Portuguese cover art for this célula.in Podcast episode: o surgimento do célula.in, meaning how célula.in came about. It carries photographs of the three founders.

Presentation

How was the cell-based church app created, which is bringing technology so that small groups can multiply in a healthy way?

In this interview Fabrício Tavares, André Gonzaga and Alexander Reis tell how it all happened.

The short version of this story is on about célula.in.

Summary

célula.in was born inside a church, not inside a software company. In 2011, at Igreja Batista Central de Belo Horizonte, three frustrations met: a pastor who needed information to supervise cell groups, two group leaders who wanted to help their church with technology, and a cell group secretary tired of an outdated system. That is the story Fabrício Tavares, André Gonzaga and Alexander Reis tell in this célula.in Podcast interview.

Development started early in 2013, on nights and weekends. The name came out of a conversation in the pastor's office and carries the vision itself: being in a cell group.

The original intention was different. The idea was to give the application away with open source code, so each church would run its own. It was dropped for a practical reason: most churches cannot pay someone to maintain software, and software without maintenance dies or traps the people who depend on it. Hence the decision to build a company to sustain the product.

Opening the code has not been ruled out, and the public célula.in API comes from that same vision: any church can build on top of it or connect célula.in to the tools it already uses.

Listen to it at:

célula.in Podcast on YouTube

How did the idea come about

Alexander

When I started working at the Belo Horizonte Central Baptist Church, in the cell group office, they used a system (Church Web). And the cell group area of this program had been developed in partnership with the company DM10.

The church invested money so that the product meets the needs for good cell group supervision, so that the management of small groups could be monitored online. I was responsible for providing support to the small group leaders with regard to the system.

So during this period I began to dream and I shared this dream with Pastor Roberto Bottrel: That we should have an open source, open source system. And the churches that used the tool would share their needs and God would use the people in the technology area of these churches so that the product would grow and, based on this movement, something extremely relevant for a cell-based church would be built.


Andre

I was the leader of the Belo Horizonte Central Baptist Church. When I went to fill in the attendance information I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The system was quite archaic.

Then I thought: “No, man, I have to schedule a conversation with my Pastor to somehow try to change the reality that we are living here”. And since I was from the area, I reflected: “Nothing fairer than me trying to help in some way”. So I made an appointment with Roberto Bottrel.

When we talked, to my surprise, he was feeling very demotivated with the system that Central was using, with the rudimentary form that the cell group system was presenting itself.

I said: “Roberto, I have free time, we can try to make a new app for the church or, at least, for our network, for our area. He really liked the idea and, in fact, that was the seed of célula.in.


Fabrício

I already knew André from some projects we worked on together and at a service at Central, I went to poke at him and said: “Dude, do you want to sit down with me and we can come up with something for the church? Create an app for our church? Make an app and give it as a gift or something?” And to my surprise he told me that he was already talking to Pr. Roberto.

If I'm not mistaken in September 2011, we met at Roberto's Pastoral Office and talked about our ideas, what we thought of the system that the IBCBH was using, and what our vision of technology for cell-based churches was.


Andre

And it was nice to see how he also dreamt with us. Roberto presented the needs of a cell-based church for cell group supervision and we were increasingly excited.

I said: “Wow, Fabrício, I think we're on the right path, let's do that right!”


Fabrício

For various reasons, it was only at the beginning of 2013, during vacant hours, at night and on some weekends, that we began to draft and develop what it was until then... I don't think it had a name, in fact it wasn't even a célula.in yet.

Some time later we realized that it was going well and we began to draw up a plan to start testing the application for the church. Roberto Bottrel arranged a conversation with other church pastors and then the name célula.in appeared. I don't even remember exactly how that name came about.


Alexander

And I remember that story there, I thought it was very cool. We were in the living room with Roberto. I, Fabrício, think Pastor Inar Brandão was there too.

At a given moment, Fabrício says that the name is célula.in and that is to give the idea of, in cell group. Of people being in a cell group.

I thought like this: “Well, how sensational!”. It's cell-group model. It is an application for managing a cell-based church, it is being fully designed to be an app for a cell-based church. I think the name was perfect!


Andre

célula.in was born out of a movement almost in opposite directions. A pastor in need of information for excellent cell group supervision. Two small group leaders who wanted to help their church. And the church secretary dissatisfied with the cell group management system.

And then he brought together the three: the church administrator, the cell group leadership, and the pastoral vision, who wanted information so that healthy cell groups could multiply. I think it brought those three things together a lot. The three-fold cord is not easy to break.

I believe that the success of célula.in came from this synergy. It's like it's written in Ecclesiastes 4:12: A three-fold cord doesn't break easily.


Fabrício

At first, our idea wasn't to sell the app or work on its maintenance, we thought: “No, we're going to develop and open the code. Make a free app for churches, open source. And then distribute that code to the cell-based churches. Then each one would be responsible for maintaining their app.

Over time, the idea of open source matured and then we realized that it wasn't going to work out. Because most churches don't have the money to hire a software developer or someone to be able to do the necessary maintenance.

Because any software that is not maintained, any application that does not receive new features, that is not worked on, ends up dying, falling into disrepair, or otherwise plastering people. He ends up hindering rather than helping.

And since our goal is really to reach all the churches and help all the cell-based churches, and to bless all the communities with small multiplier groups, the best we can do is to set up a company that will continue the development of this app and provide necessary maintenance for the churches. And then Célula Software appeared, which is the company behind célula.in.

Our idea of offering a free app for churches, if it's open source, isn't dead yet. We still intend to do this, to do it in stages. We don't know exactly how or when that's going to happen. However, what we are certain of is that we will not leave the churches in the lurch.

And just today, still in this line of serving churches with cutting-edge technology, we provide an API, a REST API. It makes it so that any church that wants to develop any application or functionality on top of célula.in can do it now. Even connecting célula.in with other tools that the church already uses. This is something in line with our Open Source vision.

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Download the original Portuguese interview transcript