Mass Finder: find nearby churches and services

On Pentecost this year, I released the Mass Finder app on the Android playstore along with the more generic Faith Finder app. Initially the app had about a hundred churches mainly in Bangalore and few others in India. But once the app got released I got requests from different places starting with Sydney, Australia and the Bay Area, California. Checking the search query logs, I found requests from other places including the Philippines and Singapore. To serve our users, the database grew and now we have over 17,000+ churches in 400+ cities in 200+ countries. Most of the common fields are based on the Google places search results including the GPS lat, long co-ordinates, the City, State/Province and Country, the Rating and the number of Reviewers.

If you do a "Find a Church" query, you get a list of nearby churches within a radius of 5-20 kilometers (you can select the range) sorted by proximity and you can click on the Car icon to allow Google maps to take you there (we do not believe in re-inventing the wheel and since G-maps does this job very well, we just allow it to help you get there). If you click on the > link, you get more information about the church, including Address, Contact details and Mass timings. These fields may or may not be present and we are on an ongoing mission to fill in these gaps. Here are the features planned in the upcoming releases:

1. On first use, collect preferences and provide quick help
2. Add Adoration and Confession schedules and provide "Find a Confession/Adoration" service
3. Provide the days Mass readings text or audio to help users prepare for the Mass and if it is in a different language they can follow the readings this way
4. If when a "Find a Church" or "Find a Mass" search is performed, there are no results in the vicinity and the church data is not present, inform the user and provide an option to probe using google to find nearby catholic churches. These may be added to the database after verification
5. Enable search of churches at different location from current GPS co-ordinates
6. Provide points and badges for volunteer contributors and promote when they earn badges
7. Integrate google sign in so that volunteers can just use their google id and not have to remember a separate username/password for their volunteer account
8. Provide a language list selection in preferences (currently single language is available)
9. Provide church verification and mass schedule verification option and also feature to report inaccuracies and out of date information

Faith Finder is the sibling of Mass Finder and is meant to be open to all Christians so that all can find their churches and join the services in their respective churches.

Many people helped bring this to where it is now, but especially I want to thank my wife and family for their support and encouragement and facilitating me to work on the app. I want to thank my friend Snehan Solomon for his initial contribution to the codebase and Kevin Rodrigues for early testing and feedback, Gideon Santiago for designing a beautiful logo and icon for the app (you can find Gideon's profile and work here: https://gidsant.myportfolio.com/work) and Amanda for sharing lots of data about churches and Mass timings in Bangalore. With the continued collaboration of our growing community of volunteers and helpers, I'm sure we will be able to improve the database and the app and bring many more people closer to God through the Church.

Defending the Church today

The Church, an age-old institution, has believers around the globe. A big tree cannot sustain unless it has great strong roots. God himself has planted the seed of the Catholic Church. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God's promise of reconciliation between Him and us. Through Christ life and death, we can come back to God, cleansed by Divine Mercy and perfect love.

What times do you and I live in? Is it a time of world peace, a distance from war-time, decades after the World wars? Centuries after Christian martyrs and saints death? Our search for an answer takes us to the feet of Christ, listening to his words on peace and strife. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Jesus speaks of inner peace, one that gives deep assurance.

Outside, Jesus warned of division, challenge, opposition, suffering and persecution. If one wonders why he said so, the pilgrim of truth finds meaning only deeper. This is challenge to us to a path that needs constant prayer. We are up in arms not against men, but against the treachery of the devil - forces inside of us and speaking to us in different ways. As Saint Paul wrote to early Christians in Ephesus, Greece, we fight not against flesh and blood, but the powers of darkness (Eph 6:12). How do we stand up to this challenge? What do we need?

This is a battle unlike any other. One that we can fight only because Jesus Christ is on our side. A battle against sin and death, forces of abortion, violence, sensuality and selfishness, imperfect and pleasure seeking love. Yet, God loves us and knows each hair on my head and yours. He only wants to give freely, the gift of love, truth and grace, the gift of life itself. If God is so good and has created us himself with love in our hearts, it is no wonder then, that we thirst for God deep inside. This holy thirst is good and has as its purpose, our complete peace and joy.

For any battle, we need to leave behind all hindering thoughts, take up armor and fight with faith. In the same way, we need to lay aside our fears, ask our Lord to cleanse our past, seek to be in communion with him each day, defend as one us, the Church, united in the Eucharist, in the presence of Christ, the light of the world, the Prince of everlasting peace, the greatest lover and shepherd, who alone can lead us against all arrows and swords. The greatest battle of all time is on, but we can only have the great King on our side if we pray, ask forgiveness and accept His gift of his presence. Let us all pray together.

Come, Emmanuel.

He who stands firm till the end will be saved.