MinHub Apps are a product of Magic Makrs, LLC.
Kurt Libby
MinHub Creator & Chief Helper
Kurt’s PROJECTS
App projects and articles about building apps.
Pastoral projects on spiritual disciplines for following Jesus.
Dear pastors,
I made this for you.
Since 2007 years, I’ve worked as a pastor. I’ve preached. I’ve prayed with people. I’ve comforted and confronted people. I’ve cried with people. I’ve cared for people.
If you’re reading this, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.
Starting in 2014 I also had MinHub—this side project youth ministry app that has so much potential and it’s fair share of bumps and bruises along the way.
In February of 2020 I realized that the shifts due to COVID-19 were going to make the preaching part of my current tent-making season more difficult, so I doubled down on the app-making side.
I don’t even know how to tell you how hard I’ve worked or how it lights a fire inside of me or how committed I am to making sure these apps continue to surprise and delight you and help you and your ministries flourish.
Between February and August of 2020, I learned to code and spent nights and weekends and almost every early morning behind the keyboard so I could make these apps for you.
My family and I haven’t been able to attend in person worship services for the longest stretch we’ve ever experienced. My son is immunocompromised with type 1 diabetes and the risk is just… we just can’t.
You know what I mean.
Families still need care and people need pastors to check in on them and we all need spiritual direction. Having a system to track that and find out who may be slipping through the cracks is more important than ever.
I’ve got a burning passion that has been reignited to make the best apps for the way that ministry actually works—and for the first time, I’ve got the skills to work on and deliver on my vision.
Almost every ministry database app out there is built on top of a database for giving. As a pastor, I get that tracking giving is important, but earning the privilege of caring for people and actually doing that work, recorded in a feed of ministry moments will always outweigh a database of tithes and offerings.
And other apps that promise community are either built on a model that sells data to advertisers or rely heavily on email while we all bang our heads against the wall with spam filters and open rates and promotion tabs.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
So here’s to all of this getting better and making the most of technology in a way that brings us closer together and helps us understand what is actually happening in our ministries!
Love you all.
More than you know.
—Kurt Libby
The MinHub Origin Story
For our first project, we set out to make a great app to reduce the amount of hours spent in youth ministry with tracking attendance and other student data.
Since there are many database solutions out there, but none geared specifically for iOS, we wanted to start there. But more than that, we wanted to build something that works for smaller ministries first. We wanted to make sure that you own your data and that you won’t have to budget for a subscription fee if you don’t need it.
We also want to scale to the point where we could help any size ministry. We are taking the longview with a lot of thoughtful design and research in our development.
But the story starts way back.
Starting in 2005, Kurt helped as a volunteer youth leader at Oroville Nazarene Church. At that point, Reagan was a junior high student. Within a few years, Kurt made the leap into full-time vocational ministry. Kurt got to disciple Reagan as he grew up and went off to college at Northwest Nazarene University to study computer science. Since Kurt had been in a Computer Science program at the University of Nevada, they stayed in touch and had a lot to talk about.
As Kurt continued to work with youth and grew frustrated with the hours spent on data tracking, conversations started around the idea of building an iOS app solution. During Christmas break at the beginning of 2014, Reagan and Kurt finally sat down to design and build what would one day become Youth Ministry Tracker, which was rebranded in June 2015 to MinHub Youth.
Meeting weekly on google hangouts became the routine that would help push the app into reality. We started the email list to get feedback from youth pastors that might be interested in the solution we were building and were blown away at the response.
We added Lori to our team as the customer support specialist. She helps keep everything running smoothly and indexing feature requests for future development.
In just a few months, over a thousand youth pastors joined us. As we launched the app to kick off the new school year, we hit the #1 spot in the App Store in the productivity section. With over 3500 churches using MinHub, it has become an incredible resource for youth ministry world wide.