What's New: Week of September 30, 2026

This note covers September 24 to 30. Version 1.19.21 reached the App Store and Google Play on September 27, three days after 1.19.20, so most of what landed this week is already on your phone. The web app and the pastor console update the moment a change merges. Where something is merged but not yet in your hands, this note says so.

On your phone now: version 1.19.21

Give with M-Pesa in Kenya and Tanzania. Your church registers its own M-Pesa merchant number, your phone opens the operator's M-Pesa menu, you pay with your own PIN, and church staff confirm the gift against their own statement. SoapBox never touches the money. Mozambique is built in as well; we are confirming the merchant setup with Vodacom before recommending it to churches there.

Cover the processing fee. Giving by card in US or Canadian dollars, pounds or euros? You can add the card fee to your gift so your church receives the full amount you meant to give. It is your choice, off by default, on the public give page and in the app. Gifts remain a 0% fee passthrough to the church.

Every African country in the picker. The country list for churches and givers now includes all of Africa, not only the countries with a mobile-money rail.

Bible audio that stays with you. The audio player now docks at the bottom of every screen, with a loading state, seek and a full player. There is a Play Chapter button in the reader, audio plans open on the right day and pause properly, and an uploaded sermon video or clip plays right in the app and pauses your Bible audio while it does.

ORA answers in your language. Instead of writing in English and translating the reply, ORA now answers in your preferred language directly. Deep Study Mode, once on, applies to every conversation.

A way out of every setup. Church and ministry setup has Back and Exit on every step, every onboarding question has a Sign In link, and pastors get an Exit Console button that returns to the member home.

Small things you asked for. A reading plan you started stays with you even if it is later retired, a plan day loads its passage when none was stored, more screens read in your language, and the MTN MoMo giving text is corrected in several languages. On iPhone the give sheet now shows and charges in the church's own currency; a church set to yen had been billed the wrong amount.

Giving: quieter fixes that matter

Anonymous means anonymous, in the console too. When a gift is given anonymously, church staff screens and exports now read from views that never carry the donor's name, on every platform. The church still sees the gift and its amount.

Year-end statements for anonymous donors. A church can tick a box in the console that authorizes SoapBox to issue its anonymous donors' year-end statements on the church's behalf, so an anonymous giver still gets a statement without the church learning who they are. A sweep in late January catches anyone the church's own statement runs did not reach.

A trial counts as the plan. A church trying a paid plan through Stripe now has that plan's features during the trial, and returns to the free plan if the trial ends without converting.

For church and ministry leaders

Trim a clip by time. Sermon clips can now be cut from 5 seconds to 3 minutes on a timeline, with or without a transcript. The AI Sermon Clip Generator belongs to the Shepherd plan and above, and the apps now say so up front instead of failing quietly.

Amplify on iPhone. See your YouTube videos, make a post from a sermon clip, then review and approve it, as on Android and the web. Connecting a YouTube channel now finishes in the web console.

Ask before the welcome email. Adding someone to People now asks whether to send the welcome or invite email, and says so if none was sent.

Your country, picked on purpose. A church in Mozambique was stored as a US church because the setup wizard guessed the country from the phone's language. The server now reads the country from the address when none was chosen, existing records were reviewed and corrected, and the wizard makes the country a required pick in the next app update.

A printable welcome card that prints. The visitor welcome card now opens as a page instead of raw code.

Eighteen how-to videos, and a Questions tab. soapboxsuperapp.com/tutorials now has 13 videos for pastors, 5 for members, and a Questions tab that answers the seven things pastors ask most, from "What's the catch?" to "Is our money safe?" and "AI in church?". Each card previews on hover.

SoapBox in your country. More than forty country pages at soapboxsuperapp.com/countries say what SoapBox does in Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Pakistan and the rest, in the words of each country's own video. The Catalog is now in the menu on every page of the site.

ORA and language

Six Ugandan languages are back. Luganda, Runyankole, Acholi, Ateso, Lusoga and Lugbara returned to the language picker on September 27 on Android and the web, and Luganda, Runyankole and Acholi on iPhone. Giving and money screens stay in English in those languages until a native speaker approves them.

If you connect an AI assistant. Members who connect their own AI assistant to SoapBox can now ask it for a daily devotional in their language, a Scripture memory coach that quotes the KJV text exactly, help studying a sermon, and a guided prayer composer. It can read your own giving record only if you grant that permission, and the consent screen spells out what that means.

On the way

• Bring your records with you. A migration archive is merged: upload an export from Planning Center, ChMeetings, Pushpay, Subsplash or Tithe.ly, keep the original file and its rows in your church's own account, and have each kind of record move into SoapBox as the matching feature ships. Attendance headcounts come first, with a 12-week trend and last Sunday's count on the Monday report, and the People export gains a Groups column. All of it waits on the production deploy.
• Weekly sermon-prep kit. The sign-up switch shipped in 1.19.21 on both apps. The first kit is planned for early October.
• Country required in the setup wizard on both apps, in the next update.

Thank you for the reports that drove these. Keep them coming.