Digital Lighthouse Designs · Ann Arbor, Michigan

Designing applications that unlock the potential of human relationships.

A small software studio run by a working pastor — building the platforms that help leaders keep watch over their people, every day, one person at a time.

See the fleet Meet the keeper
The Premise

A lighthouse is a working building.

It isn't decoration on the coastline. Someone climbs the stairs every evening because there are people out on the water whose names the keeper will never know — and the light has to be on anyway. That is the job we build software for.

I

Keep watch

Pastors, spiritual directors, administrators, parents — people responsible for other people. Every product exists so that no one quietly drifts out of sight.

II

Daylight the work

The work of care is invisible until it fails. Care that lives in one person's memory — or one color-coded spreadsheet — leaves when they do. Our software brings it into the light, where a whole team can carry it.

III

Working tools, not demos

Every product here began as a tool for the founder's own ministry and is run in real congregations and real practices before it's offered to yours. Shipping to your own people first keeps you honest.

The Fleet

Seven lights on one coastline.

Different buyers, different waters — the same conviction underneath: relationships are the point, and software should make room for them.

For churches CareNote Retire the spreadsheet. Track pastoral care. Pastoral care management for care teams — requests, visits, tasks, and follow-through — so nothing lives only in a spreadsheet or a pastor's memory. In service from solo chaplains to a twelve-campus church of twenty thousand. Flagship chart name · Polaris carenote.app ↗ Church Vitals See your church clearly. Act decisively. One dashboard for the numbers a lead pastor actually steers by — giving, attendance, engagement, and care — across every campus, with goals and trendlines instead of gut feel. churchvitals.app ↗ Church Dashboards You hold the people. Unified reporting that gathers the scattered numbers from your church systems into a single view, so leadership meetings start from the same page. churchdashboards.app ↗ Mobilize Relationship-first church management. Congregant care, small groups, events, giving, and the money side of ministry in one place. Currently serving its member congregations — no public signup. chart name · Navigator private harbor
For practices, people & parents Directee Keep the hour sacred. Practice management for spiritual directors — scheduling, session notes, invoicing, and records in one quiet place — so the hour before a session belongs to prayer, not administration. directee.app ↗ Prayetic The ancient rhythm of fixed-hour prayer. The Divine Hours, carried in your pocket — scripture and original meditations for the offices of the day, keeping time the way keepers always have: by the watch. chart name · Horae my.prayetic.com ↗ Summarize It Eight school emails a day. One brief every morning. For parents: every school email, ingested and distilled into a single calm morning brief — so the signal about your kids never drowns in the flood. summarizeitforme.com ↗

There is an eighth light on this coast. It isn't software — it's the keeper himself.

The Chart Room

Named for the way home.

Inside the studio, every hull carries a chart name — instruments for finding your position in the dark, hours for keeping the watch. It started as a naming convention. It turned out to be the mission statement.

Polaristhe north star → CareNote
Navigatorthe one who plots the course → Mobilize
Horaethe goddesses of the hours → Prayetic
Sextantfixing a position at sea → the keeper's own books

Navigation has never been about the instrument. It's about getting people home.

The Keeper

Built by a working pastor.

Digital Lighthouse Designs is Donnell Wyche — a pastor in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who kept needing software that didn't exist, and eventually stopped waiting for someone else to build it.

Every product in the fleet began as a tool for his own ministry: tracking care so it wouldn't fall through the cracks, keeping the hours of prayer, running the unglamorous machinery of a congregation. What worked was offered outward — to other churches, other practices, other families keeping their own watch.

The studio's rules are short: simple beats clever, tested beats promised, and shipping to your own people first keeps you honest.

Correspondence welcome · donnell.wyche@digital-lighthouse.com

Donnell Wyche, founder of Digital Lighthouse Designs, smiling outdoors
Donnell Wyche · pastor · designer · keeper
The work of care is invisible until it fails. Good software daylights it — so the whole crew can carry what one keeper used to hold alone.
The Eighth Light

Pilotage — bring the keeper aboard.

Not every light is software. Churches are steering into AI and modern operations through a crowded harbor of tools, with no pilot who has run these waters. Pilotage is a standing advisory relationship with Donnell — the same counsel the fleet itself is built from.

I

Chart the course

An AI and technology strategy your staff can actually run — where it genuinely helps your ministry, where it doesn't, and what to do first. Standing hours each month to think, plan, and decide together.

II

Rig the ship

Modern operations instead of cobbled-together tools. One example: replacing a mega-church's scattered spend process with programmatic cards, expense policy, and bill pay on a platform like Ramp — set up in weeks, not budget cycles.

III

Mock it up

Counsel that can draw. When talk isn't enough, you get mockups, prototypes, and working designs from a builder who ships — so your team evaluates something real, not a slide.

Monthly retainer · $2,500–$3,500 Three-month minimum · then month-to-month Strategy · vendor selection · best practices · build-alongside
Request pilotage Who you'd be working with
Lens