Add Open Graph and Twitter tags plus a branded share image site-wide, so every shared link renders with an image and a description, not bare text.
- Write meta descriptions for the top fifteen pages, starting with the homepage, Plan a Visit, Locations, Give, and Connect.
- Add per-campus Church and LocalBusiness schema with service hours and address, plus Event schema for the roughly 440 events, so Google can surface times, location, and events.
- Build branded /sermons pages (embed, recap, transcript) so messages are indexable and become an on-ramp for someone exploring before they ever walk in.
- Link every social account from the site header and footer, and set every social bio link to the new Plan a Visit page; the site links none today.
12-Month Plan
Strategy only works when someone owns the next step. Here the audit and blueprint become a calendar: four quarters, clear roles for your team and ours, a channel strategy that hands guests from one place to the next, a content engine that turns one sermon into a week of content, and an honest scoreboard you watch together. You stay the hero: your voice, your people, your ministry. Ministry Builders is the guide, carrying the systems, builds, and technical weight behind the scenes.
The year in four moves
Foundation gets your data and tracking right and stands up the content engine before the August 26 consolidation. Engine turns on weekly content and powers year-end giving. Scale multiplies what works into Easter. Advanced adds custom AI and scopes a church app on mature reporting. Each move funds the next only once the last is working.
The four phases, quarter by quarter
Foundation + Engine Sprint
Focus: Get the database, consent, and tracking right, then stand up the weekly content engine before the August 26 consolidation so no audience is lost at the cutover.
What Forest Hill does: Approve the Plan a Visit page and messaging, gather campus details, set the SMS consent language with your team, own the welcome, supply sermon and story content, lead the campus Instagram merge with your audiences and community.
What Ministry Builders does: Kick off the unified website rebuild, sync CCB to Mailchimp, build the Plan a Visit page, install tracking and tracked links, rebuild SMS consent and clean the list, build the content engine and clip pipeline, ship /sermons pages, activate and link the existing @foresthillchurch TikTok, prepare the consolidation so Natalie's team runs it.
Season anchor Next Gen Summer · Aug 26 consolidation
Engine + Year-End Giving
Focus: Open the front door on every sermon, run the in-room story moment, and power the Christmas and year-end giving push with the engine now live.
What Forest Hill does: Capture sermon and story content, create on-camera story and life-change moments, supply year-end stories and calls to give, own donor and guest relationships.
What Ministry Builders does: Run the weekly content engine, build the story-video pipeline, power the Christmas and year-end giving push, mature analytics so the team can see what is working.
Season anchor Awaken · Christmas and year-end giving
Scale + Easter Run-Up
Focus: Multiply what is working into the biggest weekend of the year: repeatable flywheels, a story-video moment, and a lead-pastor channel ready for Easter.
What Forest Hill does: Give Doc a regular voice, run the in-room and follow-up ministry, lead the Activate and Easter on-ramps.
What Ministry Builders does: Stand up the lead-pastor channel, tune flywheels and analytics, coach the team on cadence, ready every channel for the Easter run-up.
Season anchor Activate · Easter run-up
Advanced AI + App Scoping
Focus: Layer in custom AI, scope the church app, and run on mature reporting once the data and consent layers are proven.
What Forest Hill does: Approve app scope and giving messaging, supply the stories and calls to action, own donor and guest relationships.
What Ministry Builders does: Build sermon-to-everything and guest follow-up AI, scope the church app, mature analytics into a quarterly scoreboard you own.
Season anchor Next Gen Summer (year two)
The split, in one sentence
You own voice, content capture, ministry execution, the in-room moments, approvals, and the people work. We own the systems, builds, integrations, automations, training, strategy, and analytics. You stay close to people. We carry the technical weight.
Channel strategy: owned, paid, earned
Each channel has one job and hands the guest to the next. Social and YouTube are the window into the room, the website is the front door, and text keeps a guest connected after Sunday. Every CTA points to Plan a Visit, and every opt-in writes back to CCB, closing the gap between the 65,000 you know and the 18,000 you can email.
The front door and the lifeline
- Website: one unified foresthill.org with a Plan a Visit page as the primary CTA site-wide, plus indexable /sermons pages.
- Email (Mailchimp): the nurture channel, fed by a CCB sync that closes the 72 percent reach gap.
- SMS (Growth Method): a re-permissioned, consent-clean list that keeps guests connected after Sunday.
- Church app (scoped Q4): give, watch, read, next steps, and groups in one daily-use place.
The window into the room
- Instagram: consolidate behind @foresthillchurch (~7,600), campus accounts merged by Aug 26, youth kept separate.
- YouTube: separate live from on-demand, publish weekly Shorts and clips, rewrite titles for search.
- TikTok: activate the existing @foresthillchurch account and link it from the site to reach a younger Charlotte audience.
- Life-change stories: 60-to-90-second testimony videos that travel across every feed.
Amplify what already works
- Paid sits behind the owned and earned foundation, not ahead of it. Build the engine and the front door first.
- When the Plan a Visit page and tracking are live, promote it around season anchors: Activate, Easter, Next Gen Summer, Awaken, Christmas.
- Boost the highest-performing organic clips rather than starting from scratch, so spend follows proven content.
- [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: confirm whether a paid social or search budget is available, and at what monthly level, before scoping paid as a workstream.]
How the channels work together
Each channel hands off: earned reach (social, YouTube) is the window into the room, the owned website is the front door, owned text keeps a guest connected after Sunday, and paid amplifies what is already proven. Every CTA points to Plan a Visit, every opt-in writes back to CCB, so reach you already have becomes a tracked next step instead of a missed one.
The content multiplication model: one sermon to many
Distribution over creation. The content already exists in Doc's weekend message. The Sermon-to-Everything engine takes the sermon audio or video already flowing through John's pipeline and Frame.io and turns one message into a full week of content, so one sermon becomes ten-plus pieces and feeds the blog you are missing today (only 3 posts indexed against roughly 440 events).
| One input | Becomes many outputs | Feeds |
|---|---|---|
| Weekend sermon (audio or video) | Clean transcript | /sermons pages, search visibility |
| Transcript | Small-group discussion guide (recap, scriptures, questions, application, prayer) | Leadership and Discipleship flywheel, mid-week groups |
| Transcript | 3 to 5 captioned vertical clips | Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts |
| Transcript | Platform-specific social posts and a quote card | Owned and earned feeds |
| Transcript | Mailchimp email recap | Email-reachable audience |
| Transcript | Blog post and scripture-reading print copy | SEO, seat-back QR and print campaigns |
Who does what: Your ChatGPT and Claude Pro accounts (moving to enterprise) do the drafting. Tanner and Trevor do the final cut and the human judgment. The principle behind every AI build: automate so humans can be human, freeing the team for the face-to-face 85 percent of ministry while reach scales in the background.
Success metrics: the honest scoreboard
We measure only what is real and within reach. Where a baseline is not yet tracked, it is marked "to confirm" rather than guessed. These targets are directional commitments to revisit at the Blueprint Review, not results already achieved.
| Metric | Baseline today | 90-day target | 12-month target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email-reachable share of database | ~18K of ~65K (roughly 28%) | CCB and Mailchimp synced; reachable share climbing | Majority of active records email-reachable |
| SMS opt-in count (permissioned) | To confirm (status unclear) | Confirmed consented baseline established | Growing, fully permissioned opt-in list |
| Plan-a-Visit conversions | To confirm (no page, untracked) | Page live and conversions tracked | Steady month-over-month visit signups |
| Sermon clips published per week | To confirm (untracked) | Sustainable weekly cadence set | Consistent multi-clip weekly rhythm |
| Next-step completions tracked | To confirm ("not tracked very well") | Key next steps instrumented in CCB | Funnel visible stage to stage, drop-off shrinking |
Note: "To confirm" means the baseline is not yet measured, not zero. The first job of Q1 (Foundation) is to make these numbers visible so every target becomes accountable. Ministry Builders has not yet delivered measured web, traffic, giving, or follower results for Forest Hill; these are the metrics we commit to track together from here.
Asset Inventory
Forest Hill already owns the hard parts: a recognizable logo, an in-house creative and production team, and a fast site. This inventory does not re-list those. It lists only what still needs to be created so the nervous first-timer in greater Charlotte has a clear, warm next step, and so the team can multiply that reach without new hires. Every item below traces to a gap in the audit and a solution in the blueprint.
Start here: what you already have
You do not need a logo, a brand refresh, or a new web platform to start. Forest Hill has a clean logo, a strong in-house creative team, and a fast site. The work ahead is filling the front-door and funnel gaps, not rebuilding the foundation. Where this inventory lists a "Brand voice one-pager" or "story-video template," it is to give the team you already have a repeatable system, not to replace them.
How to read the badges
- Must Have Required to open the front door and connect the first-time guest. These ship in Phase 1.
- Nice to Have Strengthens the funnel and compounds reach. Sequenced right after the must-haves.
- Post-Launch Built once the front door and content engine are running. Deepens discipleship and measurement.
Digital
The owned front door and the systems that turn reach into tracked next steps.
| Asset | What it does for the guest | Priority | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unified website (one site replacing the campus microsites) | One clear home, no confusion about which campus site is real | Must Have | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill creative team |
| Plan a Visit page (the front door) | Answers parking, kids, what to wear, what to expect, removes first-timer fear | Must Have | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill |
| Visit form wired to CCB | Lets a guest raise a hand and be followed up with, not lost | Must Have | Ministry Builders |
| Owned-audience sync: CCB and Mailchimp, rebuilt SMS consent | Makes the roughly 65,000 contacts actually reachable again | Must Have | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill data owner [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: CCB and Mailchimp admin contact] |
| Branded /sermons pages (YouTube embed, recap, transcript) | Gives a sermon clip viewer a real next step on your own site | Must Have | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill creative team |
| Lead pastor and campus pastor bios with social links | Puts a trustworthy face on the church for a stranger | Nice to Have | Forest Hill creative team [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: pastor bios and photos] |
| Church/LocalBusiness and Event schema per campus | Helps a searching neighbor find the right campus and service time | Nice to Have | Ministry Builders |
| "I'm New" email nurture, triggered by the visit form | Walks a new guest from first contact to first Sunday and beyond | Nice to Have | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill |
| Analytics and goal tracking (visit form, opt-in, giving) | Shows which next steps people actually take, so effort goes where it works | Post-Launch | Ministry Builders |
| Church app scope (give, watch, read, next steps) | Closes the "no app" gap and keeps the next step in a guest's pocket | Post-Launch | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill |
Video
The content engine that turns each weekend message into reach, and reach into next steps.
| Asset | What it does for the guest | Priority | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central content engine, live before the August 26 IG consolidation | One coordinated voice so a follower never loses the thread mid-cutover | Must Have | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill creative team |
| 3 to 5 vertical sermon clips per week, linked to the official @foresthillchurch TikTok | Meets a scrolling, "done with church" person where they already are | Must Have | Forest Hill creative team, Ministry Builders system |
| Monthly story-video pipeline (changed-life stories) | Shows a skeptic a real person who found hope and belonging here | Nice to Have | Forest Hill creative team, Ministry Builders template and cadence |
| Lead-pastor short-form channel (weekly devotionals, @dochanberry) | Builds trust with a curious viewer before they ever visit | Nice to Have | Forest Hill, with Ministry Builders |
| Bilingual clip set for South Boulevard / Casa Viva | Reaches the Spanish-speaking community in their own language | Post-Launch | Forest Hill creative team [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: Spanish-language capacity and reviewer] |
The in-room pieces that carry a guest from the seat to a tracked next step.
| Asset | What it does for the guest | Priority | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tracked QR and print CTAs writing back to CCB | Turns a seat-back card into a real, measured next step | Must Have | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill creative team |
| Weekend guide ("what to expect" piece) | Calms first-timer nerves before and during the visit | Nice to Have | Forest Hill creative team, Ministry Builders copy |
| Connect card aligned to the new pathway | Gives a guest one obvious way to say "I want to take a step" | Nice to Have | Forest Hill creative team |
Sales Enablement (ministry equipping)
For churches, "sales enablement" means the internal tools that equip staff and volunteers to guide people and multiply, so the team spends its time on people, not platforms.
| Asset | What it does | Priority | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guest-to-disciple pathway map | One shared picture of how a person moves from guest, to connected, to group, to serving, to leading | Must Have | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill leadership |
| Brand voice one-pager (Warm, Rooted, Sending) | Keeps every campus and volunteer sounding the same and welcoming | Nice to Have | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill creative team |
| Social consolidation playbook (campus accounts to central, by August 26) | Migrates followers cleanly without losing anyone in the move | Nice to Have | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill creative team |
| Practical AI playbook for staff | Frees the team from busywork so they can spend time with people | Post-Launch | Ministry Builders, with Forest Hill staff |
| Volunteer follow-up scripts and SOPs | Equips a greeter or group leader to make the next step warm and clear | Post-Launch | Forest Hill, with Ministry Builders templates |
Summary by tier
Twenty-three assets to create, weighted toward the front-door and content-engine work that ships first.
| Category | Must Have | Nice to Have | Post-Launch | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Digital | 5 | 3 | 2 | 10 |
| Video | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
| 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 | |
| Sales Enablement | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 |
| Total | 9 | 9 | 5 | 23 |
The tier counts above are a planning view, not a contract. Owners are recommended splits between Ministry Builders and the Forest Hill creative team. Exact scope, sequencing, and any associated cost land in the engagement agreement.
Implementation Roadmap
Strategy only works when someone owns the next step. This is where the audit and blueprint become a build plan: every system scoped with a priority and a complexity, a phased timeline anchored to your seasons, and a recommendation for how an embedded Ministry Builders team multiplies Natalie's in-house bench rather than replacing it. You stay the hero. We carry the heavy technical lift.
Major Projects Roadmap
Beyond the system-by-system scope below, here are the flagship builds, one per 90-day block, each one setting up the next. The native app is built in the fourth block and launches the following quarter.
Brand & Website Redesign
One unified foresthill.org and a refreshed brand: the single front door every later build points to.
FoundationInvite Tool & Text Short Codes
A shareable digital invite plus SMS short codes, so members invite a friend and guests text one word to connect.
ReachSermon Search Launch
Every message transcribed and searchable by topic, scripture, or question, and easy to share.
EngagementCustom iOS App Build
A native Forest Hill app (give, watch, read, next steps, groups) built this quarter to launch next.
BuildThe iOS app goes live the following 90 days (Q5, Jul to Sep 2027), right after the Q4 build.
Technical Scope by System
Seven systems, each rated for priority (how much it moves "Bringing Heaven to Greater Charlotte, One Person at a Time") and complexity (how heavy the build is). Sequenced by impact-to-effort, re-ordered after the June 2 session, with the database first.
1 · CCB to Mailchimp to Growth Method sync, with consent built in
Priority: Critical Complexity: High
A connector that keeps Church Community Builder, Mailchimp, and Growth Method in agreement. New and updated CCB records flow to the right email and text audiences automatically, each carrying a consent flag: email opt-in, SMS opt-in, source, and date. Where texting permission is unclear across the roughly 65,000 phone numbers, the system gives you a clean, defensible re-permission path before any send.
Why it matters: the 72 percent email gap (CCB about 65K, Mailchimp about 18K) is your stated Priority One. You cannot disciple, invite back, or re-engage someone you cannot contact. Consent management protects the church legally and protects trust.
Scope notes: needs a connector service between CCB, Mailchimp, and Growth Method, plus agreement on which fields sync. Consent rules scoped with Christina and Ryan before the first send.
2 · Unified website rebuild
Priority: Critical Complexity: High
One Forest Hill website replacing the dozen-plus splintered domains (foresthill.org plus the five campus sites, two school domains, and the dead blog subdomain), with the foundations missing today: a "Plan a Visit / What to Expect" page, meta descriptions, Open Graph, Church / LocalBusiness / Event schema per campus, and a mobile viewport that allows pinch-zoom (honoring the Disability Inclusion ministry).
Why it matters: a dozen-plus domains splinter SEO and brand, the site scored 62/100, and the nervous first-timer has nowhere to land. A unified home turns scattered touchpoints into one front door and anchors the Reach and Assimilation flywheels.
Scope notes: keep the Flywheel + Fastly host; ship Plan-a-Visit and SEO/schema foundations first, then consolidate domains. Decide deliberately: full consolidation, or a shared theme, security baseline, and analytics if local autonomy is the goal.
3 · Social consolidation + central content engine
Priority: High Complexity: Medium
Stand up one weekly content engine (sermon clip, quote card, invite graphic) the main account runs and campuses amplify via Stories, before the campus Instagram accounts sunset on August 26. Standardize handles, migrate followers with a pinned "we've moved" post, consolidate the duplicate Fort Mill YouTube channel, and activate and link the existing official @foresthillchurch TikTok as the short-form engine. Keep youth accounts separate, as planned.
Why it matters: consolidation is the right call, but collapsing accounts without an engine to replace the local cadence can read as "the church got quieter." The engine fills that gap and adds the short-form layer that reaches under-30s.
4 · Tracked links + reporting loop
Priority: High Complexity: Low
Route every QR and print CTA (seat-back codes, sermon-series scripture pieces) through a tracked short link to a campaign landing page, with the opt-in writing straight back to CCB. Add analytics and goal tracking on visit-form, opt-in, and giving conversions, and pull true baselines from Meta Business Suite and YouTube Studio.
Why it matters: response is "not tracked very well currently." Untracked QR codes and print pieces mean a guest can raise a hand and you never see it. This is what makes print finally measurable across Activate, Easter, Next Gen Summer, Awaken, and Christmas.
Scope notes: low lift, high leverage. It is the measurement layer the whole funnel reports through.
5 · AI workflows (sermon-to-everything + guest follow-up)
Priority: Medium Complexity: High
The Sermon-to-Everything engine takes the sermon audio or video already flowing through John's pipeline and Frame.io, generates a clean transcript, then drafts a small-group guide, three to five captioned vertical clips, per-platform social posts, a Mailchimp recap, a blog post, and the series scripture-reading copy. Guest-Journey Automation fires a warm welcome email and text, a same-week next-step invitation, and a task to the right campus and Christina's Next Steps team when a visit form is filled. A standalone AI Group Discussion-Guide Generator ships earlier as a focused slice.
Why it matters: one sermon becomes ten-plus pieces, feeding the blog you are missing today (only 3 posts indexed against roughly 440 events) and ensuring no guest falls through the cracks. The principle: automate so humans can be human, freeing the team for the face-to-face 85 percent of ministry.
Scope notes: mostly prompt-and-workflow assembly on the ChatGPT and Claude accounts you already pay for (moving to enterprise). Tanner, Trevor, and a leader on Christina's team keep the human judgment. Sequenced last, after the quick wins land. Depends on the Q1 sync and a working Plan-a-Visit form. Start with one campus, one series.
6 · Story-collection + production pipeline
Priority: Medium Complexity: Medium
A standing system to gather life-change stories: a simple submission form (QR in the room, link in follow-up), an intake workflow into Frame.io for review, and a light production track for Tanner, Trevor, and the open video production lead. Output is a steady supply of 60-to-90-second testimony videos ready to drop into the service.
Why it matters: the weekend flow has no story or life-change moment between worship and the message, the single highest-conversion piece of content currently missing. This pipeline fills that gap on purpose and keeps it fed as next-steps fuel for social, email, and the giving case.
Scope notes: intake and routing are quick; the value is the repeatable cadence and the hire who owns it. One story per month is the starting target.
7 · Church-app scoping
Priority: Medium Complexity: High
There is no church app today. Scope a member home base that closes the no-app gap: give (Pushpay), watch (sermons from the Sardius Media transition), read (scripture and series content), next steps, and groups, all in one place with push notifications. This is a recommended build, not a tool to keep.
Why it matters: the app becomes the durable daily-use channel that all three flywheels lock into. It scopes last, in Q4, once the data and consent layers are live to feed it.
Where each system points
Every build above serves one of the three flywheels and the four goals from the blueprint:
- Reach: content engine, tracked links, the unified site, the activated TikTok.
- Assimilation: the CCB sync, guest follow-up automation, the story pipeline.
- Leadership and discipleship: the AI discussion-guide generator feeding Christina's mobilization and training.
- An AI-equipped team: sermon-to-everything, so staff spend their time with people, not platforms.
One weekend message, one CCB record of truth, one unified brand after August 26, feeding all of it.
Priority and Complexity at a Glance
The same seven systems, sorted so you can see what to fund first and what carries the heaviest lift.
| System | Priority | Complexity | Quarter | Flywheel served |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CCB to Mailchimp to Growth Method sync, with consent | Critical | High | Q1 | Assimilation |
| Unified website rebuild | Critical | High | Q1 to Q2 | Reach + Assimilation |
| Social consolidation + content engine | High | Medium | Q1 (live before Aug 26) | Reach |
| Tracked links + reporting loop | High | Low | Q1 | Reach + Assimilation |
| Story-collection + production pipeline | Medium | Medium | Q3 | Assimilation |
| AI workflows (sermon-to-everything, guest follow-up, guide generator) | Medium | High | Q3 to Q4 | Leadership + Team |
| Church-app scoping | Medium | High | Q4 | All three |
Phased Timeline
The year moves in four phases tied to your seasons: Foundation gets the data and tracking right, Engine turns on weekly content and capture, Scale multiplies what works, and Advanced adds custom AI and a scoped app. You carry the ministry and the content; we carry the systems and the build.
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Q1 · Foundation (Jul to Sep 2026): Next Gen Summer, Aug 26 consolidation
Get the database, consent, and tracking right, then stand up the weekly content engine before the August 26 consolidation so no audience is lost at the cutover.
- Sync CCB to Mailchimp and start the welcome / re-permission flow across the 65K-to-18K gap.
- Audit SMS opt-in on the roughly 65,000 Growth Method numbers and rebuild a clean, consented list.
- Kick off the unified website rebuild: build the Plan-a-Visit page, add Open Graph and per-campus schema, re-enable pinch-zoom, retire or 301-redirect the dead blog subdomain.
- Install tracking and tracked links; pull true baselines from Meta Business Suite and YouTube Studio.
- Stand up the central content engine and clip pipeline; ship /sermons pages; activate and link the official @foresthillchurch TikTok; prepare the consolidation so Natalie's team runs it.
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Q2 · Engine (Oct to Dec 2026): Awaken, Christmas
Turn on weekly content and capture at full cadence, land the website consolidation, and run the connected funnel through the Christmas season.
- Complete the website consolidation; the unified site becomes the single front door and the site-wide primary CTA.
- Run the lifecycle engine: "I'm New" nurture triggered by the visit form, writing back to CCB; baptism as a tracked CCB trigger into a groups sequence.
- Operate the content engine weekly: three to five vertical clips per sermon, consistent TikTok posting, recap-and-transcript pages feeding search.
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Q3 · Scale (Jan to Mar 2027): Activate, Easter run-up
Multiply what is working into the biggest weekend of the year: repeatable flywheels, a story-video moment, and a lead-pastor channel ready for Easter.
- Launch the monthly story-video pipeline as the missing moment between worship and the message.
- Stand up the lead-pastor channel: weekly short-form devotionals cross-promoted to grow @dochanberry.
- Ship the AI Group Discussion-Guide Generator as a standalone win feeding Christina's discipleship and groups.
- Tune flywheels and analytics; ready every channel for the Easter run-up.
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Q4 · Advanced (Apr to Jun 2027): Next Gen Summer (year two)
Layer in custom AI, scope the church app, and run on mature reporting once the data and consent layers are proven.
- Build the full Sermon-to-Everything engine and the Guest-Journey Automation (depends on the Q1 sync and a working Plan-a-Visit form).
- Run church-app discovery and scoping (give, watch, read, next steps, groups); a production build is scoped and quoted separately.
- Mature analytics into a quarterly scoreboard Forest Hill owns.
How the Engagement Works: An Embedded Team That Multiplies Your Bench
From the June 2 session: under Natalie Shepard there is a real in-house team. That changes the shape of any outside help. The job is to wrap that group in systems and an engine, not to replace it. Think of this like a fractional chief marketing officer for the church, a senior strategy-and-build team on demand without full-time overhead.
What "fractional" means for a church
You already have designers (Sammie, Lilly), editors (Tanner, Trevor), production (John, and the open video lead), and a 30-hour social contractor (CaliGrace). Output is limited by workflow, not talent. An embedded Ministry Builders team brings the senior strategist, builder, and analyst roles you would not hire full-time, plugged into your existing bench, so the same people ship multiples of what they ship today. We multiply Sammie, Lilly, Tanner, Trevor, and CaliGrace; we do not replace them.
Capacity, not headcount, and you own everything
This is a blended monthly retainer: senior builders, strategists, and analysts on demand, scaled up or down to whichever workstreams are active. There is no full-time overhead and no platform you rent from us. Everything we build, you own: the site, the systems, the automations, and the data, all yours.
The three tiers describe how hands-on Ministry Builders is inside one monthly total, not separate stacked phases:
| Tier | Monthly | How it works | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do It Yourself | about $2,500/mo | Your team executes day to day; we direct and train (strategy, setup, coaching). | Capacity is strong and you want guidance. |
| Do It With You Recommended | about $3,000 to $3,500/mo | We build and coach, standing up the systems while Natalie's team grows. We multiply your people, not replace them. | You want momentum now and lasting capability. |
| Do It For You | about $5,000/mo | Full fractional team; we own execution end to end. You stay in ministry, we carry the marketing and tech. | You want speed and minimal internal load. |
The year moves in four phases. You stay the hero: your voice, your people, your ministry. We are the guide: systems, builds, and the heavy technical lift.
Packages & Pricing
A phased investment, not a lump sum up front. The $9,500 Ministry Blueprint is the paid front door, and it is complete. Everything that follows is phased, so Forest Hill funds the next move only when the last one is working.
How to read the money
The phase table below names the workstreams. The three monthly tiers (Do It Yourself, Do It With You, Do It For You) are not stacked phase by phase. They are one blended monthly retainer that funds whichever workstreams are active, with the tier naming how hands-on Ministry Builders is inside that single monthly total.
So the math is not "Phase 2 monthly plus Phase 3 monthly plus Phase 5 monthly." The math is: one tier each month, plus the one-time builds quoted separately. The recommended path is the Do It With You tier running the active workstreams, plus the one-time website rebuild in Q1.
The three engagement tiers
One blended monthly retainer. Pick how hands-on the team is.
Do It Yourself
You run it. Your team executes day to day.
- We direct and train: strategy, setup, and coaching
- Natalie's team owns hands-on execution
- Best when capacity is strong and you want guidance, not delivery
Do It With You Recommended
We build and coach. We stand up the systems while your team grows.
- We build the systems and multiply your people, not replace them
- Natalie's team grows capability alongside the build
- Best when you want momentum now and lasting in-house capacity
Do It For You
Full fractional team. We own execution end to end.
- You stay in ministry, we carry the marketing and the tech
- Senior builders, strategists, and analysts on demand
- Best when you want speed and minimal internal load
The phase ladder
The workstreams the retainer (and the one-time builds) fund across the year. Build-effort labels are directional estimates for planning, not fixed quotes.
| Phase | What it includes | When / Duration | Investment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase 0 Ministry Blueprint |
Strategy, audit, and this twelve-month plan. Complete. | Delivered (June 2026) | $9,500 contracted |
| Phase 1 Unified Website Rebuild + Brand |
One unified site across all campuses, refreshed brand, built for guests and growth. | Kickoff Q1 (Jul to Sep 2026), one-time build landing across Q1 to Q2 | $40,000 to $48,000 one-time |
| Phase 2 List-Building + Lifecycle Engine |
Email and SMS, CCB sync, consent rebuild, and nurture journeys. | Starts Q1 (Jul to Sep 2026), ongoing monthly | $2,500 to $3,000/mo ($30K to $36K/yr) |
| Phase 3 Social Consolidation + Content Production |
Merge accounts, weekly content engine, clips, and TikTok. | Starts Q1, engine live before the Aug 26 consolidation, ongoing monthly | about $2,500/mo (about $30K/yr) |
| Phase 4 Custom AI Workflows + Church App Scoping |
Sermon-to-everything workflows, guest follow-up automation, tracked links and reporting, and a church-app discovery and scope. This phase is app scoping, not a build. A production app build is scoped and quoted separately. | Q4 (Apr to Jun 2027) | $20,000 to $25,000 |
| Phase 5 Ongoing Growth Partnership |
Monthly strategy, SEO, YouTube, AI tooling, and on-call support. | After the build phases, ongoing monthly | $5,000/mo (about $60K/yr); annual prepay saves about $6K |
Year One: the recommended path
The recommended path is the Do It With You tier running the active workstreams, plus the one-time website rebuild quoted separately:
- Roughly 12 months at $3,000 to $3,500/mo (about $36,000 to $42,000) for the blended retainer
- Plus the one-time $40,000 to $48,000 website rebuild in Q1
These are planning ranges, not a quote, and only the $9,500 blueprint is contracted to date.
Standard terms
- Ranges are planning estimates, not a quote. Only the $9,500 blueprint is contracted to date.
- Final scope and pricing are set in a separate agreement, and annual prepay discounts are available.
- Client owns everything. Everything Ministry Builders builds, Forest Hill owns: the site, systems, automations, and data stay theirs.
- The tier is a single blended monthly retainer, not additive phase-by-phase monthlies.
- One-time builds (the website rebuild, the Phase 4 AI and app scoping) are quoted separately from the monthly retainer.
Decisions to make in the Blueprint Review
So the review ends in closure, not conversation, here are the commercial calls Forest Hill makes in the room:
- Commercial model. Confirm the engagement is a single blended monthly retainer (recommended) rather than additive phase-by-phase monthlies, and pick the tier.
- Tier selection. Choose Do It Yourself, Do It With You (recommended), or Do It For You based on internal capacity.
- Q1 start and the August 26 deadline. Confirm the Q1 start date and whether the August 26 social-consolidation deadline still stands.
- Phase 4 scope vs build. Confirm Phase 4 is workflows plus church-app discovery and scoping, with any production app build scoped and quoted separately.
- Website rebuild budget. Confirm the one-time $40,000 to $48,000 website rebuild is approved to scope and quote formally. [NEEDS CLIENT INPUT: confirm budget appetite and timing]
- Annual prepay. Decide whether to take the annual prepay discount on the ongoing retainer.
You are the hero of this work. Ministry Builders is here to guide, build alongside Natalie's team, and multiply the bench you already have. Bringing Heaven to Greater Charlotte, One Person at a Time.