Podcast Episode 187: Episode 160: Special Edition- Catie Pershing

Description

In this Episode of Rockcast, Catie Pershing of Woodmen Valley Chapel shares how they're using Rock to track their One Another initiative, aimed at connecting with every church member this year. She also highlights their Ministry Toolbox's Gold Circle Award and how these tools are making their ministry work easier and more effective. Tune in to learn how Rock is transforming their church engagement and operations.Show Notes:Catie’s Church Woodmen Valley Chapel: https://woodmenvalley.org/Gold Circle Award - https://community.rockrms.com/subscriptions/rx23/state-of-rock 2:01:20Content Subscription: https://community.rockrms.com/subscriptions Catie’s Video is "One Another – Tools to Find and Reach the Lost (and Found)"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 this special edition of Rockcast, the podcast that explores the intersection of technology, ministry, and community with ROCCRMS. I'm Emily Forman, and with me today is Katie Pershing from Woodman Valley Chapel and Laurie Yocum right here from our SPARC staff. Now Katie is the IT director at Woodman, and they're based in Colorado Springs. They've been running Rock since 2014, so they're going to be celebrating our ten year anniversary with us on Rock next year as well. They have an average attendance of about 5,000 people per weekend, four campuses, plus another campus in a nearby prison. Welcome, Katie. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. It's exciting to be here. Well, we're thrilled to be able to share a little bit about your story and what Woodman is doing with Rock with the community at large. Why don't you start out with telling us a little bit about your background and how you started in the Rock community? Sure. So I started attending Woodman in 2010. So I've been at Woodman for about thirteen years. I've been on staff since 2015. I actually started as the assistant to and partner of our executive pastor. I helped him launch a campus and then managed campus operations for a couple of years, which really helps to see things from the ministry side and kind of be in the trenches of day to day ministry. Throughout all of that, I worked part time in IT and I helped with our preparation and launch of Rock. In 2018, so about five years ago, I took over as IT director. So I currently oversee both traditional IT, but also our Rock team. And our team has grown from just being me and then one full time and one part time person to include an additional two full time individuals. So, the past five years, we've really grown. It's fantastic. So, last year, I had the opportunity to join our strategic lead team, which has been wonderful. It's given me the opportunity to speak into technology, digital strategy, and at Woodman as a whole, beyond the sphere of traditional IT. So I have been in the Rock community for quite a while. I originally came from web development, specifically WordPress and PHP. So when we first went to Rock, it was quite a change for me to go from being able to Google and answer and find everything I was looking for. Yes. And as soon as I found Rocket Chat, or I think we were on Slack back then, and I was able to reach out and actually ask questions and find answers, I jumped in, started learning, starting asking questions. And it was just pivotal to find people who spoke my language, who spoke lava, understood Rock, but were also trying to further the kingdom and serve those in their community around them. Yeah. You mentioned Rock Chat, which is an amazing way to get to know the community. So how will our community recognize you? What kinds of things are you involved in other than Rock a Chat? Where would they know you from? So I have been hanging around the community for a long time. we said, I've given sessions at I think three conferences, maybe four. So I've been giving sessions. All of them are up. You can go check them out. I love going to the conferences and getting to meet with other churches and hearing what they're working on. I think it's very encouraging to meet with other churches because I feel we feel isolated in our own little spheres. And we will feel we're falling behind or we're not making enough progress or, Hey, we haven't gotten to that yet. But then to go to the conference and meet with other churches and have people be , Oh, yes, we're trying to struggle and push through that too. Or, Yeah, we just rolled that out too, and it's going really well. And so conferences are amazing. And just being on Rocket Chat is a great way to get ahold of me. Email is faster, but Rocket Chat is also great too. Now Woodman's been doing a lot on Rock, obviously, in the last ten years, but right now you have a new initiative going called one another, which is a pretty big project. What can you tell us about how you're doing this in inside Rock? How are you doing it? And and what's your progress look ? Yeah. Sure. So for a little background, every year, our elders and our lead team set forth the vision for the year ahead. We share that with our entire staff and then our commission leaders. And as our lead pastor would say, those are the things that we want to get after in the year ahead, things that we're really focusing on. Sometimes they're tangible, sometimes they're specific to staff, sometimes they're a little bit more intangible. But this year, we're doing something slightly different. It's something that's not really all that radical when you look at Jesus' ministry or the early Church. It's basically the whole premise of the Bible. We're just launching into the year of what we call the year of one another. And essentially, we're focusing on how God goes after the one, one person. We all know the parable of the lost sheep to leave the 99 and to go after the one. And when you sit and think about Jesus and His ministry on earth, that's really He taught to large crowds, but He also took time to sit with people, to sit with His disciples, and even more to sit with the woman at the well, or Nicodemus. And in those moments, that's where lives are changed. And so, in the year ahead, we are setting out as a congregation, as a staff, to in faith engage every member of our Woodman family in a face to face conversation. And we're praying and trusting that God's going to use those conversations to advance His Kingdom. It's a little scary, but we are very excited and really kind of already hearing some pretty amazing stories from there. But as Emily mentioned, it's a really big undertaking. And obviously, we can't do it without Rock. So more or less, we're running this whole program with core functionality in Rock, which is pretty amazing. And it really kind of a testament to the power of Rock that we're doing it with all its core functionality, dynamic data, in tags for people using workflows. We're using connection requests. The board is just people's favorite thing that they can drag and drop cards. Mhmm. Makes them so happy. And so we're relying on connection requests, dynamic data reports and tags essentially. And that lets people know when somebody's already been in a conversation when those have already happened, what came out of those. That's incredible. And your entire staff has access to it because it's all in Rock. They do and it's all built and using data that we've been collecting for for all of these years and so we know a lot about how people are connected and engaged at our church now. That's incredible. Now you said that you've got some great stories coming out of that. What kind of stories or what stories could you share with us that you've already gotten back? Because you guys have only just started this initiative, correct? We have only just started. We officially just kicked it off in September. We kind of got a jump start, a few people in August, but for the most part, we're just getting started. And I just heard a story a couple minutes ago, and it was just really cool to hear about God's provision and how He moves pieces together in a specific time. So for example, a fellow coworker reached out to a congregant that he'd known and seen around for several years but hadn't seen in a while. So he reaches out and come to find out that the gentleman's wife is pretty sick. And because of that, they've just been watching our service online and haven't been able to make it in church into church. They're really sad to be missing that community aspect but really thankful that they can watch online. And so interestingly in the timing, he reached out and they scheduled a meeting. During the time that he reached out and they scheduled time to meet, the gentleman's wife ended up having an issue and had to go to the ER and it was just really rough week for them. And so it was really fantastic for my friend to get in and be able to meet with them and encourage them and pray for them and to rekindle that relationship, I think, for a time that could be a little bit more turbulent here in the future. So that's a pretty amazing story we've heard. Another one that I just heard recently, one of our staff members met with someone and it had turned out that her dad wasn't doing very well. And they met, and a couple days later, she came into church on a Sunday just to come in and tell her staff member that she met with that her dad had passed away. But they had built that relationship, and she was able to pray with her and to encourage her and to get her connected to the right people in that moment of grief. And so, it's just been some really amazing stories that have come out already. And I really think when we look back, we're going to remember the people in the stories and see how God just orchestrates everything around us for his purposes. I think you're right. Thanks for sharing those with us. Those are really great reminders. You mentioned you were a member of the strategic leadership team or committee at Woodman, and that's really exciting. So you're in a position that gives you the opportunity to help kind of bridge the communication between the senior leadership team and the technology teams inside your organization. How have you helped your leadership understand what technology is bringing to the table? I think that's a great question. I think it's an inevitable and consistent experience for most of our Rock community, the at the proverbial seat at the table. It's always hard to prove the value of Rock and what we're doing and the tools that we champion. I think to some degree, God has actually used a lot of the data that we have as a a way to encourage those conversations. We've spent the last maybe two years really digging into our data and trying to get a better understanding of who our congregation actually is. And so we have what we call this concentric circle model that has our people we've interacted with, people that we are confident are attending, people that we know are connected, and then people we know are engaging. So, we have this concentric circle model. And we've been looking at it. And one day, I kind of made an offhanded comment to our lead pastor that , I know the name of every person in that circle. I know who they are and can tell you more about them. And I think that the fact that he realized that the number actually tied to a name created this really holistic picture for him and kind of put it in his language and helped him to understand that we can actually use that to help minister to the people in our pews and the people in our congregations each weekend. And I think that was a pivotal turning point. And I mean, we've been on Rock for a long time, but for our pastors specifically to see that value was really encouraging. And it's encouraging. It's encouraging too to everyone who works in a data or a Rock position at any church to realize the value of what they're providing, right, where they are in the ministry role of that. Sometimes that can be hard to see at the exact moment where you're just doing your job. It's always be hard to be on the back end. Yes. And not see the ministry impact as clearly. So Katie, for the the staff members at churches who don't have the strategic seat at the table that you were mentioning that you have right now, , that didn't come for you originally and and immediately in your Rock roll. And maybe that's out ahead of some other people, but they aren't there now. How do you advise them to communicate well with their leadership to help bring about some of the same kinds of realization about the value of what's being provided? Well, definitely it's a process. It doesn't happen overnight. I think it's taken a lot of time and a lot of work, even just organically, to get to this place. To be honest, about two years into Rock, our leadership was actually really questioning whether Rock was the right tool for us. And we spent an entire year evaluating that and working through the questions that they had. And I think what we really uncovered was that we had approached the migration and had been attempting to support our ministries in a way that wasn't very effective. It really wasn't the tool itself. It was just the way we were using it. And we came with this mindset of, You tell me what you want, and we'll build it. And when we flipped that script, and we actually sat down and said, What are your struggles? Where are you having problems? Where are you spending the biggest time? What do the people in your ministries actually need? We were then able to take that and create a solution. And I think that's important because leaders of our ministries are not always gifted with the same digital mindset that we're gifted with. Those of us in tech, we see things differently, we see a problem and instantly we think of five different ways we could solve that problem in Rock. And so, we kind of have taken that mindset to shepherding our staff and seeing our staff as our flock and helping to find solutions to their problems rather than waiting for them to come to us saying, I need this tool or this process. And essentially from there, you get kind of a grassroots movement. And we ended up with a couple staff members that just became our champions, became Rock's champion. They were Rock stars, essentially, our own version of Rock stars. That's incredible. And you and I had talked previously about you guys have a culture where your team comes to your Rock team first when they need something instead of going externally. And they have to ask you, does Rock do this? And you guys uncover that. Now how did that all come about? That was something because of this or how did that culture get created? I think a lot of that culture came because we had those three to four really key staff members that were serving as Rock stars. And we made an intentional decision to make Rock our home base for staff. When I first started, we had an app for this and an app for that, and you had to log in to 10 different places and tools to get your job done. And so over time, we compiled almost everything except for planning center into Rock. And so it's become the home base. And because they can see that Rock can run my room reservations and my event registrations, and it hosts the website. We've really worked with them and given them the tools to ask us when they need help versus trying to seek out the answers. And a lot of that is just building trust and building relationships with our staff. Yeah. Absolutely. Now, Katie, we last ran into each other at Rx twenty three, where you were awarded a gold circle for a project that you'd worked on, and that's community judged, community awarded. Can you tell us a little bit about that project? Sure. So we won a gold circle award for our one ministry toolbox. We've been using the group leader toolbox functionality in Rock for a really long time and had over the years continued to expand its functionality. But eventually, we found ourselves in a place where we had a ton of different toolboxes for every ministry scattered all over the place. And when viewing that from a congregate perspective, from an end user perspective, it became really confusing and difficult. And then from our side, it just wasn't scaling well. Every time we'd add a toolbox, we had to add extra pages, we had to add more support, and it became really difficult to manage. And so we started to think about how could we streamline that and make it easier where I can just click a few buttons and a toolbox magically appears. And so that's where the idea of the OneToolbox was born. We worked with a partner to build a new theme and a site that kind of matches the look of our mobile app. And that serves as the single home base for all of our ministry partners and congregants for all of the ministries that they're a part of and lead. So we have everything from mission strips to community groups to Awana groups to worship to weekend teams to kids ministry. And it's basically become a place where they can come for resources, which we feed from content channels, events, which we feed from calendars by audiences, a traditional roster and communication option, so they can go see everybody in their group and then email them. And then for other toolbox, we add specific functionality based on need. So some of our toolboxes have group scheduling, although we're still working some of that out with our teams. And then our mission trips have access to see their fundraising, to see their group's fundraising, and even make contributions for their trips in their toolbox. That is incredible and this has made a huge difference for your volunteers when they come and try to use that. Do you see them using it more? What are some of the benefits that you've gotten from this toolbox change? Overall, it's been a really great experience. It's really improved the communication between our staff because we know that people don't necessarily read emails but that is what we were relying on to get lesson plans and event registration links out. And, Hey, we're not having student ministry tonight. We were relying on email to do all of that. And they get lost, they get scattered. But to have a single spot where our ministry partners can come and check their toolboxes has been great. So now the emails will say, Hey, here's a quick update, but check your toolbox for more. And so it's just become a way better experience for our ministry partners and leaders. So when they log in, they see the toolbox for all of the ministries they're in. They can read resources specific to that ministry. And the goal is to just provide them with the tools that they need to equip them for their ministry and give them the ability to feel well equipped with everything they need. And it's all right there in one place. That is beautiful. All in one place. So Katie, we'll wrap up here with one last question. What are the Rock features you're looking forward to in the future? So we just got to version 14. Mhmm. So we're very excited to kind of delve into the personalization feature. We're doing a lot of that in our mobile app with personas and actually targeting specific things to specific people, but we haven't had the opportunity yet to roll it out on our website. So that's something we're really looking forward to in the coming year. To be honest, we're also really looking forward to getting group scheduling rolled out to everybody. We've been on Rock for so long that there were features that weren't there when we first started. And so now we're going back to using the core functionality. And so to be able to do that has been really encouraging and really exciting to get some of those things that are gonna make a big difference in the lives of our staff. Definitely. Well, thank you so much for sharing and for joining us here. I know the community really values being able to hear what's actively being done inside other churches and sharing that we have a lot of platforms for it. We have chat, but to really be able to get your story out a little more broadly, This podcast will be very beneficial. We appreciate your time. We appreciate your involvement in the community, and I know the entire community looks forward to running into you again wherever we'll next find you. 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.