How The Summit Church Managed 7,000+ Christmas RSVPs Across Two Locations

For large or multi-location churches, managing Christmas and Easter service registrations can become a months-long strain on staff time. Explaining seat types, communicating location-specific details, updating service capacity, and handling RSVP edit requests can create constant back-and-forth during the busiest seasons of the year.

The Summit Church in North Carolina faced those same challenges — until they used Church RSVP to manage Christmas 2025 service registration. With Church RSVP, The Summit welcomed 7,000+ guests across two locations with significantly less staff stress, far fewer registrant support emails, and a smoother experience for guests from sign-up through follow-up.

About The Summit Church

The Summit Church was founded in Kernersville, North Carolina, in 2001. A second location began meeting in Oak Ridge, North Carolina, in 2013. Today, the church averages around 4,000+ in-person attendees each Sunday across both locations in addition to online attendance.

For Christmas 2025, The Summit welcomed over 7,000 guests across its holiday services — making registration, communication, and capacity management a major operational priority.

The challenge before Church RSVP

Like many large churches with multiple locations, The Summit hosts multiple services for Christmas and Easter. Those events require months of planning and a steady stream of communication, coordination, and registration management from staff.

“We start planning around three months in advance,” said Tanya Dellacona, who serves in a communications and connections role on staff at The Summit. “So six months out of the year we are planning.”

Much of that effort was concentrated on creating, explaining, and managing holiday RSVPs — work that required ongoing staff involvement at both locations.

“That was probably most of what we spent our time on when managing our holiday services,” Dellacona shared. “There are just so many details to cover with two locations that can operate differently. We also offer different seat types, and the children’s ministry operates differently depending on the event. And with new guests attending our holiday services, there are considerations regarding first-time visitors, children’s allergies, and things of that nature.”

The Summit uses Planning Center for many weekly needs and smaller events, but had outgrown the platform for high-volume holiday registrations and needed more flexibility and customization for Christmas and Easter. The church had also tried Eventbrite for holiday services, but stopped using it due to limited branding control and concerns about ads appearing alongside the event experience.

Follow-up after the event was another challenge. The Summit wanted to communicate with first-time guests in a way that reflected where they attended and what next steps made sense for them.

“I help guests take the next step at our church and get connected with one of our ministries,” Dellacona said — a process made harder when follow-up needs to vary by location.

By the time they began looking for a better solution, The Summit needed a way to:

• Streamline holiday RSVP management
• Create a frictionless sign-up process for registrants
• Communicate location-specific details clearly
• Maintain church branding across event pages and emails
• Follow up with guests based on the location they attended

Why The Summit chose Church RSVP

The Summit didn’t just need another event tool — they needed an RSVP system built for the way churches actually run high-attendance holiday services.

Church RSVP gave them the flexibility to build a branded registration experience for Christmas while handling the operational complexity behind the scenes: multiple locations, multiple service times, flexible seat types, per-service capacity tracking, customizable notifications, self-service RSVP updates, and reporting and export tools.

One of the biggest wins for The Summit was branding and customization — something Dellacona noted is often missing in church software like Planning Center and generic event platforms.

“We loved using Church RSVP,” Dellacona shared. “We had so much flexibility on the creative side of things, and were able to keep all our emails branded for The Summit and maintain that sense of community.”

That same flexibility helped on the administrative side, too. Managing notifications and service capacity had previously required constant oversight and troubleshooting. With Church RSVP, Dellacona could monitor registrations, close full services, send updates, and stay on top of changes through the dashboard and reports.

“We’re always having at least five services by location, so the ability to go and close a service in a matter of seconds was amazing.”

How Church RSVP fits The Summit’s real holiday complexity

The Summit’s holiday registration needs aren’t simple — and that’s exactly why Church RSVP worked so well in practice.

Their services vary by event, and the details matter. Christmas and Easter don’t offer the same ministry options, and seating needs can differ depending on the service and guest type.

“We have variations between events. During our Christmas services, our elementary ministries are unavailable, and we only offer preschool, while on Easter, we offer both,” Dellacona noted. “We also have a unique way we break down seats, separating out adult and preschooler seats.”

For a church welcoming thousands of guests across two locations, those differences can be hard to communicate clearly. Church RSVP helped The Summit organize that complexity into a cleaner registration experience for guests, while keeping the backend manageable for staff.

“RSVP made it very clear and easy for us to create our event with our unique needs, and what we were able to present on the registration side was clean and so easy for our guests to use.”

By using Church RSVP, The Summit was not forced to simplify ministry decisions — instead, it helped them communicate their plans more clearly.

What changed for the team during Christmas 2025

From event creation to design to day-of registration management, The Summit staff was able to prepare, promote, and host Christmas 2025 with far less friction — for both staff and registrants.

For Dellacona, one of the most immediate differences was the dramatic drop in registrant edit requests and support emails.

“I’ve managed these events for the last three years, and this past Christmas I got a fraction of the feedback emails from registrants who want to edit their registration, maybe 5 percent of what I’ve had in previous years.”

That reduction aligns directly with one of Church RSVP’s most practical features: self-service RSVP management, which allows registrants to update their own reservation using their confirmation email link instead of emailing church staff for help.

“Out of 7,000 seats that were taken, I had maybe 7 emails from people who could not find their confirmation email. That is not a bad ratio,” Dellacona joked.

That kind of result doesn’t just save time. It changes the emotional experience of managing a major church event.

“This year was like heaven,” Dellacona said. “When we first launched our RSVP page, I thought, wait, is it really working? Because I’m not getting any emails with problems.”

Better follow-up after the event (not just better registration)

Church RSVP also improved the experience for staff after guests attended.

For The Summit, follow-up is a key part of helping first-time visitors get connected — but messaging often needs to be tailored based on the location a guest attended. Church RSVP’s customizable notifications and segmentation by location made that easier.

“You want to touch people after they have come through your doors at a big event like Christmas or Easter,” Dellacona said. “Being able to follow up with those guests and give specific details or offerings based on whether they went to our Kernersville or Oak Ridge location has been a premium experience. We can’t always say the same thing to our guests across the board depending on where they attended a service, but with RSVP, we are able to customize that message and reach the people at those specific locations, which reinforces that sense of community.”

Why The Summit is continuing with Church RSVP for Easter 2026

With Easter 2026 approaching, The Summit is already preparing for its next holiday season with Church RSVP.

After using it for Christmas, Dellacona says the team is no longer comparing platform options the way they did before.

“In the past, we may have looked at other platforms, but since using RSVP, I don’t think we’ve even thought about switching to something else. What RSVP offers is just far superior to anything else for a price that is astronomically lower than what we would be paying elsewhere.”

That combination — operational simplicity, strong customization, and clear value — is what made Church RSVP stick.

A word to other churches planning Christmas or Easter service RSVPs

Dellacona’s advice to churches with similar holiday event needs is simple:

“RSVP is simple to understand. It’s efficient in managing the backend of your registrations coming in, managing it from the site, and keeping everything up to date and current by the time your guests are going on there. And sending out the customized notifications was very beneficial for us since our locations can operate differently. Simple, efficient, customizable — that’s what we love about RSVP.”

Ready to simplify Christmas and Easter RSVPs at your church?

The Summit Church’s Christmas 2025 registration season shows what’s possible when a church has the right RSVP tool for high-attendance events: clearer communication, faster capacity updates, fewer support emails, and a smoother experience for both staff and guests.

If your church is managing multiple services, locations, or complex holiday details, Church RSVP helps you stay organized without sacrificing warmth, branding, or flexibility.

Start a free trial or request a demo to see how Church RSVP can help your team manage Christmas and Easter service registrations with multiple service times, real-time capacity tracking, customizable notifications, and easy self-service updates.