Podcast Episode 193: Episode 166: Wrapping Up 2023

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Don't miss the Rock Cast 2023 wrap up! Join the core team as they explore this year's updates and offer a sneak peek into 2024's next-gen Check-in. Discover the power of generosity in time, words and talents. Tune in for insights that make a difference!Show Notes:The Biblecast with Pastor Jimmy - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biblecast-with-jimmy-witcher/id1558193888RX24 - https://rx.rockrms.com/RX Hotel- https://www.marriott.com/event-reservations/reservation-link.mi?id=1694551025506&key=GRP&app=resvlinkRock Classes- https://community.rockrms.com/classesYear End Donations- https://www.rockrms.com/Rock/InvestChip Challenge: https://community.rockrms.com/chip-challengeRock 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 this edition of Rockcast, the podcast that explores the intersection of technology, ministry, and community with ROCCRMS. I'm Emily Forman. And together, we have Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo, and we are going to talk about Rock. This is a special Christmas Carol edition too, right? Oh, yes. And so you'll be singing what again? Little Drummer Boy? Mean, we always go ladies first. No. Oh. Don't you have a choir background? Why? Child, yes. Excellent. Mhmm. My voice changed. Then this will be really exciting. For the better. Falsetto Christmas Carols by Jon Edmiston. Mhmm. No? Christmas was always a very odd time for me because we are , literally every night, we were going to some country club or high end gala to to sing, , literally every night. So some and on the weekends, , sometimes we'd have three in a day. We had to go from one place across town. It was pretty crazy. I always wondered why you wore your Christmas suits all month. It's habit for Christmas suits. Yeah, to the office? Oh no, we had to do choir robes. Choir robes. Traditional boys choir. Yes. Very interesting. I think we should talk about Rock. Probably a better topic, yeah. Yeah, okay, great. Nick, where are we at? What's happening? I can tell you what's been happening with version 16.1. We are at the tail end of alpha testing. We've had two rounds, and we've been fixing some issues as they've gotten reported. And we just last week heard of an issue. It was an issue caused by a change at Mailgun. They made a service change, deprecated. We all knew they were deprecating their legacy API keys and things, but unbeknownst to us, they put in a second key. So Rock's component doesn't have a spot for two keys. So if you're using the Mailgun component, we would say, if you don't change anything, you're fine. But if you're a new customer of Mailgun, then you're gonna need either +1, 14 4, or +1 coming soon. So those are the next ups. Okay. 14.4, version 14.4, and 15.4, we're going to be moving those through a rapid alpha and beta. And so we're doing that so that if you're on any one of those versions, you're safe. So we technically could just do it in sixteen point one, but we wanted to be kind for those who are maybe not caught up yet and make sure that they could all have a plan that didn't require a 16 upgrade. Yeah, and that's what we do. It's harder to do it that way, that's why we have three simultaneous releases that sometimes happen this for emergency patches. Now luckily, point one, we were able to get this into 16.1, so there won't be another 16.2 for just that. Thank goodness for one of our developers who was working with his own church in getting Rock going. He's the one who actually noticed it and helped get the fix in. It's great your own team is so - In tuned. In tuned, but also just so passionate about what they work on that they're evangelizing their own church and the use of technology. I don't think you see that in a lot of other industries, I guess. And he came into my office, it was either Thursday or Friday. He's , I think there's an issue. And I'm , really? We talked about it. And then he confirmed. He said, yeah, found the spot. This is what we need to do. And I said, Man, what luck. And he knew what I meant when I said that. He's , Yeah, it is not luck. It's a gift from God when these things happen. Just get these Because we know that didn't send out any notice. No. You even did some research into the blog posts. Right, and I found a mention of some changes, but it did not spell out the change they actually appeared. I mean, they didn't appear to have made it. You can look at the documentation that we have and compare it to what it looks now. They definitely changed it, so. Which is definitely rare. I mean, Twilio, Mailgun, we get a lot of those alerts and that one certainly was not communicated, which I kind of wonder, all their other clients, what are they doing? Yeah, we can't be the only ones in that situation. We'll see what happens. I mean, again, we stumbled on it through the developer who was working with his church and they were just getting Rock started. And then coincidentally, another person in the community found it, reported it on GitHub. I think it was yesterday morning. And so anyhow, that's what's coming. But if I can do a quick year end review. Great. Cause again, what did we do all year? Well, we did three releases for version 14, not including the ones I just talked about. Four versions for version 15. So four patches and version 15. And then 16 So one for version 16. So three, four, and one plus the three more. That's quite a bit of work. Yeah. Well, plus, I mean, the major releases too. I mean, that's where a majority of the work is. And that was fifteen point zero and sixteen point zero were released last year. There's always this tension between, well, how many releases do you do? Honestly, there's people in the community that says, You do too many dot releases. There's others who are , You don't do them enough. We want these faster. Can you go back to version 13.2? Well, that's another topic. But even on the more mainstream versions, which we give you lots of options there, how many do we do? And so we're in this little bit of the middle of a tug of war between different parts of the community who want it different ways. We try to moderate that and try to balance it. Trust us, our selfish best interest, we would do no, because it's a lot of time. It's a lot of time and effort to go through that. And we also know that there's beta and alpha testers too, who are investing a ton of time. So it's really not what we want. We're just trying to find a happy balance. And we really even kind of went back and forth on this topic on a mail gun. , yeah, we hate to put out another dot release just for this one thing. It makes it pretty safe, but at the same time, it's a lot of testing and , it's lot of effort on us, but we just thought , there's just not a way we could get around this. Most people are using mail gun and we felt it was the right thing to do. So, but each of these things that comes out as a, here's what we're doing kind of sounds it was just not that hard, but man, if you could be behind the scenes and us wrestling the pros and cons of all of this, it's People would be surprised at some of the engineering conversations we have. And the amount of thought that goes into the decisions. It's not just a rubber stamp. Yeah. And all the decisions that never even get made. It's , okay. Yeah. We're not doing that. And sometimes those come come back and bite us when additional pros and cons come up. But yeah. I mean, I was actually thinking that the other day. Was in a meeting. Nick, Daniel, and I, we were talking about something that's coming up on a new project. And we were so down in the weeds on stuff. we had done some benchmarking and testing on something that I think most people would be , what are you talking about? Looking to see how fast it was to do 10,000 of these in a second. What was the payload of the JSON in that thing? I was , Wow, if most people could be in on this conversation, they'd probably be rolling their eyes It's , but It needs to be done. It has to be done. And that's not to say we don't miss other ones. You can't hit them all, but it's not we just throw stuff against the wall. There's this really deep engineering mindset that we're trying to do to increase performance. Because if I'm being honest and fair, we didn't do that in the beginning. Some of it was a rush, some of it was just our own inexperience at that time. Think people take it for granted that we're not writing the kind of application that you write when you get out of a book, right? This is very extensible, it's very difficult, runs in 600 churches. It's really hard. I think there's a lot of inexperience maybe in the beginning that now we're still kind of polishing up and improving. But the way we do things now is way different than what we used to do. Know, there's a lot of even things that we our gut thinks is fast, we go back and verify through benchmarking and lots of PowerPoints. Not the kind of PowerPoints you're probably thinking, but there's a lot of pros and cons. Here's the test results. Here's this. And that's the kind of stuff I think you want us doing, trust me. But it's not necessarily easy. It is fun if we had more time and more resources. Yeah, when you're under the gun and so much pressure and so many things flying your way, it's hard to have fun when you're doing what you have to do. Gotta get it done quick. Yeah, and I think there's actually some interesting tensions about how to do certain things with this one feature. And it's , there's a lot of different ways we could do it. And the data isn't really highlighting that one is the winner. But trust me, the future, one will be the Right. In hindsight, will be the winner. So you also know that that is out there. Also too, in all fairness, way the world works is we'll be judged by that too. That's not to say someone's being mean. It's just , well, the world judges by the decision he made and you don't have all the data and forth sight of all the different other things. So in a sense, we're really careful too, because we don't want it to come back and be , Why didn't you do this way? We're trying to be And I think there's one thing that I think we're right on the fence and we're not quite sure which way to go, left or right. Yeah, it is a very challenging position to be in because you will never have enough information to feel a % comfortable that you've pre guessed everything that's gonna happen in the next decade. Yeah. Or the, Oh, what about Or the edge cases. One thing we love about our community, is a challenge, is all the interesting ways they use the Legos that we make. It's , Oh, Lego was not really meant for that, but that's a cool, interesting concept. I think Legos as a tool toy is a really interesting use case because they're very powerful, you can do so many things. But they also do have this concept at Lego of illegal build techniques, which is, I've kind of gotten a little deeper into the Lego community just through a hobby. It's funny to hear the community talking about , well, LEGO just released a set with an illegal build technique. Also they'll sanctify that technique in certain ways. It kind of reminds me of Rock components and lava and this and that. There's so much creativity, but there are things that are better to do or not better to do and things that you should use SQL for and things you shouldn't use SQL for and things you can do with lava and maybe things that you can't. So it's kind of interesting. That reminds me of check-in and how people use check-in in different ways. Yeah. Some illegal builds out there, I may have been responsible for one of them at my previous life. Well, lot of times I think we learn things through experience, right? And so I think there are a lot of things in life where the experience comes to teach you things. And what I about the community is that we're tight and we can share that kind of information and we can help learn from each other rather than all having to learn individually. Yeah. It's also one of those things when you get to the middle or past the halfway of your career, you could only go back in time, could have saved yourself so many heartaches and headaches and things. That's one thing I kind of wish in my career. Never really had a technical mentor. I had a light one early in my career at Honeywell, but I felt if I had a technical mentor that I probably could have learned more faster. And I mean a technical mentor. Had their business mentors or leaders that I really admired, but someone who could really put their technical arm around some of the projects and say, Oh, don't do this, do this. That's one thing I do about our team is we have a lot of that going on. We have some very young, talented people, and then we have some folks that sit near next to them and who can give them guidance. I'm just , Wow, what a gift for that person. But speaking of check-in, there's a lot going on on that front as we're looking at what we're doing in the next generation of check-in. Can you tell us a little bit about that, John? Yeah, we've really bitten off a big project there. So next gen is a thing. We want to get everything moved to next gen because we have to, right? The framework that we're on is still supported by Microsoft, but is not going to be. There's a date that has not been announced by them, but it will be announced probably fairly soon. Then probably push back once or twice. Because there's a lot of companies that use web forms. But we are trying to get ahead of that and move. But so check-in is the thing that we're gonna be tackling. We started now, but we're gonna be moving full bore in 2024. And so we're evaluating everything about check-in. There's definitely some performance improvements to be had in check-in, and so we want to make that happen. That's gonna be a fairly large architectural change about how check-in actually works. Many people may not know that check-in is actually built on top of the workflow engine. And it was really what pushed the creation of the workflow engine in the very beginning. We always knew we wanted a workflow engine, but what pushed it ahead in priority was the check-in. So unfortunately, that's probably not the fastest way or the most resource conservative way to do the check-in. And the fact is most people aren't playing with that workflow. Yeah, it was overly flexible, that And most people have not played with that, thank goodness. Thank God. Because it could, and has in some cases, led to some challenges and some issues. So we're trying to make it more API based. That will do two things. It'll make it much faster, much less resource intensive. And I think it will open it up to other innovation by ourselves and others who can use those APIs to do check-in in lots of different ways. And so what we wanna do is, in some ways, we're tearing down these Legos, but I think what we're gonna be doing is providing a more advanced Lego kit. So you could kind of think of it as we're going from straight Lego to the techniques or techniques kit. It's gonna be more advanced, you're gonna be able to do more things, and it's gonna be faster, more structural, but things will change. Now here's the thing I guess you have to hear is , from a feature set, we want to have parity between what is there today and what we're moving to. There might be a small number of features that just aren't being used, but our goal is not to take away things that people are absolutely needing. So we'll be putting out a survey here pretty soon where we're gonna be asking people some questions about check-in, Do you use this? And some of those things that we're asking, we know people are using and we're not taking away, we're just kind of curious. Sometimes this is a curiosity question. It's , Do people do this? And so we wanna know a little bit more. We'll probably follow that up later next year with another survey, because every survey I've ever done has led to more insight and more questions that we wish we would have known and to So there might be a second one. But the goal is not to take anything away, but the whole, everything behind the scenes will, all the code and all the technology will be changing. We'll also probably take the opportunity, of course, to kind of do a UX polish. There's some things we'd to get rid of from a user experience, having to know where to tap five times to get out of an app. That's kind of annoying. I think there's other ways we could do that. And at the same time, separately, we'd to start innovating around check-in. Now this is not an official part of the project, so this is not something that we're committing to, but it's something that we want to do. I think the philosophy there is , has check-in changed in the last twenty years? Don't think it really has. It was not necessarily pioneered by one person or one team, but a couple of teams back in those days were kind of doing things a certain way and everybody just kind of has built off of that and slightly improved it over the years. But we have a lot of new things now that didn't exist back then, smartphones and which are basically mainframes in our pockets. Yeah. So why don't we use some of that? But we know that some people don't want their cheese moved. In fact, most people probably don't around check-in. And so that's gonna be more of a gradual phase in and an optional phase in, , Oh, you could do check-in this way now. But we don't wanna be so shortsighted that we just rebuild what we have that will be done. But we also wanna be forward thinking in terms of what else could we do? So we're going have some real collaborative discussions on that starting early next year with a small group of churches. Obviously, is When you collaborate and innovate, you have to boil that down to a couple churches. So they're gonna come in and kinda help us ideate. And looking forward to that, it's gonna be a bit of a challenge too, we don't I think sometimes going to a first principles approach and tearing something down to first principles is very frustrating because there's a lot of assumptions we go in with and each of those assumptions has to be torn down and validated. Is that a fair assumption? Because we do it ourselves in the technology. We'll say , Oh, we can't do that because there's no way we can make that fast enough. And then that's , Okay, we challenge that assumption. In a lot of cases, we've been able to make things a hundred thousand times faster, and that allows us to do certain things. I don't know about you, but personally, I'm really inspired by the Cybertruck that Tesla put out. I'm not a huge fan of the look, but I'm a huge fan of the engineering that went into Yeah, the wiring, so many things. Yeah. I mean, there's a hundred things that no car company has ever been able to achieve that they just seem to have been easily, and it wasn't, but It always looks easy from the outside. Yeah. So I think a lot of people are either fans or not fans of the look, but I would say forget the looks. Look underneath the stainless steel outside and learn about what they achieved and then use that to motivate ourselves. Well, how do we bring that same level of innovation into what we do? Whether it be technical or non technical, you might say, well, I'm not a developer. Well, cool, but a lot of what we're talking about with check-in is not code, it's the techniques. And you have to go, okay, well we can't just do that. You have to apply the same methodology, which is this first principles approach. What makes it so hard is our whole lives we've been taught, take whatever you see, figure out a way to make it slightly better. First principles is , take everything and flush it and start from scratch. And it's a really hard thing because you're fighting against everything in your brain, which is just saying, take however many years you've been on the planet, take all that experience and just do that. It's relearning to walk. Yeah. Glenn Yoda said it best, You must unlearn what you have learned. Yeah. And we don't realize what we've learned. We don't realize that in some ways our subconscious is just a machine on a program that was written many, many decades ago by our own experiences in life and the knowledge that we've put in. So we're trying to take that approach for check-in. It's difficult because check-in does have a lot of stakeholders, and it has a lot of needs security, obviously kids' security is, you can't argue that. But perhaps there's some assumptions of what is secure and not secure. But all that to say that's a big project, and we've a lot of stuff going on. We've a lot of small changes. This might be a long podcast now, but we had a church come in a couple weeks ago to talk about some digital stuff that they were wanting to work on. And it was probably one of the most interesting and fascinating requirements, meaning I've been in a while, because they had so many good ideas and I think it was made much better because the senior pastor was there and he was an amazing senior pastor. from a senior pastor, what you want your senior pastor to do, teaching, preaching, amazing, but he's also very strategic, very innovative. And what? He knew Rock really well. Wow. That's incredible. I know. Was , at one point I'm , what don't ? , He has a daily podcast which you should listen to. I'll have to put that out on Twitter. I'll send my brain just We can add it to our show notes here. Yeah. Okay, we'll put a link into it. It's amazing, I would listen to it every day now, although I can't tell you the name of it funny enough. And I was asking about that, he's , I'm , Wow, it's amazing you put that out every day. He's , Yeah, it just takes me a few minutes. I record them all in a week, and then I edit them myself and put them up. I'm , Wait, added them yourself? And he's , Hell yeah, it doesn't take much. And he's at a pretty big church. But he had so many good ideas about digital innovation, and so we've been putting some of those ideas. We can do it one way out of the box, but we want to build it into the core. We don't want to have to rely on attributes and stuff that. But some of those ideas that he was having was , your brain's hurting and at the same time you can't wait to run back to your desk so you can get the requirements written up to get to the dev team. So I love those kind of conversations. And even a lot of that is It's just a good example of what makes the community amazing is that They give their ideas. Well, give their ideas, they have the ideas, yet at the same time Spark can then go take those ideas and give them to everybody. And that's not even a part of his project, right? He's not paying for that. I mean, perhaps we could have asked and he probably would have said yes, but that's not Those ideas are , okay, well, we're going to solve your need this way, but we're going go put this in the core. And then eventually we'll have to rewire that to use the core feature, which won't be hard, but it's that peppering of ideas. I don't think you get that unless the team that's responsible for the core is actually in trenches. That's so true. Right? I know that the companies I've worked with in the past, they even took one of the products that we made and they took it and they never were in another trench. And that's why we were , eventually this threw our hands up and , okay, well, that's not going to work. And we learned from that. Because there's no way these ideas come any other way. No. It also, so that's on the one side, right? core team has to be involved, but it also means that the churches have to be wanting to solve a problem in a way that benefits a lot of other people. Yeah. And there's a lot of churches, especially a lot of the features that we talk about when we talk about who either funded or who even gave us the idea because sometimes they can't fund it. That's right. Mean, Rock would be a good product if it wasn't for that, but it wouldn't be what it is today. That's right. And in a lot of it, it's just a small little micro change. It's , Oh, that's a really good They appear small, but they're exponential. Yeah. Another good example, tangible example that came out of that meeting, super small, but so important, is that we recently came up with this feature in Rock where if we know your age, we'll put you into an age bracket So now you can hinge off of your report. You can say, Oh, are you 25 to 35? Are you 35 or 36 to 45? So that was really, really good. And it's going to be really helpful. It's a new feature. But he was , , but you treated the kids. The kids' range is, think it was zero to 17 or something. So kids. He's , Wow, it'd be nice if we could just split that into two. And I was , in hindsight, you're kind of , well, duh. But there's good reasons why we didn't do that, or didn't consider that, ? But bringing that ministry in, I'm , but then be able to sit at the table with him and say, okay, well, in your experience, what would you prefer that cut to be? Now we could go back, and I had ideas, of course, was , we're not dumb, but it was so cool to be able look him in the eye and say, What would you to see in that? And he goes , Woah, actually we do this kind of internally, this is what we use. And I was , Perfect. And then he gave the why behind that. And he , That's exactly right. So we've actually already made that change, I Yeah, and then I got the requirements and we made it happen. Yeah, so it's not been released yet. It's coming, but there's a thousand things that. literally a thousand things that that you might take for granted, but basically we're standing on the shoulders of those who have done that. And again, that was in a meeting about a project that and we can live without it. Know, he can live without that that feature, that project didn't need it. But that peppering, think is just really great. So because I think in that case too, it's , well, that's a use case where it makes sense for that to be an opinionation, right? Because we could make it a setting. Right. Everybody gets to pick their own brackets. Well, that's cool. But two problems, one is performance. One is the standardization of knowing and sharing across churches. Well, I don't want a rabbit trail on that one yet. But the other thing is we have to also look forward to the future of getting thousands of churches on Rock. Do you imagine every small church being , it's a configuration overload. Right. Now I have to pick that too? Right. Or there's a setting for that over there too. We'd have to hide it. Right. But now the rabbit trail, because I think it proves his point. I had a little bit of a proud moment to myself as he was talking, because he kept talking about ERA, Estimated Regular Tender. And he was using it because they've embedded that into their strategy. , Well, that doesn't make an ERA. This is actually different than ERA. And he was talking about ERA, and I was , That was a concept that we came up with. Very early on. Yeah, it was actually even before Rock. We had a, at the church at CCV, that we had come up with in a previous thing. But to hear him talking about it and hearing how it's embedded in his ministry, ERA is definitely an opinion nation, right? we said, this is the recipe. And from those part, you can't change it. A couple people have gone and changed it in their store procedure, and then it gets overwritten, and that's a bad practice. But it was just cool to hear that, because it's evidence and proof that sometimes those opinionations are actually a good thing. Mhmm. So anyways, that's a very long winded thing about what we're working on. But there's a million other things just that. In fact, I'm so far behind. I'm always behind, feel , but I feel I'm four x behind. And the frustrating part of that is because there's all these good ideas that we need to get out and get the requirements ready for development. Although the development team's pretty busy too. Nobody's twiddling their thumbs over here. No. We got a nice backlog. It's great to hear not only what's being worked on, but why and how and how that all comes together because it's easier to picture how the entire community is a part of what makes Rock tick. Yeah. Especially around digital strategy, there's a lot of innovation going on that probably is not being seen and there's no space to talk about really. But there are fringes of the community really working on that. Tim Lemons is leading a really cool sub team on digital strategy that's open to anybody, but you can see it in Rocket Chat. And we post those videos of the meetings that he hosts. And a lot of good stuff comes out of that. Well, know what? There is space to talk about right now, giving. 'Tis the season. 'Tis the season. And, yes, we do need to make sure all the donation monies come in. And if you've got a little extra in your budget line item, where to send it to have a maximum impact, and we won't turn it away. So we do appreciate your generosity on that front, but that's not even what we're talking about today. Correct. We are talking about giving as a part of the community and the ways that you can be involved in the impact that that makes here and what sets the Rock community apart. Yeah. I mean, definitely just giving them money, but we're talking more about all the other things that you can give as a community member. And it kind of reminds me too, when you come out of your family, and maybe your family was generous, came out of a family that was very generous to the church or to others. But someday you have to realize that giving is not about an organization. Your organization giving might be your parents, but what are you giving as a member? And it can be your time. That's true. Your talents. Your brain, your creativity and your thoughts, ideas. Yeah. And so we had that big challenge thing at RX and it was kind of funny that someone had asked or just shown where they put their coin and it kind of turned into a thing, which was so cool. I love seeing your guys' environments and your challenge coins. It's , well, maybe it's a time to refresh your mind around that challenge and say , okay, giving, how have I given? Yes. And your organizational gift is not what we're talking about. We're talking about you as a person. How much time? Be tangible. Is it a good amount of time? For many of you, it's a lot. But for some, I think maybe the challenge probably hasn't been fully engaged. Your talents, what else could you do to help the community, to help those who maybe have a question in the community, help triage maybe someone else's issue. , Oh, someone just posted an issue. Maybe I can help the team confirm it. Or if I'm a coder, I can point out maybe the line of code that perhaps I think it might be. Yeah. And people have done that and that is very helpful. Yeah. Even if you're off by a line or two, it's super helpful because you gave us into the right direction. You're saving tons of time. Yeah, you just saved me fifteen minutes. You saved Colleen fifteen, twenty, half an hour. Sometimes more than that, I Yeah, No, it's a huge- all adds up. Thanks. So that's a Or maybe you're not technical and you can help someone with a process question or , how do you guys, there's a lot of questions in Rocket Chat. How do you guys do this? Or who do you use for that? Don't undersell that. Right, and the best solutions have to start with a great process or a great plan. So that's definitely something that you can contribute, even if you aren't the one physically bringing that process to life. Yeah. It's interesting because recently the CCV has been doing a series preparing for Christmas, and Ashley, who's doing an amazing job, talked about the shortest sentence requires two words. And so if you were going complete the sentence, God blank, what would the blank be? And I think he accurately nailed it and said, God gives. And obviously salvation was the biggest, most un- Deserving. Undeserving gift you could ever think. Even if you slightly put that aside, which sounds horrible, but He gives every day, just generously. And his thing was , Well, if that's the God we serve, should try to emulate that. And so how do we give to those around us in the community? Perhaps another thing you could give is your gratitude. And how cheap your words are. They don't really cost that much. They don't take that much time. But maybe the challenge I'd put out is , why don't you pick someone in the community and send them your words? And it could be someone you don't even know. maybe you just saw someone ask a hard question, or you saw someone new who is nervous about asking that question, maybe it's someone who's answered a lot of your questions, but you don't know them very well. By giving them your words, you're gonna start to know them a lot better. You're gonna actually connect at the conference. And I know it seems awkward for some reason in our culture to do that, to express words of gratitude or words of impress me. But that's really the devil, right? that's evil trying to say, your words don't matter to them. But I'm sure that, I hope some of you have gotten cards that you still have to this day. I have one from when I was at Honeywell. I'll never give that up. Was , wow, thank you. It could be from someone high up in the organization or it could be someone from very low in the organization. I would even say, you you might say, Well, they're my manager or my supervisor. Doesn't matter. It means a lot, they won't get rid of that card. So your words are very inexpensive to you, but they're a treasure to somebody else. And I would just say pick up maybe one, two people and maybe pick some people you don't know and send them that. Not only are your words not expensive, but in my experience, if you share words of encouragement with someone, you are encouraged. It's that refreshing of others to refresh yourself. And it reframes your mind. It refreshes your soul. It's just a great practice to be in. And I think the root of that is probably giving your empathy because that means setting aside , John, you mentioned it might feel awkward and it totally can. But if you can set that aside and say, but what would I feel if I were in that person's shoes, the new nervous person or the person who asked the question and is just so sure they're now looking dumb to an entire community. How would I feel if I were sitting in their position and how can I give them some inexpensive words that will make them feel so much better? Yeah. And those words don't have to be long. You don't have to be Mark Twain. Don't have be John Steinbeck. Just say, hey, man. I really appreciate you. You've really poured in a lot into the community. You've answered a lot of my questions. I just wanna say thanks, and I really admire you. Mhmm. It's all you have to do. We have no idea how people show up every day. Right? Most people I know have something going on and are probably trying not to bring it with them. And that's hard because we're a whole person with different slices that show up in different places. And you have no idea how much impact you can have with words. Right. And then maybe, , the challenge is do it, , today. Yes. But then turn it into a habit. try to find someone once a week that you can do that to. Maybe it's, , and you can turn it into a bit of a game. , I'm going to find the fifth person in chat and, , I'm going count up five and encourage that person. And give yourself the right to not, because it might be a weird thing to comment on. Go five up until you find one, ? It's gotta be genuine. It can't take that much. No, but I that because what you're doing is you're stretching your brain in a creative way to say, I'll go make that happen. You're putting a little effort in, and that makes it easier over time. Yeah, and I'd probably even take the challenge a little bit further and say, if you feel resistant to that, do you really believe in the community? Do you to take from the community or receive from the community, or do you want to give to the community? Kind of you said, giving gifts, even physical gifts, I love it. It's my favorite thing. Don't actually to get gifts, but to give them is so much more fun. Because you're thinking about the person, you're trying to find out the right thing, and even if they never even respond, you just know you did something good and it makes you feel Yeah, it does, it is so contagious. I ran across this quote this week from Marcus Aurelius. You'll that, John. I Marcus Aurelius. Yes. And I think that ties into exactly to what you were saying. He said some people, when they do someone a favor, are always looking for a chance to call it in. And some people aren't, but they're still aware of it and regard it as a debt. But others don't even do that. They're a vine that produces grapes without looking for anything else in return. And after helping others, they just go on to something else, and we should be that. And I think that ties in exactly to what you're saying, that motivation that's looking at other people instead of looking through your personal lens, seeing where they are and providing something that encourages them at no cost to you, really with a benefit to you in the net end. And and then not checking it off necessarily and saying, good. I'm done. But saying , okay, great. Now who else can I encourage? How else can I help? Hey, I heard about from Nick, all of those dot releases that have to come out and things we have to control for , , Mailgun making changes that they're making and we have to deal with that. Is there a testing team that I can help be a part of? How in the community can I use my time and talents to get involved? And I know there's a lot of encouragement that goes in, Nick, as that example, just knowing that that team has, the core team's back. Yeah, they're so appreciated. But maybe you can't be that because you just feel you have the technical skills. If you encourage someone on that team, do you think they're going to do it more or less? Because sometimes people have to be , I can't right now, I'm burned out or something. If you encourage them, they're gonna do it better. So even if you can't, you can still be a part of that team in another way. That's right. But I love what Marcus really said there, but I love, There's a piece of Marcus really said I really is that his lack of faith, because he wasn't a Christian. Right. But his words are so Christian. Yes. But his lack of faith, but having that proves that there is truth in this world. What he said is truth. It is true. And he may not have found it through a direct relationship with God, but because those truths are in play, he was able to discover them and it proves that the Bible is true, that God's word is true, and that there's principles, godly principles that are in play in it. Because when I read him the first time, This guy has to be a Christian. There's absolutely no way he could not be a Christian when he wasn't. He actually persecuted the Christians, But it actually kind of made me smile in another way because it proves that there's truth in this world. And it's discoverable. It is. Even if you don't have someone preaching it in your face. That's right. God's truth is what powers this world. Yes. And those who give without thinking of themselves, without putting it through their own filter, they give to be a positive impact on others, they're the ones that advance the world. And they're the ones that advance our community. And I think we can see that in action. I think we all know somebody in the community that we're , wow, that person really put so much momentum and energy into this community system that I can see how it powers what we're doing. And they become our heroes. Mhmm. They do. And sometimes it's easy to be a hero if you just give your words. Mhmm. Give your encouragement. Yep. I think that's a great message for the season, especially as a lot of times we're just so consumed with many details this time of year. Don't forget that very small things, if remembered, can make a big impact on others and on the Rock community. Before we wrap up, just a few announcements. Don't forget your budget may be turning over here at the end of this month. If you have dollars available, this is a great time to get your RX ticket purchased for next year or your hotel rooms. Don't worry if you're not a % sure what a name or person is getting attached to the ticket. We can sort that all out, later. So go ahead and get those purchased if you have any available additional funds. And also, if you have any additional funds that you can provide as a donation, we, , we do work on a very efficient running margins over here, and we've got a lot going on. So we would appreciate your generosity on that front. And finally, we do have our donation changing, our levels changing for 2024. If you haven't reached out yet and your conversations are internal, that's great. Just let us know where you're at. An updated commitment, application for a grant, or just a discussion about when during the year your budget changes and what that looks will really help us with our planning for next year as well. Thank you so much for joining us and being a part of this incredible community. We appreciate you, and Merry Christmas. 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. 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