Blog - Central Christian Church: Contributing Toward Innovation

When the vision for Rock RMS was formed almost five years ago, the development and leadership teams at Central Christian Church in the greater Phoenix area were on board. They recognized a solution that would work for their church and wanted to contribute toward the mission of providing access to innovative technology for all churches.

As contributing members in the development of Rock RMS both developmentally and financially, this five-campus church of 10,000 weekly attendees began a gradual launch process in early 2015. After about a year of planning and working, they went live in January 2016, with the frontend website launch a month later.

Creative Director Jason Ake shares how the launch affected the Central Christian staff. After a general early communication, the rollout team then began to focus on introducing the staff to Rock. "Three months prior, we held a 'Taste of Rock,' a simple lunch and learn environment that allowed people a chance to see, touch, and experience Rock with well-planned presentations and videos."

As the go-live date approached, they began small class trainings with one-on-one support for each user. "This allowed very hands-on and practical training of everyday and advanced functions."

Now that Rock is their new normal, Jason has noticed how much they use content channels, which was unexpected. "It has been great to develop custom content views with channels allowing a very easy method of displaying changing content throughout the website."

Another favorite feature of the Central Christian team is Rock's mobile access, making their jobs much easier. As he reflects on the general reaction they've had during this season of change, "the best stories and quotes are not of words but of sounds. The 'ooooh's' and 'aaaaaah's' were at a constant during the trainings and sneak peeks. And spoke volumes to the level of excitement people had for the future of our data management with Rock."

Top Tip: Circling back and getting constant approval from ministries during the development phase would have saved a lot of time closer to rollout, as teams and ideas changed with time. Communication is key and I would highly recommend written communication for easy checks and balances.