Podcast Episode 210: Episode 183: Special Edition with Ryan Smith

Description

Calvary Chapel Chattanooga knew Rock was the solution to bring everything together under one powerful system, but the technical complexities felt overwhelming. Join us to learn how they did it—and how your church can, too.

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 this special edition of Rockcast. This is the podcast dedicated to the Rock community, and today we have a special guest with us. I'm Emily Forman, and I'm excited to welcome Ryan Smith, the Director of IT and Finance Assistant at Calvary Chapel Chattanooga Church. Welcome. Hey, Emily. Great to be here. We're so happy to have you, Ryan. Tell us a little bit about your church and how you came to Rock, because it's a pretty recent story, think. Yep. Yeah. So we are a church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. We have about 2,200 on our weekend attendance. And we have been using a bunch of different platforms for managing our church data for many years. We came from a long relationship with FellowshipOne. We have been using Planning Center for our service planning for quite a while and children's check ins and things that. We have been using church teams for our small groups management for a long time. Basically how we found Rock was we realized we had all of our data and all of our people in a bunch of different areas and nothing was cohesive, nothing talked to each other. We actually reached out to a company in Knoxville that helps people find CRMs basically. We reached out to them, this was many years ago before I was even in this position, and we're looking at what might be a good solution to bring everything all in one basket, one place. He brought up several different things and presented it to us. Then we had a transition of multiple people coming through in my position as things happen at church. I think that's normal. Yeah, I think it is. So it kinda just fell off and it was always a thing RockRMS, that might be a good solution for us. It was just always out in the background. We just kept plugging along with what worked. That's the long and short of how we first found out about Rock. But yeah, we've been working to get implemented more recently. That's been my goal to get us up and running. We'll talk more about that, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. So you did officially launch on Rock this past summer, right? Yes, we did. In June. It sounds it was quite a journey. Now, what you're telling me is a problem that's common to most churches and the reason they come to Rock, they want to consolidate their tools, they might feel pinched in certain areas, so they run into Rock, which of course is a flexible toolkit for churches. But you took a kind of interesting approach, and I think that our listening audience here on the podcast will be really intrigued to hear about that. Can you tell us about maybe your first approach that didn't work so well? Let's just start there for now. Yeah. Our first approach to it was to work with a company locally that had got another church up with Rock. We talking to them about, we have all this data, we have bad records, we have records from four different systems we want to consolidate. When we really consider this, how do we make Rock work for us? How do we get all that put into one basket? We went on a year long discovery with that company of them looking at the data we had, trying to figure out how much it was going to cost, trying to figure out how we could pull the data from our current sources and how we could really get it all combined into Rock. Due to some unfortunate circumstances, number one, one of the biggest things was just the cost involved in It was almost cost prohibitive for us. When you look at ministry in a church budget, you try to do the best with what you have. Absolutely. And just using God's resources wisely. And the reality we came to is we have a bunch of data that isn't good. It's not useful really in any way for us. Why would we spend the money to try to bring that all in one place? Between that and just the relationship issues with that company, we decided not to go that route. That was our first go at it. We started to take a step back and go, maybe we should just wait on all this. Let's not necessarily move on any of it. It's a lot of money. We don't think this is the right partnership to be working with for that solution. So we just paused there. That could be a frustrating spot. I imagine under certain circumstances, it could just be something that leads to someone saying, forget it, we don't care, we're gonna stay where we are. We've spent a lot of headache on this getting there. But the interesting thing is that for your church, it seems you sort of doubled down and you knew where you wanted to go, and so you took a pretty radical approach. Yeah. You and I actually had a conversation just and you were checking on our implementation status. You said, well, don't want this data or it's bad data, then why don't we just abandon it? Have you thought about that? That is a shocking statement to hear, right? Yeah. But it really didn't hit me that hard because I was , what, that's true. What are the things that we really need to have? What do we need to have for our church to keep moving forward? The other thing too is how fragmented we were. We weren't really looking at a lot of historical data for our church to make decisions. It wasn't something where we had all these reports or different things we were really working with other than just the very minimal things that we use to work off of. So I was , what? We really don't need all of that. That could be interesting idea and then we can start rolling it out slowly and move forward with that. That's what we chose to do. Yeah. I think for a lot of churches in our community that may have a larger technical teams or budgets to put towards those kind of things, or maybe they've been really working hard to pull data from multiple sources into specialized reports and they are currently using that historical data very heavily. It is a radical approach to consider a church moving and leaving their data behind. Of course you have data exports from your previous system as reference, but those did not get imported into Rock. And I'm curious to know how you're seeing the data pipeline working with data coming into Rock currently, how that looked at the beginning and how it looks now. We decided that we would roll things out very progressively as far as just It was really for me to not have to deal with every department, everything launching all at one time. We started with our children's ministry because we felt that would be a low barrier to entry for most people. So we started with kids check-in. And so we basically did a family pre registration form that we sent out to the entire church and said, Hey, please fill out your information, give us your current name, phone number, email address, children, ages, all that kind of stuff. We announced it for about three weeks before we switched to actually doing check-in for our kids check-in. And then we got a lot of buy in on that. People gave us filled out the form, gave us their data. And then we used that and then that launch weekend for children's ministry, we just had extra staff there to go ahead and input people in quickly. And it worked really well. Honestly, it was a very successful launch and that basically gave us children, ages, parents information, phone numbers, emails that are current and good. And then from there we've launched into our financial giving. So we moved our giving over to Rock, which again is another big chunk of people. Really gets you And the nice thing was a lot of them already had their information because they are checking kids in. Yes. So they just had to give us their payment information and set that up. And then from there, in the fall we rolled out our small groups. In late August, early September, we launched our small groups for the year because we do a semester based small groups. We launched that with InRock and so that gave us another big area where people are interacting with us, maybe some of the older generation that maybe hasn't given yet, but they aren't checking kids in, they're in a small group. So we just use that way to kind of bring people in. Then our next project that we're working on now is our serving teams. So moving our serving teams from Planning Center over Rock. So we're just really moving methodically through each area and bringing that data into Rock and then working from there. It's been a good progression. But what does your internal Rock team look ? Initially it was just me. Well, was me and another guy that was our IT assistant worked with me, but then he ended up leaving and moving on to a different job. Then it was just me. Then more recently, we actually just hired a developer to help us on the internal side of things. Was somebody that was in our body, goes to church here, been around for a long time. His wife actually works here on staff in our children's ministry, and he had recently gotten laid off from a job and was looking for something, so we brought him on as well. So currently there's him and I. Great, well thanks for sharing that. I know that's a big question a lot of churches have is what do you do with your internal staff, right? And so it sounds you've tried a couple different internal groupings of people, you've been key to it, another hire is a great idea, and partnering with a Rock partner to help do some of the initial, especially implementation based heavy lifting, is helping your team get to where you need to be. Then that progressive approach of adding in another type of service, another type of feature to move toward where you want to go. That's really in line with what we've been kind of calling this essentials track for churches that are implementing Rock in a non custom way. So at the conference, we rolled out these terms that were trailblazing and essentials as being sort of different approaches to using Rock because you can use it in a totally custom manner, but you can also use it right out of the box and find a lot of value and benefit just by having a combined data warehouse, a place everyone can log into, all the information is easily available, and just so many features are there. So we would say that you're using this Essentials track, and we actually had a quote from you as part of our community keynote during the conference as well, mentioning just the value you saw in leaving your data behind. So a lot of churches listen to this podcast that speak to other churches. They might be themselves on the trailblazing track, but might be speaking with churches on the essentials track. Would you mind just giving your insights again into why leaving your data behind might be a great idea? Yeah. I think that the beauty of Rock that we all use it for and appreciate it for is just the fact that it's very customizable. That's what we found when we were looking for something to manage all of our data was, yes, you can use Planning Center. Yes, you can use Church Teams and Fellowship One. It's kind of an older system. But we were stuck in the box. And we found different things that we were trying to get out of that box. Number one. And so that a big priority for us. And so but we kinda felt as a smaller church, without development team and people that had a big background in that, that it was in and trying to figure out how to get all of our data moved in. It was gonna be just this insurmountable issue that we had. That's where just that different perspective really made it feasible for us. I think that the value behind it is being able to jump into rocks with both feet and not have all the baggage behind you. So that that's that's why we really wanted to do it that way and and why it's worked for us because we haven't been dragged back by all of that. So There's been a few challenges I would say that have still come up. One thing I may have done differently is giving. It was one of those weird transitions. You're going to have giving in one system and then giving in another system. And how do you, while you're still migrating people over, because we still have people that have recurring gifts in our old system and we're trying to get those off. You send emails, you send texts, and you call through the list and people still don't do it. This year, forgiving will be a bit a bit more cumbersome just because we're gonna have to give giving statements from both and combine those and try to get them out to people. So if you could do a clean break, that would be more ideal. So there is still some, you would say old data as in people's old gifts and things that that we're still working through. It wasn't a perfect system, but it just allowed us to be able to be more flexible with what we were gonna do. The other thing is to I mean, the resources to go back and clean up your data is a lot, especially when you're working in ministry. I was thinking about this today. There's just so much it's when ministry is happening and and a lot churches just don't have people that could just sit and go through data all the time. You realize that there's so much that you just there's so many people or that may have come or are no longer attending or duplicates that have been created and all these things that it just becomes this mountain of information that is hard to work with. Starting with a clean slate and putting in practices of de duplicating and really encouraging our staff. If you have conversations with people where they've moved on to another church or they're no longer attending or whatever, make sure we deactivate them. Getting a fresh start on all of those things where you can really start with good information and work from there. I think it's just been so helpful for us. Thanks for sharing that. I often think about moving data as a lot moving houses. Well, just the whole implementation process. But data in particular seems you take a bunch of boxes that were thrown together pretty hastily, right? it isn't even that your spoons are all in one box and your forks are in another. It's everything gets kind of dumped in, you're in a fast move, and your boxes of miscellaneous items get dumped in the garage of your new house. And I know a lot of us have had experience moving, and it can take years to get those boxes unpacked. The essential things you're going to find because you need them for life functions, but some things just never get unpacked well. That's one headache that you've been able to leave behind. Mhmm. Yeah. I have a propensity in my own personal life to just throw things out if I haven't used them in a long time. Maybe that was part of Maybe was part Well, in this case. You may be right. Yeah. Don't need that data. Let's move on. We haven't touched it anyway. But yeah, I mean, there is truth behind that. That's a good analogy just because you do find how much that you're dragging around with you that you never touch, you never look at, and you don't care about. Getting a fresh start from this perspective has just allowed us to use what's right in front of us, use the church that we have around us, and move forward with that. That's great. In our past conversations too, it seems the newer option of having managed hosting for Rock opportunities has been something that also helped you move quickly and not have to really worry about talking about servers or keeping up with them. That's been a good option for you too. Yeah, that was one thing that we discussed back and forth. We talked originally and that's throughout the process. The first time we looked at Rock too was we have a server here at the church. But just scaling that up to be able to run Rock, make sure it was maintained and all that, talking to our IT partners because that's part of my job here. So we looked at that and we looked at having the IT company that supports us hosted there. Then we also talked about that other company that we were looking at implementing with. When we were talking to them, we were going to have them host it. But yeah, I think that having an out of the box hosting Cloud based that we can just roll with was super helpful. That's great. I know I to consider the implementation period to be different from the launch period. So if I'm talking with a church that's considering moving, it's just a heavy lift. It's a lot to consider. If you can really narrow down what you need to launch to, , what what has to happen next weekend for success, that list is a lot smaller than everything that has to happen for your whole ministry to feel adequately moved in. If you can change those up a little bit and view your launch period as your minimum viable product, and then slowly implement other things after the fact according to internal priorities. It's just a lot easier to not have to have a fully dedicated implementation team on your staff to be able to do multiple things at once. It just makes it, I think psychologically easier to approach as well. Yeah, definitely. Just the fact that we haven't had to just pull the plug on one thing and have everything launched in another. It made it a lot more feasible. Still don't know if we would have done it at the time that we did without a lot more prior planning and a lot more work on the front side versus this rolled out approach that we did, which was I think the way to go, especially for I don't know that it would work for everybody, but for us just because when you think about the reports and the user accounts and all of the security levels and all the different things that you have to have, let alone the sites, the pages, all the things that you have to have up and running to make it successful. That list is huge if you just write it out loud on paper. Yeah, it can be. But we really just, okay, this is the page we need. This is the thing we need. This is where we work from and then launch from there. It made it a lot more bite sized so that we could all make it work. So that's been good. Ryan, let me ask you really quickly about change management because I know the technical part of an implementation for something as broad as the base of your church, right? And all the features and data, that's hard. But for people, the change management with staff can be just as challenging. How has that gone for you? Really good. There's been great buy in. I think that part of that was because everybody is working in systems that they didn't necessarily love to start with. I prepped everybody. Said, there's growing pains with these things. But so far there have been very few features or tools that somebody has needed that we haven't been able to just get launched right away. Then the rest of it has been , okay, well, you've always done it this way because that's what you looked at, but maybe we could look at it this way because we do have this information or this tool that can do what you need it to do. Most of that's been super easy, just a redirecting of rather than it's that page, the way it works that way, it's now going be this page and the way it works this way. I think people are excited on our staff about getting in this new system, it all being cohesive. The buy in part has not been difficult for us. We had the support from the top down if that makes That's critical. Absolutely. Our lead pastor said, hey, this is the direction, this is what we wanna do. Then our leadership team had that same feeling towards it. So we've just kind of from there been able to work through the rest of the, filters down to the rest of the staff. I think that's key is having that buy in from the top. Because we were so fragmented before, but being this is what we're doing, we're going with one solution, Then it just takes away a lot of the, well, I this or that or different things that people might talk about. It's been good. Especially when the leadership's behind it, that's pretty key. Let's summarize this. Let's say that I'm listening and I'm just a solo pastor or maybe I'm a director that has lots of different areas I'm a part of, and I just know our team needs to move to a system with more opportunity for us. What would your recommendation be to that person? Yeah, I think just jump in and get started. You really just have to determine what are your needs, the minimum get along things that we need to have in place and start there? That really made it just what was in front of us. We can start working through those things. Then the other part would just be work with a partner, especially if you're a small church and you don't have the resources to have your own server, maintain it, get it up and running. Also the development background for your team, you don't have somebody that has major development background that's able to customize and build all your reports and do all those things. I would just say, work with a good partner. There's good partners out there, know what they're doing, they do this on a daily basis. Somebody you can ask the questions to. The Rock community is great. You can go on and ask the Rock community, they're super helpful. But in those, when you're trying to get up and running, a lot of times you don't have that , let me put it on the forum and see what people might respond. Usually they respond pretty quick. But I'm just saying, it's nice to have a phone number or an email or someone that you can be , I'm going to reach out and get a response right away. Because when a page isn't working or something that's mission critical is down and you need to have somebody you can go to. That was super successful for us in having a partner that could do that. That would be the two things that I would say is make sure you have a good partner and work with them to get implemented. That's great, thank you. And it's so nice to know that no church moving to Rock right now has to do that alone, there are others who have gone before. And you are really helping kind of set a vision for how a church could move in a different way than we've seen typically in the Rock community, but we know there's so much possibility there. So I would say if you're a church listening to this podcast and your experience wasn't essentials, you took more of the custom trailblazing route, consider as you're talking to other churches, would this church be more of an essentials church or a trailblazer church? And consider the types of responses you give them and the direction and connections that you give them inside the community to help validate and support the direction that might be best for their ministry. And just know there are options out there. And Ryan and Calvary Chapel Chattanooga have kind of visualized in a way that is totally accessible and approachable how you can move in quick manner, that's successful, and the staff feels great about it, and you can be on to a better place without having to maybe invest so much time and money. So consider that and make sure that you're guiding churches in the direction that makes the most sense for them. Ryan, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story about how Calvary Chapel Chattanooga has moved to Rock and your approach to it. It's so interesting to see the diversity inside the Rock community in so many aspects, And this is a great new aspect of diversity we're really happy to to introduce and provide some thoughts around. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Emily. Alright. Cool. Thanks. That was great. Yeah. 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.