Podcast Episode 199: Episode 172: Navigating Church Management with Insight and Innovation

Description

Discover the latest insights and innovations in church management with the Rockcast podcast! Join Emily Forman, Jon Edmiston, and Nick Airdo as they discuss topics like utilizing ERA to track attendance and engagement, leveraging streaks for predictive analytics, and optimizing age brackets for targeted outreach. Stay ahead of the curve in church administration and leadership.Show Notes: Version Releases: https://www.rockrms.com/releasenotesRock Best Practices: ERA Documentation: https://community.rockrms.com/documentation/search/?Q=ERA Streaks Documentation: https://community.rockrms.com/documentation/search?Q=Streaks+&bookCategory=RX24 Information: RX Registration - https://rx.rockrms.com/ Hotel link- https://www.marriott.com/event-reservations/reservation-link.mi?id=1694551025506&key=GRP&app=resvlinkRock Classes: https://community.rockrms.com/classes Rock SponsorsWe are thankful for our Rock Sponsors and their support of the Rock Community. Visit their websites through the link above to learn how they can help your ministry and confirm that those you work with are as invested in the success of Rock as you are!

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, the podcast dedicated to the Rock community. Join us as we dive into behind the scenes happenings, offer insights into our community, and explore leadership dynamics. I'm Emily Forman, and joining me are Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo. Welcome to Rockcast. Nick, kick us off. What is going on in terms of our release schedule? I'd love to. There's never a dull moment. We are now in v sixteen four land. Everybody now has access to v16.4, went through its alpha and beta testing. It's got a number of bug fixes in there, and we are working on 16.5, but that's not ready yet. Okay. Now, we are also just started v15.5. So for anybody that's still back in the v15 branch of Rock and can't, for some reason, go to 16, we're doing another tiny little patch in v15, so it'll be called v15.5. Okay. And it's currently an alpha. It's a quick alpha and a quick beta, and that should be out maybe by the time this podcast is out. Because as a quick reminder, we don't push back a lot of the issues to 15. If there are big issues, we will, but not all issues get pushed back. There's some conversation I think about that in the community a week or two ago about a major feature and the unsubscribe, automatic unsubscribe and could that be pushed back? And it's , you can't do that. Taking code from newer releases and pushing it backwards is insanely difficult and causes all kinds of trouble. Other problems. Yeah. It's interesting because you see that in your life. There's a lot of products that people upgrade and it's , Oh, I wanted this. And no one does it. And why? Because it's insanely hard. Yeah. So even if if Rock v 16 has features you don't need, it's still good to just push on and upgrade to v 16, unless there's some particular reason why you can't, but there shouldn't be. If there is, let us know. Yeah, well I think, my experience, a lot of it is because of customizations that have been done to core and it takes a long time to test. And that's true, but that's why we recommend you don't do that. That you stay on the cleanest core as possible. And as we work with churches, that's what we do. Make it clean as core as possible. And we have made a process much easier to request changes from core. So if you do find that you're stuck with some customizations that you're now toting around with you and are making life difficult, , let's look at how maybe we can get a few core tweaks in place that will help you have an easy upgrade path so you can stay up to date all the time. So you can check that out on the community page if you fit into that category and you're looking to get rid of some customizations. Yeah. So continuing on with our theme of best practices, we have a couple we want to talk about today. The first one I want to bring up is ERA. ERA is an amazing tool and asset, And many churches are using it really, really, really well. I would say that for most people, it's really important. I think most churches would say, Hey, we want to make sure that we care about our people. I think almost every church would probably agree with that. But how do you care if you're a church of more than 500 if you don't have tools ERA? ERA stands for Estimated Regular Attender. We kind of joke that God knows RA, but we can only estimate that, so we call it ERA. ERA uses two metrics to determine this: giving and attendance. Usually that's children's attendance. Those are the only really two reliable ways of seeing participation, consistent ways across churches especially to know if it's consistent. That's what we use. And so there's a recipe for becoming an estimated regular attender. And it's that you've given four times, at least in the last twelve months, or that you've attended eight times in the last sixteen weeks. So if you as a family meet those criteria, you become an ERA, we would say then you're a regular attender. And then there's a recipe for becoming not an ERA. And that recipe is a little bit different. It's a little bit broader because we don't want people to be right on the line flipping in of ERA and out of ERA every other week. So it's a little bit broader. But what I'd always say too is , think about that criteria again, you gave four times in the last twelve months, or you attended six times in the last sixteen weeks. So picture the person who does that. Now picture the person who stopped doing that. Is that something of concern? Yes. So why wouldn't you follow-up with these folks? And Rock makes it super easy. you can just make a workflow that say, hey, when someone exits ERA, send them an email. And the email doesn't say something , we miss you. Don't be accusatory. We haven't seen you around in a while. Because there's a lot of situations that could happen that could trigger these things that perhaps are nothing to be worried about. But say, hey, Sami, I'm just checking in. Now it could be as innocent as their kids went to college and now no longer attend and now they're you don't have the check-in data. Guess what? That's still a life event that warrants a check-in. Pretty much anything that causes someone to not be an ERA might mean that they're still regularly attending, but a life event occurred. Perhaps they stopped giving because they lost their job, or maybe they lost their love of giving. They still regularly attend. But again, these are all things that probably need a follow-up. Now some churches take it much further and they have calling campaigns instead of workflows so that their pastors are calling folks and just checking in. And we've heard some amazing testimonies from pastors who have caught things because of that. I'm thinking of one pastor who said that he literally saved a marriage because when he called, the person on your side said, Yeah, my wife and I are thinking about separating. And he met for coffee and over the course of many, many weeks of meeting and counseling, this couple saved their marriage. And it's easy, it's there. Why not use it? You could have it up and running with just an email in an hour or two. It's probably already calculated because it runs, that job runs. At the very least, go look at it. There's some churches who are not using it and I go into their systems and I look to see the numbers, and it's just so encouraging to me to see the impact. So let's talk about the use of it as a metric. The church is probably one of the only organization types in the country that doesn't have standardized metrics. What does attendance mean to your church and what does it mean to the church down the street? Two totally different measures, right? We try to make this a standardized measure, so that's why we're very rigid about how it gets calculated, and we'll talk about that more in a minute. It's there for a reason. I think it's really, really interesting. When churches tell us what is their average weekend attendance through their donation, and then you compare it to their ERA number, it's insanely, the ratio is insanely consistent. The only time it's not consistent is when the number's wrong. When the attendance number is , sometimes you look at attendance numbers , really? I thought they're lot bigger than that. And then guaranteed their ERA ratio will kind of say the same thing. Not that we use it for that, but occasionally I have checked it and I was , Woah, because we don't have your ERA numbers. That's your data. But it works. It's really interesting to look at the ratios because they're very consistent across church. So we know it works. Now there has been some misunderstanding about ERA because they're , Well, that's not the full picture for our church. We would want to have a more holistic picture of our discipleship paths and journeys. And I would say, you're right. That's exactly right. Because ERA is not meant to be the whole custom thing for you. It's an accounting. There's a lot of measures that Wall Street would use or that investment firms would use to try to understand your business. And they're very consistent. You don't get creative with that without going to jail. But they have to be consistent so that they can measure. So no one, no business would ever say, well, these financial measures that are standard globally accepted perfectly paint a picture of our unique business. They would never say that. They have their own internal measures also. But some people don't use ERA because it can't be customized. But we have this other class that we really need to be a part of ERA and you don't have a way to configure it. Yes, and that's intentional and that's good. But again, go back to the recipe. If people had these behaviors in terms of giving and attendance, and then they stopped, isn't that the value? So I would say, bluntly, if you're not using ERA, you should, and you should make a point right now saying Not tomorrow, today. At the very least, go write some metrics and figure out how many people are coming in and out of it. And then you can use that to take it to your church leadership and say, Hey, can we at least send them an email? Right? Just checking in on you, click this button to schedule a meeting with a pastor. Pretty much every email package now has a booking capability. Put their booking link in or put a connection request in. Something simple, just do something simple, but do something. It's a shame that these people leave out the back door. I've left churches to go to a different church. And it always kind of made me feel a bit badly no one ever followed up when I stopped. My giving went away, my attendance went away. And they didn't know. Or didn't care. I mean It feels didn't care. And in large churches, it may mean just doesn't have a good handle on on how data represents people. But is it possible that by not knowing you don't care? Because if you have the tool now maybe you didn't have the tool, the church I'm thinking did have the tool, but they didn't care. Because if they care, they would have put the tool in place. Yeah, I mean, I think we have to be honest, , do we do we really care? And it's not that you necessarily are running after them to keep them into your church, right? , you're not the, , get back in the pen. But we have a moral obligation to find them another pen, another ministry. , as Christians, we we care about the lost sheep because Jesus does. He even said so, right? So if not our pen, let's get you into a different pen, especially when the tool is so stinking easy. I think what you've mentioned is really the the drop off of ERA can represent a pain or a concern. And and I know you said life event, but a lot of times life events come with confusion or fear or pain or some negative emotion that is difficult to put into perspective, especially without spiritual guidance. And so it really is caring to have that. And it doesn't mean ERA is your only measurement or metric or tool you use, but why have it and not use it? Yeah. It'd be kind going to an accountant or maybe someone on Wall Street and saying, hey, I just need one metric for the whole organization. , no. No. Go read the annual reports. There's a reason why there's all those metrics because they each give you a bit of its different seasoning as to what the organization is doing. But I think we need more metrics ERA that are not customizable so that as we meet with churches, can start saying, Hey, what is your ERA to average weekend attendance number? Oh, wow, yours is actually higher a little bit. That's interesting. How did you get that? , what are you guys doing? I think another good one too, just off the cuff here is , if you look at year A to average weekend attendance to active records, Easy to see if your database is clean. Very interesting. I was looking at a church and they have hardly any inactive records. And they've been on Rock for many years. Ouch. That's it. And that's just saying they don't care about the active record says, right? For some reason, they just don't feel the need to inactivate. And to a certain point, there may not be a big reason to inactivate people, but I do think from a searchability, it does really help. But I think that's another interesting metric that I'd actually to convert to a standard metric, an ERA to active. There's lots of stuff we'd to do. We're just talking about that before the podcast, but there's only so many hours in a day and so many dollars in the bank. ERA, anything else on ERA? Start it. Start using it. Yeah. Don't say next quarter. Don't say next year. Don't just say what which date this week and do something small. Okay. So the next one I want talk about is a little bit newer. I mean, it's been around for a while, but it's newer in terms of thought is streaks. Streaks are cool, really cool. There's some churches doing some really cool things with it. So now, the patterns aren't often talked about, though. So I want to kind of just plant some seeds here. So streaks are just basically measuring the predictability or reliability of people doing actions. So a lot of times the streaks might be about check-in, have they missed any weeks or such? That's really easy to set up inside of Check-in. You can just have it do it for you. Pretty easy. There's also some things you can use. You can configure streaks that drive off of interactions. So people are doing stuff on a webpage maybe. For instance, there's a church who's using Streaks on their mobile app to track participation in what they call daily revival. Summit Church has this daily revival that every day they want people to go in there and you read some stuff, do some Bible reading, there's an unreached people group you can pray for, there's some prayer requests that they put in from their prayer system. It's really cool. But they also track it with streaks. And I was just looking at the streak data this week out of curiosity to measure success of the project. It's so fascinating to see what's happening in there. It just unlocks so many ideas , Oh, when this streak broke, we should have push notified them. And so how do we make it better? And so I think streaks is something we should really be thinking about as a community, some really cool ways to use it and then to share those recipes with others. Because sometimes it takes some people on the cutting edge to create, think, do, and then inspire through vision. So Streaks, look into it. It's pretty interesting. I've been running some SQL across them and it's really fast and really, really interesting. So look at that. And the final one, is even simpler is age brackets. So we added this concept of age brackets a couple versions ago, know which version, probably 16, I think. Hopefully, yeah. We've had age obviously for a while, being able to put people in the age brackets actually is really helpful. As you look at across data, consider adding to your report the age brackets. Then as you push that into a tool Excel or Power BI or Tableau or Domo, name your poison. Look at that. I was doing that very similarly with the streak data and it really helped see , well, who's doing this? What age bracket? And again, age bracket is one of those things too. It's , well, they're not customizable. You're right. And we did that on purpose. A, it's simpler, but B, we try to pick age brackets that a lot of marketing firms would use and it just seemed the right thing. And then if everybody's age brackets kind of are the same, then it's easier for you guys to kind of share tribal knowledge across things too. So that's not to say that they were right when it came first out of the box. It was very, very close. We kind of lumped all the kids, everybody under 18. Just kind of said, Ah, they're all under non adults. We really shouldn't be tracking that. But we were working on a project with the church and they were kind of saying, Yeah, it's kind of unfortunate. And they had a really good use case. And so we went and split the younger folks up into, I think two different age brackets. That made a lot of sense. Yeah, use age brackets. They're there for you. Great. And we have heard from podcast listeners that highlighting some of these features that aren't as used as much yet and don't have maybe as much, that you might hear about at the conference or in other areas is really helpful in casting vision and making decisions about some cool things you wanna do. So hopefully this is really helpful in considering some of those. Yeah. Someone on the team mentioned just yesterday that it's unfortunate at the conference we talk about all the things that are coming. And then when they have arrived, and now you can actually use them, you can forget. So yeah, you might go back and rewatch the previous conference and say, Okay, which stuff of this? Or maybe go back two years because definitely those are all done in in in there. , of these should I be using right now? Yep. And speaking of the conference, it is coming and we're getting all geared up on this side, but don't forget to get geared up on your side as well. Big announcement. If you wanna stay at the hotel where we have the event, it's 90% booked. So put on your running shoes and get over there. Let's get those rooms booked. If you plan to be there, you otherwise, it's gonna be across the parking lot. So convenient being in the same hotel It is. Conference. It's really nice. It's really nice. That said, there will be space at other hotels too, so you're not gonna be left out if you're stuck in, , a budget approval process or something. Don't worry. But if you have the ability to book it now and it just hasn't hit your to do list, , you wanna find yourself at the same space if possible. Yeah. We also have a masterclass before the conference every year, which makes the travel budget more convenient. So for some people taking a little extra time while they're already in the Phoenix area to take that in person masterclass before the conference is a really great fit. So while we have some seats open for that, it does tend to get pretty full as well. Make sure that you're signing up for that. And if you come back from taking masterclass and the conference, I mean, you're basically leveled up Oh, you're set. Levels. So you come back much smarter. Well, and with different connections, right? So one of the benefits of the in person masterclass is you really form a kind of cohort of learners. And it's so interesting to see people that have been in, the community for a long time that had a group of people they went through masterclass with, and they're still really tight. So it's a great experience. And then between that and what happens at the conference where you can connect with all the the vendors and the sponsors in this space, see what's going on, and make connections with others in the community. Maybe you just know their avatar in chat. But it's just a really great opportunity to to power your experience the whole rest of the year. Yeah. Because those connections from Masterclass will just go right into the conference too. Absolutely. But you will learn a lot. You will, and your brain will be tired. Yeah, hat size goes up one. Hat size up one. Yeah, plus one. But also, we just got this week a chance to just run into the space and it's been fully remodeled and it's very nice. Took out all the color and really polished it up. Looks really nice. So we're really excited about just the polish that they've added to to the space. It was always a nice hotel. Yes. And the space is a great fit for our event. Really good. But it's gonna look Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Well, a big thank you to our listening audience for tuning in again. And if this is the first or second time for you haven't yet subscribed, don't forget to subscribe where you get your podcasts so you don't miss out on our next set of announcements and topics. We hope this has been really valuable to you. And if ever you have a concept for a podcast you'd to share with us, please reach out and let us know. Thanks for joining us. 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.