Podcast Episode 194: Episode 167: Beyond Limits: Rockcast on 2024's Reach

Description

Listen to this episode as Rock's core team unveils exciting projects – from new versions to the integration survey and everything in between. Explore how the word "Reach" will shape our 2024 journey. Join us in the ascent; it's time to Reach Up. Show NotesKeep up to date on New Versions here: https://www.rockrms.com/releasenotesIntegrated Survey Results: https://www.rockrms.com/services-surveyRock Radar- https://www.rockrms.com/rock-radarYou can join the collaboration: https://community.rockrms.com/ideas-changesCollaborating with Dwell Community Church: https://community.rockrms.com/connect/dwell-community-church-collaborates-to-enhance-power-bi-report-viewer-blockSign up for our annual conference: https://rx.rockrms.com/Finance Class: https://www.rockrms.com/rock-financeUpdate your Rock Commitment: https://community.rockrms.com/organizationsRock PartnersWe are thankful for our Rock Partners 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 for the Rock community that tells you all about what we're doing here behind the scenes, gives you insights for the community and the leadership. Alright, Nick. We are ready to talk about what's going on with the latest versions of Rock. There has been a flurry of activity related to releases. Yeah, we kind of had our hand forced through a change that Mailgun made. So Mailgun made a change, and we've kind of quickly instrumented the Rock Mailgun plugin. So if you use the Rock Mailgun, not plugin, but component transport for your mail, then you'll probably want to be on version 14.4, 15 point four or 16.1. Those are the versions of Rock that will have the fix. Now you're not in trouble if you don't. Just don't go and change your mail gun settings because they made a change on their back end that would kind of, if you recycled your keys, would cause you some issues. So, and really this is affecting new Rock installations and new Rock clients, because when you sign up for Mailgun, you're going to get two separate keys and Rock only had a place for one because that's how it's always been. So the status of those three versions are, well, 16.1 is now out. That's been released. Version 14.4 has been released. And version 15.4 is in alpha testing. It'll be a really quick alpha and beta. We won't go very long on the beta. So that one will probably be about very shortly. Great. So there has been quite a bit of activity there. Yes. And 14.4 is just the mail gun fix, right? 14.4 was really just that single fix. I think there might've been a small other fix, but it was incidental and nobody should worry about that. But 15.4 has, I think 18 other fixes. And then 16.1 had a large variety of fixes from sixteen point zero stuff. Great. Again, if you're on the mail gun transport right now, you're grandfathered in to the one key system. Just don't mess with your settings and you'll be fine. Yep. Great. Okay. Well, that is helpful to know and be in the know. There have been a few interesting things that we've been working on here and the holidays have come up in the middle of all of it. We just wanna take a minute to to point out a few in case you've missed them. One is the community integrated services survey. So we send something out to the community knowing that there are so many different services that integrate with Rock and that there are there's a variety of experiences people have had with those services, it would be super helpful to know what that looks . So thank you to the many people that responded to that survey to help indicate the type of experience they've had working with certain products and services that integrate with Rock. You can find the results of that survey if you go to, Rockrms.com/sponsors. And at the top, there's a link to the services, survey results. The thing you should know about that is everything that came in response wise was anonymized and combined, and chat came up with the generalized ChatGPT. ChatGPT came up with the general description that you'll see available there. So it's kind of a combined anonymized and then run through AI to get what we have there. So it's very representative of the feedback that we heard, but it isn't any individual item of feedback that someone typed in. That's the thing definitely wanna go read that. Even if you're not thinking of changing anything, go read the pros and cons to all the surfaces. I think it was really fascinating. And I think it's as good too, as people talk in the community, Hey, do anything about You'll now know something about that. That's right. So educate yourself, find out a little bit more. Maybe there's a service you've been thinking about and couldn't find anyone who was using it to ask the right questions. And I know there are initiatives that roll around at the beginning of every year. Hey, this year we need to find a new provider for, or we need to start using this type of survey of service. And so now our survey can be of help for that. We also have a new ability to subscribe to our blog posts through RockRadar. So if you go to our blog page, you can sign up there to be notified of new posts that come out. So that's an excellent subscription based notification so you don't miss any of our posts that come and are published there. So don't forget to sign up for that. It'll make sure you get all the latest updates and, , the podcast, the blog posts, social, wherever you can keep up, that will help keep you in the know. Yeah. Think even lately we've been recognizing that there's things that we've been putting out on social or on the blog that oftentimes people don't see or They don't see. Or don't know about. So we're just trying to give you a way to push to people. And I think it actually recognizes that there's really no one way in our lifestyles of getting information that. I mean, back in the long, long time ago, blogs were a thing and we all had aggregators. So it was easy to keep track of that kind of stuff. But now everything's gotten decentralized again. A lot of people aren't on social media and it's just hard to get that information out. And things just fly by so quickly. It's hard to even know if you've seen it sometimes. We all recognize we have many, many things coming at us every day. So this just helps make sure you don't miss it. Yeah. And we'll be doing a lot more Our goal is to do a lot more micro posts on that blog. In fact, and a good example of that is one that we just put out about Dwell Community Church. They came to us asking about a quick update to the Power BI block in Rock. And so that Power BI block, what it does is allows you to embed a Power BI report right into your Rock instance. That's a really great tool, but they were wanting a quick change to that where you could pass in from Rock some query filters to your report. And when I initially saw that, I was , oh, that's a that's a good idea. I didn't know you could do that. But the more I played with it in terms of making sure it could be done and then doing it, it was , Wow, that actually is a great idea. It was really powerful seeing Rock being able to tell the report, Hey, filter by this campus right now because the context of the person looking at this report, this is their campus. So in my mind, went from a good idea to , Wow, that's an incredible idea. It was a very small little quick change. It something that they wanted to fund, but it wasn't that expensive. But it was just kind of cool seeing again, how churches are getting these ideas. They're submitting them in to the core team and then boom, within, I mean, think we had that done in a week or two. And then they're using it already and now everybody has access to that. And in fact, we're going to use it. We that block internally at Spark and we're going to be using that feature that I didn't even know you could do that. And they had done the research and figured it all out and then said, hey, we'd to have you guys put this into the block. So cool. What a great example of community. Yeah. And that's the kind of thing we're gonna be pushing more out through that Rock radar so that you can know about that. You might say, well, I don't use Power BI. Well, at least it's there, you can help others or but there'll be a lot of other things that I think will be germane to everybody. But we wanna push more of those out. So, , hopefully you're getting one or two of those a week and you can kinda filter them in your inbox or you can dig in deeper if you wanna go and click the link. Fantastic. So that kind of brings up another topic. If you're liked well and you have an idea that, we do have some new tools on the community page where the ideas link was, it's now called ideas and core changes. So you can go to that link and you can either if it's a if it's a change you wanna fund, there's a route for that. If there's a change you just wanna an idea you just wanna submit and have the community voted up, which would then get it onto our list of things to do, you can do that. Or if it's a bug, you can then go into GitHub and submit it as a bug request. So the IDEAS link is now you click it, it now gives you three different options for you to kinda route your request to the right direction. And we've built in some internal systems to make sure that those core funded requests have a nice process so they don't get lost or anything. So lots of different ways to, Dwell, submit those types of requests and make it so that everybody can have them. That's fantastic. That is what really has made the Rock platform so incredibly unique over time is everyone thinking, boy, if only it did this one small thing, and then connecting with CORE to make sure that it can in the future and and everybody benefits. It's just an incredibly powerful example of how the Rock community works best. Yeah. And even it's a good education because , again, we need that. I didn't know you could do it. And now that they did the research and helped fund it, now we get to use it too. So I'm pretty excited about being able to update some of our reports now. Very cool. So big thank you to Dwell for honing in on that. Yeah. And not only providing the money, but also doing some of that pre research for us too, which was very helpful. So cool. Well, it is the beginning of the year. Yes, it is. So what do we do at the beginning of the year? We always think about planning and strategy both internally for ourselves as individuals, but also as organizations. And so a lot of times it's good to have a thought or a phrase that helps kind of focus that. And so we've done a lot of talking amongst ourselves to say , what do you think that should be kind of from a community perspective? And we want that word for 2024 to be reach. And so every podcast we hope to have a thought about that. And so today we're going to talk about how do we reach up? And how do we as individuals become a better form of ourselves? Because the thought I always have is I don't want to be the same at the end of the year as I am at the beginning of the year. So I want to make sure that I'm growing and that I'm learning. Now's a good time to be kind of thinking about that. I know you've been doing some reading over the break about , organizationally, how does that work? Then individually, how does that work? Yeah. That's been a really fascinating book that I picked up. It highlights a lot of the current people and organizations that we think of that have that are changing the world or changing their industries. And it really talks about a combination of passionate an intensity of passion in a particular area aligned with an intensity of focus. And when those two things come together, a lot of times other things may fall by the wayside, huge changes can be made in really incredible ways. That's where innovation happens and that's where major progress happens. And what is the book? The book is called All In and it focuses on what Amazon's done, what Elon Musk is doing in a variety of endeavors, how Uber came to be. And so there are incredible insights about things that are done really well, about potential things that you'd have to pay attention to if you develop this intensity because of other things that may need attention that you can't focus on. So you need to have someone else focus on them or make a decision that that's not important. But it really just differentiates in organizations that are moving things forward versus those that are kind of just repetitive and maintaining the status quo. The difference there is this intensity of passion and focus. And that's really anchored in our individual desire to stretch ourselves or to reach into growth and to do that as an organization by pairing up with other people who have that same shared intensity. Yeah. So as we talk about reaching up as an individual, it's a lot about growing in knowledge. , what books are you going to read? It might be a great time to focus on at least in the first half of the year, which books you think would be most helpful to your area? How do we grow technically? Now you might say, well, I'm not a developer, I'm not technical. Well, we are technical at some level. So you might even be , how do I learn my toolset better? Even if it's Excel or maybe I need to dabble in a little bit more into Chat GPT to learn prompts and how I can use this tool to push myself forward. So how do I grow technically is a big one too, again, no matter what level of technology you are. And then spiritually too, how am I going to be different in my depth, in my relationship with Jesus? What practices might I put in there? And probably also, I would probably push soft skills. How am I going be a better communicator? How am I going to be a better leader? And again, that might tap into books or podcasts. I would say the more I talk with people, the less I think we as a culture read. That's so true. Or when we say read, we actually listen. And I think that's great. we all have times when we can listen, but we can't read, but I'd also find times when you can read. there's nothing underlining that book that just really cements it in. I would just make sure too that think about all the different mediums that are out there, but don't ignore reading. I know for many people it's not something that they're used to doing, or maybe they don't feel they're good at it. I'm one of those. I have dyslexia and reading is actually really slow for me, but it doesn't stop me from reading. I read every day. So don't let the actual reading something That's a great point. I do. Even in interviews, we ask a lot, what are you reading? And most of the time, when you actually push into that, it's actually they weren't reading that, they were listening to that. And again, there's nothing wrong with that. Don't not do that, but you also have to read something. , I find that my brain's ability to focus on something is totally different if I'm reading it, especially with a pen in hand versus if I'm hearing it. It's very easy for my mind to wander when I'm listening to something. Mhmm. I have to work extra hard to focus on it. Yeah, and I've actually heard from a person with a PhD in psychology that this whole notion of how do I learn, is it auditory or visual? There's not a lot of science to that. I brought that up once and they were , No, that's actually not true. Research is now showing that's not what we were told. So I would just say pushing, think a lot of it's what we're comfortable with. Yes. And the habits that we have. And our habits. And speaking of habits, there's been so much groundbreaking research on habits in the last probably five years. Don't neglect the very simple habits of taking your calendar and blocking time to do the things that are important to you. So if it is reading certain books, if you say I wanna read a book a month, I need 12 books or I want 24 books in in the year, figure out what those books are for the first quarter and then block time every day. Maybe it's first thing in the morning. Maybe it's over lunch. Maybe it's at the end of your day. And and try to have a goal. Read a chapter a day or read x number of pages a day. And if you set those kind of little mini challenges for yourself, you'll see that you'll go far. You may not hit a % and don't worry if you miss, just get back in the saddle the next day. But I will tell you that time blocking has been very successful for me when I implement it well. Yeah, they say if you want see what's important to someone, look at their checkbook and look at their calendar. It's hard to argue with that. Yeah, I'm guilty of blocking that time on my calendar and then when I get to it, something else is more urgent. And so I have to do better at that. That's something I need to work on too. But I would also say work on your, I always call it my net, my information net that I go through every day. And it's just, where am I going to get the latest thoughts? For me, it's going to be different for everybody. For me, a lot of it is on Twitter, and it's all about who you follow. I should say X, everybody says X now. Man, there's so much good technology stuff on there and leadership stuff. If you follow the right people, I am daily blown away by the thoughts that I'm getting and the information I'm retrieving off of that. But it's also a lot of other things. There's blogs, I know, again, we talked about that already, that's a little dying thing, but there's still great content on But for me, Hacker News is big place where I go. 95% of the stuff on there I have no interest in, but the 5% that I do find there is mind blowing. I spent a lot of my holiday researching something I had found on Hacker News, and it's gonna change everything. It's amazing. I can't wait to talk more about it later in the year. But you have to have those nets. You have to create those daily nets where you're going through and you're harvesting your good thoughts and you're filtering out the stuff that isn't good and adjusting. So in Twitter, you found one person's giving you good information and the next thing they pivot, and all of sudden they're talking about a lot of political stuff you don't care about, great, unfollow. It's you unsubscribed to something that it was valuable for a time and that's not valuable. You have to keep harvesting your net and grooming your net and expanding your net and contracting your net in different ways. But also I think that's getting information in, but you also have to work on your habits and making sure that you're committing to the right things and that you kind of change your personality a bit in terms of I've often heard too, I forget which book it was in, you basically said to tell yourself you're the type of guy who reads a chapter a day. Yep, that's right. You have to tell yourself you are that. It's an identity thing. That's very true. Don't wait till you are that. You start by saying, No, I'm just the type of guy who reads a chapter a day. And it really does help on the accountability part of that. But if you don't bring that consistency in, and you have to give yourself forgiveness. So on the day or two that you forget, then you just start over. That's right. If you don't do that and you have that kind of all or nothing mentality, eventually because we are human. We can't be a % hit rate on everything. So eventually, you'll be doing nothing as a default because you couldn't get everything a %. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely the case in my life when I've given up on things way too early. Oh, for sure. See that in my own track record. But the community needs us all to reach If we're all the same at the end of this year as right now, then we don't move as a community and our churches need us and the culture needs us. If we step up, we push our churches forward, we push our community forward, which pushes our culture forward. I think we undervalue the change that's happening in our culture just because of this community. I agree with that. And I think when things move slowly, which real change isn't fast, it's slow and it's hard and it's not pretty. And, but when change happens slowly that, it stops and starts, and it's hard to measure if you're in the trenches with it. You don't see that change and that movement until you take a moment to stop and really reflect on it. So don't be discouraged. Make this the year that you just kind of double down and say, I'm gonna redefine who I am. And this time next year, I will be changed in those ways. And if you if you do stretch yourself in, you reach up into the things that you want to learn and grow. , they say, , shoot for the stars, and you'll land somewhere out there in space. You may not hit that star, but you'll be in a different place than you are right now. Yeah. And if you'll always land a little shorter than where you aim. Yes. So aim higher than you aim to and you'll you'll actually hit what you want. I was telling somebody because of project management axiom, don't don't never shoot. If you have a hundred hours to get it done, don't shoot for a hundred. You'll always hit a 20. You gotta shoot for 80, and you'll probably hit a hundred. And if you miss and come in a little closer, no one's gonna be upset. That's right. And no shame in not hitting that 100 marker of whatever that is. We're human. But do the best you can and get up again and do it again the next day. Yeah. And maybe something to think about too is as you're reflecting about this, a good metric to think about, I would call it Delta V. And Delta is a change, if you think about it from a scientific perspective, Delta is usually a change and V is velocity. So in space travel that you talk about, what's your Delta V? What is your Delta V? What is your change velocity right now? Do you feel you're rapidly changing and you're happy or you feel you're kind of stuck in a rut? Or we kind of run here because we say it stuck in the mud. Just get your Delta V going in a positive state. You don't have to make it go to a hundred, but get it at 10. If you're at zero, to 10 and then ten will get you to 20. And 20 will get you to 30, but you have that change in velocity because velocity is acceleration. Yes. So if you're going 30 miles an hour, your acceleration is zero. You just wanna get your acceleration going. And if you only accelerate by a little bit, it's okay. Because you said, over time, that'll make a huge difference. So think about your Delta V and reflect on that. Yep. And you can make mental habits around change. If you get yourself used to change on small increments, your brain actually kind of rewires positively for that change. So don't be discouraged. Consider your current delta v. Consider where you wanna be next year and start actually putting time on your calendar to make certain habits that will get you there. And let's give you one right now. The best way you can to implement all this, reach up, get your knowledge, get your even spiritual growth, but get your soft skills improved and change your delta v is coming to Rx. Yes, it is. Inside the Rock community, is absolutely the number one best way to reach up and improve who you are right now. And if you're in the Rock community and you don't go to RX, there's no way you can say you're reaching up unless you have a conflict. If your church has a conflict, get it, but that's not most people. Right. I think we've heard of a couple of times someone had a baby, someone got married. Those are Okay. Those are other good acceptable reasons. Other reaching up is happening. Although there was some person who I think had a baby a few days before our ex and still came to our ex. Yeah. Pretty impressive. Yeah. They got a special onesie for that. That's right. Definitely. And we in the Rock community want to continue providing ways for you to reach up in in methods and areas that we know can be helpful. So make it to the conference. Go ahead and get your ticket now because what you're doing is blocking that time for this upcoming August where you'll be in a growth pattern because you've got the time booked now. So get your ticket now, commit to it, and, and you can look forward to that time that you have set aside. Additionally, all of our classes are open for the year. So look for one that will be a good fit for you, or your colleagues. One that's coming up right now is our finance class. That's a stand alone class for finance in Rock, and it's an incredible class that would be good not only for your Rock admins, but for your finance team. So if you're hearing this and you think, I don't really need that for my role, do consider who on your team would really benefit from it and might not hear about it because they may not be following Rock content. So do share that with them so they have that same opportunity to reach up in inside that role of Rock finance. And, also, we wanted to say a big thank you to those of you who have updated your commitment for the $4.10 per person, per attendee per year, donation level this year. We've seen a lot of movement on that here at the beginning of the year already. We are so appreciative of all of you who are donating to support the mission of Rock and doing so at the minimum suggested rate. It is really helping us to move things forward. We're seeing a difference on that. We thank you for that. If you haven't had a chance to update your commitment yet, go ahead and put that in. Here's what you need to know. Putting the commitment in and the start date for when you're able to make that change, is really the best communication for us. So if you're thinking right now, we have that budgeted. It can't start till April 1 because that's our fiscal year or that's what budget allows for. Go ahead and change that in the in your records and just put the start date into alignment with what makes sense on that. And that communication is really helpful for our team in planning. If you have any questions about that, reach out, let us know, and we can help you navigate that. But thank you again for being a part of what we're doing here and helping to contribute in so many ways. As you are reaching up this year, look for opportunities that we'll continue to put out and for ways that you can subscribe to those updates and hear from them. So that's Rock Radar. And then don't forget to subscribe to our our podcast here wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us, and we're happy to share more about how we can reach this year on the next podcast. Join us then. Thanks so much for all of your community efforts. 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.