Texting with Clearstream and Planning Center
"I pretty much just help everyone communicate better. And even some of our staff will say, 'I feel like you're doing my job.' And I'll say, 'No, I'm enabling you to focus on people and ministry, while I just handle all the communication.' It's been fun to enable other people and help other staff members to be able to do the work that's most important."
Drew is the communications pastor at One Family Church in St. Louis, Missouri, a multi-campus church that averages around 2,000 attendees on Sundays and 700 volunteers. He coordinates communications, event calendars, and planning for all their ministries.
Drew and his team regularly communicate with 5,000 people, so it's important that they have a system that works well.
"We were in three different management systems. But we went all in on Planning Center nine months ago. And when we did that, ShelbyNext was our texting, and it wasn't very effective. We said we're not going to use that, so we've got to find other options."
Texting within Planning Center using Clearstream
"I had heard of Clearstream. People just talk about it a lot. And I thought, 'It's got to be good'."
Drew and his church started using Clearstream in October of 2025 alongside Planning Center People to text their congregation.
I love the integration with Planning Center. I send most things through Planning Center lists. The integration is so good that it's my go-to for all of that. That usability and that integration are really strong and have been super seamless.
"It takes away the thought of, 'Is this going to the right list?' If it's a Planning Center list and it says, 'Send text with Clearstream,' I'm so confident that that's going to who it needs to and that I can schedule through that. It's super helpful."
Quickly answering members' questions
With Clearstream, people can reply to Drew's Planning Center messages, and he can text them back and have one-on-one conversations in his Clearstream inbox.
"I'm controlling when things go out so I can monitor the inbox really closely. If we just sent a text to 5,000 people, then I'm at my computer so I can just buzz through responses and get people what they need quickly."
I just respond back and forth, and I solve people's issues. We're super responsive now because I monitor it, and a few other people monitor it as well.
Responding to texts on-the-go
I'm kind of everywhere, all the time, so having the app to be able to respond in real time is so important, because if you send a text out and somebody responds, the natural expectation is that they're getting a response in an hour.
"I found the app to be super helpful for quick responses and also responses like, 'Hey, I see it. Let me send you a link in an hour.'"
Texting for kids ministry
Drew and his team wanted to get a clearer picture of which students would be moving classrooms at the start of the school year.
"We ran a list of people who we thought were going to be in kindergarten, and we ran a list of their parents. We texted that parent list and we said, 'Hey, we're planning for your kid to be in kindergarten. Let us know if not.'
And a few people were like, 'They're not going to kindergarten' immediately. And then our lists were accurate, and we could pull those people and not have them at the kindergarten level in our system. That was super effective."
Parents are busy. They're not checking emails, so we're meeting them where they're at — their texting inbox.
Sending out youth updates
Clearstream has been amazing for getting the registration link straight to their fingertips. If I want to sign up my kid for youth camp, I'm going to click that link and at least check it out.
Effective communication with texting and email
Drew and his team wanted to rework their parking on Sunday mornings so their volunteer teams would park further away and leave closer parking available. They started by sending out emails, but it wasn't working well.
"We had kind of been haphazardly communicating that for a couple months, very ineffectively, to be quite honest. No one knew where to park."
Then, they decided to send out an email and a text.
"No one's checking an email on a Saturday for a Sunday, but they are going to get a text. So I sent an email to the team on a Monday or Tuesday. And I said, 'Hey, here's the request. Here's why. Here's a diagram of where we want you to park.' And then I scheduled a recurring text in the Planning Center Add-On that would go out Saturday.
The beauty of it is, the list updates to who's scheduled for the next day at this campus, and there's a recurring text for the next three or four total weeks that's like, 'Hey, can't wait to serve with you tomorrow. Quick reminder about parking. And here's the link to the Google Image.'"
"Me and the campus lead pulled in at the same time, and everyone had parked exactly where we had asked them to. It was a big win for us because it was something we had wanted to do, but we hadn't gotten super clear. Texting made it so clear."
Texting had a 100% success rate, day one. An email is not gonna get 100% participation. 40% or 50% is a great open rate for emails, and that's half the team. Clearstream just made our communications double down, and in my mind, sealed the deal.
Room to grow with Clearstream
Drew is continuing to explore Clearstream's features and how they might benefit his church.
We were just really one-way communicating. And now I feel like we're really starting to tap into it and utilize it for the value that it really brings. We're really starting to utilize a lot of the powerful features in it. I know that there are so many more capabilities with it that are untapped. But it's been so effective.
"Some of those features are really, really good and powerful, and I'm still figuring out what that looks like for us. We're building out the different keywords, one for each area of ministry, with aliases and things like that to make that better.
I have one that's like CONNECT or NEW, and it basically sets up a tree of our five ministries, and asks, 'Which one do you want to take a step with?' If somebody texts SUNDAY, they're going to get a quick message that says, 'Weekly celebrations happen on Sundays. Here's a link to our page that has service times.' If you want to register for next steps, text MEMBERSHIP to this number."
"I think as we grow and we add new locations, I think subaccounts are going to be in our future. It's definitely a great feature. I love that it's included."
Conclusion
Overall, it's been really good. I find the app to be super helpful. Everything works as I would want it. And as expected, it's intuitive, which I think is probably a testament to the simplicity and the usability of it. In design, it's really plug-and-play.
Thank you, Drew and One Family Church!
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