Podcast Episode 211: Episode 184: Community Christmas Gifts and Growing in 2025

Description

Before the year comes to a close, the Rock team has two gifts for the Rock community. (Did someone say embedded articles from The Bible Project?) Plan for what kind of warrior you are going to be in 2025 and hear more about the latest in the Rock community!

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 that takes you behind the scenes with Rock RMS and the team that builds it. We're so thankful for our community and love having an opportunity to share what we're doing with you. I'm Emily Forman, and with me today are Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo, and we are going to talk about Rock. Nick, kick us off with an update on where we are with our versions. We'll talk about sixteen point seven, '16 point '7. That had a great first round of alpha, and we're in the second round of alpha testing. Our alpha testers were great. They again found some things that we're getting rid of in the final release, and it will be going to beta very soon. Great, and we do love our alpha testers and beta testers. We just couldn't have the world go round without them. Yeah, they have unique environments and find things that we don't always catch. Then after that, we're still polishing 17 things, we're kind of internally alpha testing it and documenting. So that's pretty exciting too. That's fantastic. And , it seems impossible, but here we are in the first week of December of twenty twenty four, and dare I say that Christmas is around the corner. We have a few ideas on the Christmas front. John, do you wanna talk about Yes, we to give Christmas presents. One year, several years ago, for those of you who've been around a while, we actually did twelve Days of Christmas, and every day you got a little present in the form of some Rock thing. Kinda learned our lesson that 12 is kind of a lot. Was a lot of work just trying to make those 12 So this year, we have the two days of Christmas. Excellent. And you get them all in one day. So I guess it's the one day of Christmas. But they're pretty they're pretty cool. So the two features that are surprises that we haven't really talked about, but we want to give out as gifts, they're really exciting. The first one is a whole bunch of new articles in the content library. So we've been working hard with a partnership with the Bible Reading Project, and they have a whole bunch of articles that they've given for free for anybody to bring into their instance and add to their content channels. So some really good quality articles there. So go ahead, pull those in, use them. We're really excited about that. Also too, what I learned too through working with them, first of all, they're great people. But second of all, they also have all those videos, and I know you're probably familiar with their videos on reading through the Bible and their explaining all that. Those videos are free to use also. Right now, don't think it makes sense to put them in the content library because they're not really articles. They're videos, but they encourage you to download them and use them wherever you'd . So definitely check that out too. That's an amazing gift, and big thank you to The Bible Project for making that possible. Yeah, very generous with that. The second gift is a little similar, if you're familiar with the reading plans that we have in Rock, mainly used in Rock Mobile, but don't have to, we've added two new translations to the Bible reading. So we've always had ESV, that was our launch one. We've added NLT and the message. And I think that's a really great series of three, because you have one ESV, which is very technical word for word translation, maybe for more advanced readers. You have the NLT, which is a great intermediary. It's easy to read. It's just your go to maybe for first time readers of the Bible. And then you have The Message, which I think is even easier to read, adds that little bit of I don't know, I kinda would probably use the word flowery, but that's probably it comes off negative, I don't mean to be, but it's just a little bit more approachable for them. So I feel we have a very very basic and intermediary, and then really an advanced one. And so, really excited about having those as a free for you guys to use. And so if you have Rock Mobile, you can bring those in. Now, when we look at that as a feature, the goal is not to replace a u version. Right. However, we're seeing what a lot of people are doing and getting a lot of success in is trying to help build daily quiet times inside the app. So churches want to help empower that when they're people, they wanna give content. What part of that, a big part of that is Bible reading, but it's not the only part. they wanna have prayer, which I think is great. Prayer is content. Sounds weird, but it is. Daily content, it's fresh. It's two factors. It helps the person you're praying for, but it also helps you because it helps you get into the mind and closeness of God and requesting different things. So I think it allows the churches to create these diverse daily spiritual practices. And so, yeah, the goal is not to necessarily replace a YouVersion. Mean, that's just a huge, powerful, great system. But it's interesting seeing the innovation that's happening by these churches. Obviously, can't add a lot of different experiences to YouVersion as a church. So they're building kind of their own in a certain way. So it's really cool to see that. And I would highly recommend if you haven't heard or seen some of the churches who've done that, the Summit app has something called Daily Revival, and it's amazing. It has prayer, it has Bible reading, it has praying for unreached people groups. There's a new people group every day. It's praying for missionaries, there's events that the church can add in on any given day. Really, really cool. Also, LCBC has something called, I think they call it the daily experience. Similar, but a little bit different. And just really great inspiring things that I think more and more churches are looking to create. I know there's a few other churches who are actively pursuing those kinds of concepts. That's amazing. So those are the two gifts. Hope hope you look into them and and and check them out. Definitely, , the the articles are a quick easy one that you can write get to easy. Fantastic. And if Christmas is around the corner, that means so is the New Year. Yeah. Boy, it's gone quickly. And now's a great time to reflect on the achievements that each of us have leveled up with, but it's also a good time to start thinking about the next year. Now at the conference, we talked about one of the things we started out the conference with, in fact, was just talking about this concept of which kind of warrior are you? And so for those who weren't at the conferences, real quick, we set the framework that we're all fighting on the front lines. Many people in the areas that use Rock probably don't see themselves on the front lines, and maybe see themselves as supporting the front line, but we're not. The digital ministry that we're empowering, we're on the front lines of the spiritual warfare. So we are warriors. And there's a few types of warriors that we talked about. There's the surprised warrior, maybe the person who thought they were in the logistics, but they found out, No, no, you're on the front lines. Wake up. That's so surprised. There's the apprentice, Oh, I knew I'm a warrior, but I had a lot of learning to do. And that's great. There's maybe the indifferent warrior. Ministry is hard, right? And sometimes there's a season where you just kind of get a little indifferent and you just , I don't know. I'm just gonna take it easy right now. I need to , pull back a little bit. And we just tried to say, Hey, no, this is so important. You got to step in. The house is on fire. We got to get people out of this house. I think another common one is the weary warrior. We're just so tired of We're still engaged, we still have that passion in the heart, where maybe the indifferent warrior doesn't, they lost their passion. So it's still the passion, but you're just worn out. And the last warrior is battle ready. So you're ready to go, you got your skills, you're fresh for the fight, and your goal is to help everybody else. So again, surprised, apprentice, indifferent, weary, battle ready. So I think it's a really good time too to think now, okay, you heard that at the conference, what's changed? Has anything changed? And if not, have you done anything to maybe make that change? Because it's not gonna change unless you do something to change it. Maybe if you're battle ready, how have you reached out to help those who maybe remind people, maybe if they're surprised that they are in the front lines, if they're apprentice, help grow them, give them the skills that they need that you have. If they're indifferent, encourage them to get back in the game, weary, take their load, or just give them a sense of encouragement. So for no matter which warrior you are, we should be actively taking steps to get to fully battle ready. we will make sure we're all battle ready. So just a reminder, we don't want that just to be a one and done type topic. Think through those. Again, surprise apprentice, indifferent, weary, battle ready. And if you're not battle ready, figure out what are you gonna do starting now to get battle ready for 2025. '1 of my biggest worries is I'll be the same person I was at the beginning of the year at the end of the year. And I will be, if I don't take action. So now's a great time to be planning that. And it all starts with recognizing and acknowledging where you are today. We have to start with realizing where we are, because that's the only way we can make steps to figure out how to get to where we wanna be, and realize that the systems that we have in our life now, or the habits, are the things that have helped us be what we are. And if that isn't battle ready, we might need to make some adjustments to those to get ourselves into that position. I was really impressed too, at the conference, we asked the question, right? We used the interactive experiences feature of Rock, and put the interactive graph right up there. It was so cool. One are you? , going into it, was , I don't know, is anybody really gonna open up? I mean, it was all anonymous, right? We didn't know. It was just great to see people , Yeah, I am indifferent. And you said, the first step is recognizing it. Or a lot of people were weary, and that's great too, because it lets you say, Okay, maybe I need to figure this out. But I think it's also good eye opener for a lot of us to say, okay, we need to help encourage more, because there are a lot of weird people. So again, figure out which one you are, figure out how you're gonna get battle ready. And if you're battle ready, you still need to level up, because you're never good enough as our warriors. There's always, especially in technology, there's another way to level up. Whether it be through leadership, technical knowledge, lots of communications, there's a lot of different ways we all need to level up. Very exciting, and and a great time to revisit all of that information. So together as a community, let's take the time to understand where we are, and just realize that if you are weary, sometimes the act of encouraging someone else and working with them to get to their next level can be really inspiring and encouraging for you as well. So just remember that pouring into others while it seems an energy move can actually be very energizing as well. And that's why this community works so well together. Because together we can help each other make those steps. Yeah. And that's what Rock's all about, about community. Yes, it is. It's also about features. It's about features, we have some really cool ones on the horizon. Yeah, just wanna give a quick update on v17. So we're really close. So that's really exciting. Now there's a lot of things in v17, but I just wanna talk about two, because it's the big two, right? There's a couple other big ones, but the big two that everybody's really excited about, LMS and Communication Wizard. So LMS is pretty much done. In fact, we're hoping in this next pre alpha that's going out this week, so should be launched by the time you're hearing this, that you'll be able to actually play with it on the pre alpha server. We're gonna also release a very, very rough draft of a documentation for LMS. And we usually don't put this out ahead of time in a super rough draft format, but we feel , well, if you wanna play with it, you better know how it works. And LMS is a very, I wouldn't say it's complex, because that's not the right word. It's just robust. And there's several different ways that you can run it. There's a very simple way that we call on demand, which I think is what most churches are gonna use. It's very simple way of using LMS. But there are a couple of churches who have very complex residency programs and almost a university, which has semesters and all these other things. And they wanted it to also be able to support those. And some of those were actually the ones funding it. So we wanted to definitely support that. Plus we know it is a good use case. I mean, there's not just a couple churches doing that, there's several that are. And so we really need to set the vision. Okay, there's two modes and explain these modes and there's just everything, highly configurable, highly extensible. So we feel we need to get that documentation out. The only thing I'd warn is give us some grace, because we still are doing our final QA. There's a couple of things we still want to polish out. Also, documentation, I said, is a rough draft. But we do want you to start playing with it. I know several churches have shown interest so that they can start understanding it. So when it comes that they're ready. The next big dog feature is the Communication Wizard. That's been a tricky one because there's just We really, really want that to be just amazing. And trying to get the ideation on how the user experience should be, but more importantly, all the different properties that we should allow. Now it's tempting to say, well, just add them all, add everything. And that would It sounds cool, but it's overwhelming. And we're trying to make this really, really usable for ministry users. So finding that right balance between power and simplification has been a tricky thing. I think I've said it before, one of the other challenges was trying to get another feature to work with it, which is adaptive messaging. I think we have that kind of worked out. It is possible we might ship without that initially. We'll see. What I don't wanna do is I don't wanna hold up the whole feature for that one linkage. Several churches that shared some information that they're having some challenges with the tool that they currently use, and it's going from a free version to a very expensive version. And so we don't wanna be holding that up for that one thing. We're not gonna give up. if it doesn't ship in '17, we're not giving up. But we wanna be responsive to what we're hearing from the community and let that be held up. So that said, the team that's working on it, the sub team within our team that's working on it is doing an amazing job. Absolutely amazing. Some of the things, we kinda the developers specifically who's working on it, we kinda showed them , Well, it'd be kind of cool if it could do this, but it was , oh gosh, I'm not sure how we're gonna get that to look as good as this other tool. You did it. It's That's amazing. It's , woah, that's really good. So we're really excited about it. And this is one of the first projects too, that our new designer has had a chance to put in time into. I wouldn't say it's full on that because it kind of started halfway there and he kind of came and polished it out. So, I think if he'd been from the very beginning, we might've even had a little bit more polish, but it does look, it looks great. And I think it's it's shedding a light onto what you'll see more and more within the product. So I'm excited about that too. So those are two features that, , we're really excited about. But here's the thing that happens right now in this season. We start, and the core team, of us at least, start moving on. And we've already started moving on. So we're already planning the features for 18. Again, I'm going to say it, but I feel a hypocrite, because I always say this and it never happens, but we really want this one to be a smaller version. We do want that, that's true. It is true. We want it. The problem is the community keeps telling us what they need, and we keep trying to be responsive to it. We have some very exciting features planned for that, more communication features. Super excited about what eighteen's going. So it's fun that we're already starting to think about 18. Also really cool is we've talked a lot about redesigning the user interface for Rock, giving it a level up polish, and that will be an 18. And in fact, we have a lot of that kind of almost done. And our plan is as soon as 17 releases, that we're gonna immediately put that into the pre alpha, so that you guys don't have to wait long, you'll see Great. But it'll also give us a time to work out any kind of kinks or polishes publicly, so you guys can all help. I might just spill the beans. There's a dark mode. Oh. Yeah. Optional, of course, for those of us who are children of the light. My god. And not children of the darkness. There we go. I'm very opinionated about that. Yes, dark mode will be enabled. And I think the really cool thing is it's not just a dark mode, because that's not how we Rock works. We just don't go hard coded dark mode, that would be too easy and too kind for ourselves. Instead, we've created a whole framework in our CSS framework that really makes almost anything you do also natively works inside of dark mode, if you follow our pattern. So a lot of thinking went into that. That's why it's taken a while. It's not just oh, make it look pretty. It's , hey, we have to reimagine the whole CSS framework and how it works. And we have a new developer working on that, fresh out of college in August, but man, dude, he is killing it. So much attention to detail, so much effort. I'm very excited. And we'll talk more about how it works because it's, a lot of things are going away, less is going away. But we gotta get 17 out first before we talk too much about that. Yes. So plenty on the horizon. And on that note, we actually have some focus that we're doing in the community next year that we wanna talk a little bit about now. You may have seen a renewed interest in communications regarding what we're right now referring to as our regional communities. And our goal with these is really to help people connect with the people who are closest to them geographically to continue to build those strong relationships that really empower the community. What we don't wanna do is create siloed micro communities. And so that's been a big focus for us as well. And we we really want to focus on smaller groups of people as part of the community that are helping empower the whole. And so for that reason, we want to kind of re term our regional communities more as hubs. And that goes along with several other things we really want to bring to the forefront as well. Right now, leaders of these hubs are challenged with connecting with their people, but maybe without the best tools to do so. So we wanna just pour into the way we connect leaders of these regional hubs with the people that want to be members of them, make things a little bit easier, make them something that you can be a part of more simply than we currently have. So we're excited to begin talking about that and rolling that out. And that'll enable some great connections outside of the conference. That conference time is a good time for the whole community to come together. But those in between meetup times are just really encouraging, empowering, and move everyone's Rock experience forward. Yeah. Always felt a little awkward because we say something , We're one community. And then the next breath we say, Oh, and there's 12 other regional communities over there. It's just vocabulary, there's different types of hubs, aren't there? Yes, there are different kinds of hubs. And that's another good important reason that we wanna do this. Right now, there's a geographical hub in many locations where we have lots of Rock churches. But what we're starting to see also, and it really started with the digital ministry group, is groups that are focused on a particular subject matter, particular mini mission inside the community. And because that happened there, and now we're seeing one around data and data analysis, that's really taking off as well. We wanna empower those groups similar to the geographical ones so that they can also have the encouragement and connection to move those micro missions forward as well. Yeah. So that data analytics hub is a channel right now, just added. And that officially will kick off next year in terms of trying to get them to meet up and do some But you can join the chat channel now, conversations have begun. But that's really exciting. And I can't wait to see the sharing of what you guys are doing in data analytics. I think that's a big huge thing and kind of at the starting point of wanting to go deeper into that. I think watching them learn from each other is gonna be exciting. It is gonna be exciting. There's definitely been a lot of interest in that area, and we recently just dropped a blog post this week as well on describing one of the newer tables inside Rock, and and posted that in the channel there with a link. So definitely check that out if that's up your alley. It is something that will be fun to connect people around. Yeah. And speaking of community, inside our regional hubs, the ones that are geographically based, we we love to help promote our roadshows. Our Rock and Roadshows are the ones where we can then expand the knowledge and excitement of Rock to the other churches in the area. And we're already looking for hosts for roadshows for next year. So if you would to start thinking about that, reach out to us and let us know you're interested in hosting, and we will help get you set up with a brand new presentation and some more information on how to make that happen in the new year. Additionally, we just wrapped up our very first Lava class, and that has been in the making for a long time. We had a lot of great feedback on it. Many things went really well, and it's fun to see people gaining confidence with their Lava skills, closing the gaps between what they may be self taught and the other information they needed to know. It was just really great talking with that crew after the class was over. In fact, there was a podcast that we recorded that you should be able to listen to shortly from those who've graduated from the class. And they all said, Highly recommend. Take that class. So there's another one coming up in January. We do still have some open seats, and we encourage people to go ahead and sign up for that if that's an area where you'd to grow next year. Yeah. If you're gonna be battle ready, maybe it's Lava. Lava, SQL, Masterclass, there's lots of classes for you. We actually have a very full range of classes now, and don't forget about them. And don't forget about your new staff who join your Rock team as well. It may be something that they need to have a little bit of training to help get them up to speed. Now here at the end of the year, we're also focusing on donations. That is the power, that's the fuel that keeps all of these things going that we're talking about here today, whether it's product or community, ideation, or the tactical work of getting things out the door. So we encourage a couple things for you at the end of the year here. Double check your commitment for the year to Rock and make sure your donations line up. Occasionally, maybe a credit card might fail or something, our team does look for those and and reach out as best we can. But if you could do a double check on that, that would be super helpful as well. Don't forget that if you have a budget surplus this year and your fiscal year lines up with the calendar year, you might have a use it or lose it on your budgeting side. Help us out if you have a little budget surplus, we'd love some extra funding that helps us keep NextGen going at the same time as everything else we're developing, which we didn't even talk about that today. So many wheels moving over here. But if you can allocate any of your budget surplus toward an extra donation, that really helps our team and our thin margins to help keep producing what we are. And then finally, don't forget in your budgeting for next year to account for your early access level donations, the classes you need for your team to level up, and your conference expenses as well. So just kind of plan for conference to be around the same cost that you had this year, and we will have more information on that continuing to come up as details finalize. Okay. That was quite a bit of information about what's coming next year and what's happened this year. And we want you to know how grateful we are for you as we reflect on all of this here at the turn of the year, and the Rock community is at the top of our list of things that we're excited and grateful for. Thanks so much for tuning in, and don't forget to subscribe so you can hear the next podcast as well. 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 rockrms.com/hosting today.