About Steward

Built for churches, by someone who gets it

Steward started because I watched churches I’m close to struggle with problems that better software could solve.

ZS

Zach Spangler

Founder & Builder

I’m a technical project manager with seven years of experience delivering software at financial services and manufacturing companies. I’ve shipped internal tools, web applications, and enterprise systems throughout my career. Steward is my first full product—and it combines everything I’ve learned about building software with everything I know about how churches work.

I grew up in church, I serve in ministry, and I have family and friends who pastor churches of all sizes. I know how churches operate, what they actually need, and where the gaps are.

Why I Built This

I started building Steward after watching a church close to me take major building damage from a natural disaster. They spent months going back and forth with insurance, trying to piece together timelines from memory and old emails. The building damage was significant, but what came next was worse: months of scrambling to pull together documentation that should have been captured in real time.

If they’d had a system that recorded everything as it happened—what occurred, when, who was involved, what actions were taken—the insurance process would have been faster, less painful, and far less stressful for the person it all fell on.

I’ve also seen churches go through legal situations after serious incidents—and the ones who had real documentation were in a completely different position than the ones who didn’t. The difference wasn’t whether something bad happened—it was whether they could prove they took it seriously and handled it properly.

These aren’t hypothetical scenarios. They’re things that happened to churches I’m close to. Every time, I kept thinking: this doesn’t have to be this hard.

I Understand What Churches Actually Need

Through my family and my own church involvement, I have a direct line to very different types of churches:

Small churches

50–150 people on a Sunday. Budget is tight, staff is thin, and every tool needs to earn its place.

Large suburban churches

1,000+ weekly attendance, multiple staff, and dedicated safety teams. They need structure and role-based access.

Urban church plants

300–500 people in an urban setting. Security incidents, youth events, and community outreach create unique documentation needs.

That range matters. What works for a 50-person church is different from what a 1,000-person church needs. I hear from churches across that spectrum regularly.

The Problem I Keep Seeing

Most software built for churches falls into one of three buckets:

Too expensive

Enterprise pricing that doesn’t account for church budgets. A $500/month tool is a non-starter for most congregations.

Doesn’t fit

Corporate software repackaged for churches. No understanding of ministries, volunteers, or how church staff actually work day to day.

Doesn’t connect

Isolated tools that don’t talk to anything else. Data lives in silos. Nothing works together.

My goal with Steward—and everything I plan to build after it—is to fix this. Really good software, purpose-built for churches, at a price that makes sense. Software that works together, both across our own planned modules and with the tools churches already use.

Our Principles

Built for how churches actually work

We design around ministry workflows, not corporate processes. Every feature starts with how your team actually operates day to day.

Priced for church budgets

Transparent pricing that starts low and scales fairly. No enterprise minimums, no feature gating that forces you into a tier you don’t need.

Connected, not siloed

Everything we build shares context. Your data works together across tools—and we’re building toward integrations with the platforms churches already use.

Trust through transparency

We build in public, share our roadmap openly, and make decisions based on what churches tell us they need.

What’s Next

Steward is just the beginning. Incident management is the foundation, but I’m building toward a suite of tools that churches actually need—tools that work together, share context, and don’t break the budget.

I build in public and I build based on what churches tell me they need. If you have ideas for what Steward should do next, I want to hear them.

Get in Touch

I’m a solo founder and I read every message. Whether you have questions, feedback, or just want to talk through whether Steward is the right fit—reach out.

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