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Over a decade ago, Illuminare Publications launched as a publisher of liturgy and music resources to help parishes engage in authentic liturgical renewal. In 2019, they rebranded and expanded as Source & Summit. The name calls to mind the Second Vatican Council’s recognition of the liturgy as the “source and summit” of the Christian life.
Source & Summit still produces print resources but has also rolled out a revolutionary new digital platform. It helps parishes to elevate the liturgy by combining licensing, music planning, a music library, score customization, and liturgical content delivery in one easy-to-use, cost-effective module.
It’s one thing—and not a small thing—to publish a missal. It’s completely another thing to create an intuitive, seamless digital product that helps parish ministers think through every aspect of liturgical preparation and implement it on the spot.
The Source & Summit team had astutely observed the liturgical needs of parishes across the country and they had the expertise to fulfill them. They also had some experience with software development and understood the possibilities it could offer their customers.
But ultimately they were musicians, liturgists, and product designers…not software engineers. They needed to partner with a technology team that had the equal expertise needed to build a highly complex platform from the ground up—and then make that platform a clean, simple experience for the user.
More than that, Source & Summit needed a technology team that truly understood, with the heart as well as the head, their vision of serving God in the liturgy. Armed with a tall order, they came to 5 Stones.
5 Stones began by working with the Source & Summit leadership team to architect the project, choose the digital tools, and fit the design of the platform for its implementation. And the architecting was extensive. It embraced an expansive collection of liturgical texts for the entire year, hundreds of songs in multiple languages—English, Spanish, and Latin—and the capability to generate printable and downloadable orders of service.
Moreover, the digital platform had to include a subscription service for the parishes and offer multiple product tiers with scaled pricing. The 5 Stones team factored in all the many details while doing the architecture, data modeling, and documentation.
It was a hybrid team. 5 Stones collaborated with the software engineers on Source & Summit’s own staff and executed the project with them. We did most of the early project management while also helping Source & Summit interview and choose new internal hires.
Over time, as the digital platform neared completion, the 5 Stones team trained the newly expanded Source & Summit tech team to take over all of the roles we originally fulfilled, while staying on as high-level technical consultants.
The 5 Stones software development team is an experienced, smart, problem-solving, and high-performing group of servant leaders who are willing to do as much or as little as we need at every step of our product development journey.
Adam Bartlett, CEO, Founder Source and Summit
“From the beginning of our startup phase and through the building and delivery of our digital product and parish subscription service, 5 Stones filled virtually every gap and met virtually every need I could have imagined,” reported Adam Bartlett, the CEO and founder of Source & Summit. “Their team—from top-level leadership down to the lowest-level staff—clearly share and exhibit the same passion for serving the Church and for helping apostolates like Source & Summit achieve the highest levels of success.”
Bartlett went on, “The 5 Stones software development team is an experienced, smart, problem-solving, and high-performing group of servant leaders who are willing to do as much or as little as we need at every step of our product development journey. Because their goal is our success, I always know that their recommendations to me are for what is best for our organization and not necessarily for theirs, even and especially when that means building our own in-house team when the time is right.”
Bartlett noted that Source & Summit used 5 Stones technology services in close integration with our other core offerings, as many clients do. He had only the highest praise for the whole package.
“The same can be said of the customer service, marketing, and design services that 5 Stones offers—all of which have been available to us whenever and to whatever extent we have needed them,” Bartlett said. “They remain a fulfillment partner for us and I know that they will always be waiting in the wings if ever a need for their expertise arises. I truly can’t recommend 5 Stones enough to any Catholic organization that needs contract or fractional support at critical phases in their growth and development. Source & Summit would not be what it is today without them.”
Meanwhile, Source & Summit’s collaboration with 5 Stones continues to bear fruit in hundreds of satisfied parishes across the United States, where pastors and parish musicians rely on Source & Summit’s broad, deep, and hassle-free treasure trove to prepare beautiful, faithful liturgies.