Bringing Innovation & Beauty Back to the Message of the Gospel

Jason Jenson – Tilma

Almost ten years ago, a friend and I came up with an idea we could not shake: bring beauty and innovation back to how we communicate the Gospel. We looked at the early Church and saw a place that was known for art and innovation, but it was something that was hard to find in our Churches. When people used to say, “that’s a good website… for a church”, it used to break our hearts. The articulation of the gospel to our culture was somehow held to a lower standard.

Our conviction eventually grew into Glass Canvas, a marketing and brand agency for churches, non-profits, and ministries. As we worked with clients, one of the biggest barriers we noticed was the problem of not having a digital tool that fit their unique needs, especially as a parish.

I remember being in the car with my friend Pierre and wondering, what would it be like for parishes to all be connected? What if the Church’s universality could be reflected in a digital reality with shared resources and efforts? What if we could alleviate the pressure on every parish to be excellent in technology and content and all the other expectations of a social-driven world? 

So we began building tools for apostolates and ministries that would eventually become the Tilma Platform. It is a place for all parish tools under one roof that would help parish teams utilize simple but effective technology that could help them make more ministry impact in the world.

We started to realize just how necessary Tilma and other tools were to the growth of the Church. So many are leaving the Church, and much of this is because of the slow dissolution of Christendom as the foundation of our culture. People no longer grow up having an inherent understanding of who God is and how relevant He is to our lives. 

As a culture, we are now told that we are responsible to make our own meaning, and that there is no transcendent order. We’re no longer told how to find happiness and instead, we’re told we have to figure out how to create it ourselves. And if we start to map out where we see the trajectory of the world going, we understand that what’s worked in the past as productive ways to engage our culture is not going to work in the future. 

Just like the friends breaking open the roof for their paralytic friend to meet Jesus, sometimes getting the Gospel to people requires us to do it in a way not usually done. We see a new model emerging for the Church that requires communicating the same truth but in a way that resonates with the emerging culture we find ourselves in. 

Last year, we felt God calling us to the next big step: provide Tilma as a resource for the entire Church. It would mean putting all our efforts into this product and starting over as a company. It felt radical and unknown, but we knew we had to trust Him. This is exactly the time when God opened the door to the OSV Innovation Challenge.

We have always had faith in providence; God will provide what we need in His time, and OSV Institute for Catholic Innovation was another way He carried us through. When the Challenge fell into our lap, we were unsure of where the journey would take us, but it opened up our eyes to really see exactly where God was calling us as a team and gave us the courage to put everything on the line. 

Prior to the Challenge, we had assumed a lot about how to be a product in the ministry world; but being in the room with other leaders in the Church helped us understand and affirm the need we were trying to fill, while also leading us with the right guidance for our unique kind of business. 

One of the biggest benefits was learning about the product startup model. Coming in as an agency, we were stepping into territory we hadn’t fully explored before. With some very insightful questions from our mentors in the Challenge, we saw with more clarity than ever before that we could help the Church in a bigger way by becoming a product company.

Most importantly, the right community is incredibly important. Our OSV Challenge community was coming from the same heart and motivation. We could have gone to incubators or corporate structures, but the OSV Challenge brought together those same benefits within the context of serving the Church and guiding people to Jesus, and this nuance changed everything. We didn’t have to explain why sacrificing money for the mission sometimes fit into our business model or why listening to God was how we made important decisions for the company. We were introduced to some of the smartest, most connected and influential business people while staying true to who we are. 

The opportunity with OSV Institute for Catholic Innovation became the springboard to step into the market with confidence and timeliness. Since then, Tilma has passed significant markers and continues to grow: officially launching as its own brand, starting in 55 individual parishes across North America, and adoption by a new diocese.