Podcast Episode 212: Episode 185: Special Edition Lava Class Panel

Description

Rock’s very first Rock Lava Class wrapped up in November and many graduates are already putting their newfound ninja skills to work in inspiring ways. We couldn’t wait to invite a few of them back to share their stories—why they took the class and how they’re making a difference in their churches now.Curious about joining an upcoming Lava Class? Find out more and sign up at rockrms.com/rock-lava.

Transcribed Content

This episode of Rockcast is brought to you by Rock partner Triumph Tech, a full service specialist partner. Rock partners provide crucial support for Spark Development Network and important services for the Rock community. Connect with Triumph Tech today at rockrms.com/partners. Welcome to Rockcast. This is the podcast dedicated to the Rock community. And today, we have a special edition for you with a community panel of people just you who have recently completed our lava class. We're so excited to welcome our guests today so they can share with you what the experience was in coming to the class, what their experience was ahead of time, and you might be able to see if this could be the right class for you. So we are going to start with introductions, and let's start with Michael Garrison, the trainer for the class and content producer. Michael, could you please introduce yourself? Absolutely. Yeah. I'm excited to be here. Thank you. So my name is Michael Garrison, as you said, and I've been with this team since 2018. But I actually started off before that as a consultant for my church, very, very part time and not at all on staff. So they introduced me to Rock in 2014 when they asked me to just install this new program that they'd heard about, and I had no idea what kind of a platform I was jumping into at that point. So as I was rolling it out for my church, I jumped into the community, which at the time didn't even have chat. It was kind of online messaging boards, I was talking with other people, other churches that were already using Rock and trying to figure out how to get this thing up and running and managed to. So it was a great experience getting my church up on Rock in 2015, was when we went live. And eventually, joined our team, I said, in 2018. So I've been around, and and I also I teach a couple of the other classes for the community as well. That's right. So the community may see you in an instructor role or possibly on Rocket Chat. In fact, if there's an issue with Rocket Chat, you're probably the one refreshing the site as well. So you have That's right. Yeah. That's a lot of lot of experience in the community. Well, Michael, can you tell our listening audience, those who may not be aware, just a a quick, what is Lava and why it's important in the Rock context? Yes. It's really important in Rock because if you think about Rock, one of the strengths is how customizable and how personalizable it is, if that's a word. So we want every page to be able to be based on what we know about a person, whether they're logged in, whether they're not logged in, which means that it's responding to information we have about them or their site or their visits in the database. But we also know that administrators at churches have quite enough on your plates. Nobody has time to learn another programming language just to reach into the database and get information back. So, LABA was added to Rock way back when as a really approachable way of reading information and showing it on the page. It's almost never about changing information in the database, so it's a nice safe space to play around in. Really, the biggest risk in creating a lava template is creating a template that takes a long time to complete. So it's a safe place. you're not gonna break your database, and it just allows you to read information. And it's almost always about showing that information on the page. So greeting somebody by name or figuring out if they're baptized or if they're not baptized and showing different content when they're viewing that page is really what love is all about. So it sounds you're really unlocking a a new layer layer of power inside Rock, where you're personalizing your experience of the person who's maybe on a web page or interacting with an email based on what about them in your database. Absolutely. It's a a key that opens up the closet that all the information is stored in. Okay. That's really helpful. Now let's talk about this class that we just finished. This was the first ever Lava class in November 2024 for future context if someone's listening back to that. We had a wide variety of people who attended. In fact, we had to open our registration up a few times to add extra people in. So there's a great diversity of class attendees and graduates. Michael, who should be taking this class? So the biggest difference between something Masterclass and Lava class is Masterclass doesn't assume that you have any Rock experience. It always helps you to have Rock experience because you're always gonna learn something in master class. So the deeper you can start, the more you're gonna learn. But in Lava class, we're recommending that you already understand a lot of the features in Rock. So when we talk about getting information out of a workflow or getting information out of a connection request, In the lava class, we're not gonna stop and define what these features are and how they're used and how they're configured. We're just assuming that generally how they work, and we're showing you how to get the information out of those to create that personalized experience. So anybody that is creating content or supporting people who create content on their site, whether it's the external site for your members and your visitors, or the internal site for your staff, Lava's gonna be the way that you customize all of that. So anybody responsible for those pages or supporting people who are would be well suited for this as long as you kinda know some of the features that we offer. Great. That is a really helpful summary. So without any further delay, I would to introduce our panel of class graduates from the Lava class very recently here. If you could each please tell us what church you serve at, where your church is located, and what each of your roles is on staff. Let's start with Sina. Hi, yes. So I am Sina, as you said, and I work at Christ Fellowship Church and we're located in South Florida. My role is application support manager. Thanks for joining us, Sina. Next, William, would you mind telling us a little about yourself? Absolutely. Yeah. As as you said, my name is William. I serve at Fellowship Bible Church of Northwest Arkansas located in Northwest Arkansas. And the roles I play at the church, primarily in managing Rock, which includes the database, the website, parts of the app, that sort of thing. Great. Nithi, please introduce yourself. Hi. So I'm Nithi. I work at Box Church. It's in Connecticut in New England. I work as the data administrator, which involves managing the Rock product and yeah. our a couple of our other things the app and some other digital products that we have. Thank you. And Carrie? Hi, I'm Carrie. I'm with Cornerstone Church in Chandler, Arizona, which is a suburb of Phoenix. We have about 4,500 people in person in attendance on the weekend, and I'm the director of our intentional movement team. It's myself and three other three part time employees. Great. Thank you so much. We are thrilled to have you joining us here for a panel today to discuss your experience with the LAVA class. So we're gonna ask a few questions, and I'd to start, Carrie, with you. You just mentioned that the team you're on is called intentional movement. What does that mean, and how does that interact with taking a LAVA class? Well, our mission is to use to assess where our guests are spiritually, and then intentionally move them to their next step in becoming a fully devoted follower of Christ. So we use Rock all Rock Churches, we use it to collect all the data that we can about our guests and create this person profile so that we can assess where they are. We collect giving data, registration data, attendance data. We collect everything except attending a weekend service. We collect if a guest attends a growth group, if they serve when they serve, if they submit a prayer request, counseling, all that to build the data. And then we, our goal is to use that data to help the guests move to their next step. An example would be if a guest said they told us in some way that they were interested in a mission trip, then we have that data. And if a new mission trip opens up, then we'll send the communication to let them know, hey, here's a new opportunity that we hope they'll get involved in. Great, thank you. Sina, you said your expertise was self taught, you shared with us before you started, and that you had copied some Lava templates and then slashed them to make them work for your new context. What would you say about the class? Was the content difficult? How did it build on skills and knowledge you already had? Yeah. So the class, I would say is not difficult, especially as Michael said, if you have the foundations of knowing what the different blocks do and how you use them, really it's content rich but he is great at explaining and there's a systematic approach to learning that I really appreciate. So for me, I've learned this means I would just hack and slash Lava. And one example I would say is we spin up a lot of group finders for signups for our people. And I know when I copy and paste the lava template, I know I need to keep this little bit of code that I have idea what it means, but a big difference, capture this, modulo that, whatever. But now I know what those things are. Then to take that another step further, realized that what I'm hacking and slashing is lava from 2018 and there's so much more now that actually lava can do and now I know it too. So I'm looking forward to not only going back and updating those different Lava templates, but doing it myself, and I'm excited about that. That is really exciting. Way to unlock that, Sina. We're thrilled to share that experience with you. William, you mentioned in the class chat that you had taken the SQL class several people in the Lava class had previously. And when you approached that SQL class, you didn't really know SQL at all. But you do have a little bit of experience with Lava. Can you just tell us a little bit about what that experience is and whether the class was intimidating here for Lava? Was it difficult to navigate? What was your experience with it? Honestly, Michael simplified it a lot. There was some foundational knowledge for me that was missing and taking the class really filled in a lot of gaps and blanks. The benefit of having taken SQL class prior, I could really start seeing all of the different connections and how Lava actually relates with SQL. I can see the gears clicking in my head with how it all interrelates. Having that baseline knowledge of SQL really helps flesh out what Lava can do in terms of my understanding of it. Again, I said, Michael was just fantastic presenter and stepped through everything and filled in a whole lot of gaps in my foundational knowledge. Great. Thank you for sharing. Now, Nithi, can you share something that you learned in class that would be especially helpful for you? Yeah, absolutely. So we learned about Lava and workflows and how they tie together. Much Sina explained earlier how she hacked the Lava templates, I would do the same with workflows which already had Lava in them. So I know this works, so I'm just gonna copy it and then modify it and hope it works. I didn't know the difference between raw value and object and when you would use those. And Michael did an excellent job of just tying all of that back in and so many things that I had done before or planned to do kind of clicked together as he was teaching us. A specific example would be we had this entry commitment entry process that we've been developing and pre populating the person's information and then sending them a personalized email by setting the delay to the next day as a confirmation that we've received their information and stuff that. So it's already been useful and it's only been less than two weeks. Wow. That is a great example. Thanks for the being specific with it. That really does help people anticipate and understand what you gained from the class. William, what's a way that you're putting Lava to use right away? Yeah. So there was a project that's kind of been on the backlogs for a while trying to get things to work effectively for our finance team for we have we have kind of a manual system for disaster relief. So we put a web page online, with a button to to donate, and to or to give, excuse me. And the finance team has to go in and activate certain accounts and do that sorts of stuff. With Lava, I think I've already got the bones and the structure of trying to build with a workflow, with API requests, and with Lava to be able to make that simple one button solution for finance to be , turn this on and turn it back off. I've got some plans for that one specifically and some other fun stuff, but flesh those out a little bit more when I get there. Sounds good. I bet the beginning of the new year will be full of new projects and activities for you once you get through the Christmas season For sure. For sure. Very exciting. Carrie, you mentioned the idea of using your Rock data to help your guests have a personalized experience. What's an example of a way you're using Lava or will be able to now to make that possible? Well, we have a separate external website that we send our guests to. We'll only send them to our Rock instance if they say, I want to register for a class now or something that. So an exciting change that we have is we've now integrated our app with our Rock instance, so when the guest logs into our app, they're actually logging in on a Rock page. So now we've got all that data, now we've got an opportunity to use it. So we're going to use Lava to personalize our messages exactly what Michael was talking about. An example would be if they haven't been baptized, we'll tell them about a baptism class that's coming up. If they have been baptized, we're going to say, Remember the joy of being baptized, share that with your friends. So we're going to be able to do much more of that now through LAVA, and another thing is we have badges. So when our guests do, they give, they serve, they're in a growth group, we have badges to incentivize them. We've been just using Font Awesome icons, but just recently we found out about the Triumph Badge Maker, So we're transitioning to that, love the way it looks, but we've got those those really cool icons with lava that's telling our guests either thank you or encourage them to take next step. That's really fun and makes a great experience for your guests as well. And I love how you mentioned gathering the data ahead of time, because we're talking about how to use that data for personalization. That's the icing on the cake, right? But if you don't bake your cake first, you've nothing to put it on. So one really critical thing to remember is, are you gathering the data? Is it coming into your Rock instance or is it going in other places? So part of the strategy of personalization is definitely the gathering of the data. And then it's using the tools Lava to help make that personalized. So that was also a really great reminder, think. Now, Nithi, you had mentioned to us previously that you were excited about some possibilities with Lava as well, and you're planning to build out a volunteer portal and a robust connections process. How are you going to use Lava to take that to the next level? Yeah, we're excited for all that is happening in churches. And right here at Vox, we're similar to what Carrie was describing, going We use the discipleship pathway. So we're moving Kinda moving people to the step. And we have volunteers help people along their discipleship journey. So one of the difficulties that we've had in the past is the onboarding of Rock, going into the Rock and figuring out where to go to get to the connection request can be difficult for volunteers to learn. We're kind of moving that to the external webpage, which is also hosted on Rock on their My Account so they have access to their connections, just the ones that have been assigned to them so they can get to connecting with the people that they're guiding along the pathway right away. So just many ways in which we're gonna use Lava, definitely with reports that we will make available to the volunteers and all of these use the connections process as well. Just really excited for the possibilities there, and the class has been a great blessing. These examples are fantastic and a great illustration of how Rock is an innovation toolkit for churches. This is just the next level of things that can be used to help tie it all together. Sina, help us out here. What would you say to someone who's on the fence about taking a class this LAVA class in particular? How does this class maybe increase your confidence in your role or the way you serve your church? Yeah. I think if you think of LAVA as a language, it is a programming language. My fluency level was really beginner. And then I'm seeing people write graduate level thesis. Get there. I don't I'm looking at this stuff, but I I I can't seem to figure out how to get from where I am to there. This is a great for you because you get all the building blocks and it is drinking out of that proverbial fire hydrant. It is a ton of content coming at you. But I will say that out of I've taken master class sequel, check-in. This is now La La La. What I love about this class are the slides. There's a lot of thoughtful content in the slides. So I won't remember absolutely everything I learned in the class because it was a ton of information but the slides are really good. the takeaway is really good for going back and remembering, oh yes, I get that now, I remember that. So I'm excited about I'm more confident that I can get things done rather than kind of feeling stuck or going to the community or to a partner to help. And that just gives me confidence in my role and what I can do for my church. Well, we are so excited that you and all the rest of your classmates who are now graduates as well have been able to walk with us through this first class experience. And don't forget to pour back into the community because there are still people who are wondering how to get to the next level and you have insights now. You might not be writing a graduate thesis yet, but you can, and you can get there. There may be people also wondering, so don't forget to pour some of that confidence and inspiration and assistance back into them. Thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate your attending the class and supporting Spark in that way, We're so excited for what's to come and the ways that you're going to continue to use Rock for personalized digital ministry. Thanks for joining us and for being a part of this special RockCast. Do a church that loves the idea of using Rock but hasn't taken that leap yet? With managed hosting, churches of any size can get access to Rock's amazing technology, hassle free. With just one click, Rock's managed hosting removes the roadblocks that might stop a church from switching to Rock by making the process simple. Churches get the ease of a SaaS church management system without losing any of Rock's powerful features. Are you ready to take the next step or share with another local church? Visit Rock r m s dot com slash hosting today.