Podcast Episode 186: Episode 159: Rocking a Decade: Celebrating 10 Years of Innovation and Empowerment

Description

Join the Core Team on Rockcast as we prepare to celebrate Rock's 10th birthday, announce Version 16's exciting features and discuss a vital donation adjustment fueling our innovation to empower churches in their mission. Don't miss this conversation about Rock's decade of progress and it's incredible future. Show Notes: Spark Donation Adjustment: https://community.rockrms.com/connect/rock-rms-donation-update-what-you-need-to-knowRX24 Registration: https://rx.rockrms.com/Alpha and Beta Testers: https://community.rockrms.com/get-involved/role/alpha-beta-testersGet to Know our Community: https://community.rockrms.com/chatRock 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 that explores the intersection of technology, ministry, and community with ROCCRMS. I'm Emily Forman, and with me today are Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo. Nick, let's talk about where we are with version 16. All right. Yeah. Version 16 has gone through a second round of alpha testing. We just had a little extra desire to crank it through the alpha testers one more time, because there were a number of things that they found and that's good. And we're being a little cautious, which is also good. So we are about to go to beta. So by the time this podcast comes out, we may already be in beta. That's exciting. It's always nice to see the extra fit and finish that the testing teams help us provide. Yeah. Now one of the things that isn't quite seen, if you go look at the release notes, is we haven't published the v15.2 release notes, and we're probably going to do a v15.2 next for anybody that's kind of stuck on version 15.2. There's a number of fixes in there, but those fixes are all in version 16. So they've all been tested basically for the most part. So there will be a very fast v15.2 alpha round soon. So yeah, it's been active and exciting. Yeah, we actually It's starting to get a little difficult. We have all these versions and things are moving quickly. And so we are working on, I don't know if we have the exact name for it, but it's a release kind of roadmap, but it looks backwards and forwards. So you have a little bit more clarity on when a new release might be coming. And you can also know in the back, going backwards, , , what major releases are end of life. And it was just getting a little messy on the release notes, plus we still didn't have all the information we wanted to portray. So we were kind of moving that around. So look forward to some changes there fairly soon. I'd say in the next probably two weeks, we'll have that done. Probably sooner. But there'll be a lot more transparency and you'll be able to know is 15.2 really gonna come out? Because there's always one dot release that never gets released. Because as soon as we release one, we have to have another branch ready for anything that comes. But if nothing big comes, that last one will just be left behind and all that stuff gets moved to the next major release. And then the exception being if there's a security update and it's still one of the supported versions, we'll usually do it right So that was a look back at '15 point '2. Let me look forward for a moment to version 17 and beyond, just to say that we do have a change coming with the removal of support for a Redis caching backplane. Now, if that means nothing to you and you've never heard that before, you can safely ignore what I just said. It doesn't impact you. There's only a handful of churches that use a Redis caching backplane. And it was kind of an older approach before we had a Rock web farm concept. John, do you wanna touch on that? No, the number of churches that this impacts, you can count it on one hand if you'd lost three fingers in the war. So there we go. Enough said. And even those two don't, they shouldn't be using it. There's no need for it. And the farm takes over all that so much easier. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other change is which you've heard many, many times by now, removal of the dot liquid Lava engine is coming next. Not to be confused with the removal of the legacy Lava support that was in version 16. So version 16, you should no longer be using the legacy lava, but the dot liquid lava engine is going away. So your only option is fluid. Yeah. So don't postpone. Don't put that off. I see a lot of people pushing that off and it that problem only gets bigger the more you lava you write. So just get it done. It doesn't take that long. It just takes a little bit of effort. There's plenty of documentation that's been written on how to help transition. And several blog posts. Just do it. Plus it's gonna increase your performance of your system. So I mean, that alone should be enough to do it, but that alone isn't enough. So in '17, you will be forced to. You will not be able to update. So that's all I have to share. All right. That's exciting. what else is exciting? We have a big birthday coming up around here. That's right. Rock's birthday. October. Yes. So in 2024, we'll be celebrating the tenth birthday of RockRMS. That's a really exciting birthday. We have a lot of things planned. We're we're just really looking forward to the recognition of everything that's been done by the core team, the community, and and God's hand in all of it. So a couple things we really wanna make sure , it is coming up. We have the the tenth birthday of Rock. Also, our conference that year will be a great big birthday party. So we'll be celebrating that Rock has turned 10. We'll be doing that by really digging into our event and making sure that we are adding some new and exciting elements to it, some more content for people on your teams that may or may not have been to the conference before. So this is something you don't wanna miss. And to help with that, we've actually created a lightning round price discount for the conference. So if you register before the end of this month, I think September 29, It expires. We have a lightning price of $6.49 for your ticket. So make sure to get those tickets now so that you're booked, you're ready for the party, and you don't have to check that off the list later. There will be plenty of other things to do later on, but get those conference tickets now. If you've ever been to a Rock conference, you definitely wanna come back. And if you've never been and are waiting for the year to come, this is it. So make sure and get those tickets. Yeah. And strategically, we are changing up the conference a little bit. Our goal, we're just gonna put it out there and we'll see. We're already working really hard on this, is to get a thousand people to the conference. Now the way we're gonna do that is not to just try harder and push harder and talk more about it. We will do that, but that's not how we're gonna get to that number. We are strategically looking at the conference and how do we provide more types of tracks? And so we're really gonna be focusing strategically and adding three new tracks. We're going to keep doing what we're doing. So if you what's there, you're going to get that. Plus a track for generosity giving, a track for communications, which I feel with that door is already half open. Last two years, we've had pretty good content there, but we're going to just take it the full way. And then the third track would be for engagement and discipleship, which again, that door again is probably halfway open also, but we're already working on that. So I've already had conversations with some churches who have specialties in those areas, trying to find out what would they want, getting them invited, getting them thinking about what they can speak about. And so they're very excited and we're really excited. So here's what you need to do. You need to go talk to those people now, don't wait, and say, Hey, the Rock Conference is coming up, cool news, they're gonna have some tracks for your area of ministry. And so there'll be content for them, but there'll also be space for them to collaborate. So one of the other things that they're gonna get, not just content, but they're gonna be able to hang out with their peers at all these other great innovative churches, and they'll be able to network and share best practices and ideas. So we don't want to program that whole time. We want to let them have some time to themselves to talk about what they think they want to talk about, because we don't want it to simply just be Rock either. There'll be a healthy portion of that, how to use Rock in each of those cases, but we want it to be , Hey, outside of Rock in your space do you want to talk about? I really feel some of these areas don't really have established conferences that they go to to network with their peers. In a lot of ways, Rock community is specialized in that. And we take it for granted that we have these types of peer networks and relationships, but not everybody does. So let's give them space. I also think it gives them It's good to have them at the conference. It helps round out because Rock's not just one thing. It's a large platform that has a lot of different features and capabilities. We want to give them space for that. And John, I don't think you can understate that point about having a network of your peers. Now we've been through it in a couple different ways, the church IT network and now, know, Rock administration and networking. We understand the power of that because we've had it on our belt for fifteen years, but that ministry doesn't yet know what comes of that. So that community that they could build at Rock of their peers is so powerful. They just won't know it until they experience it. That's where your job comes in. They will not necessarily know about it or realize the value that they might get from that experience. And that's where you having experienced the Rock Conference in the community can be the one facilitating that invitation and helping them come to that first experience and really start to see in person what it's all about. Because you're right, Nick, it isn't the same remotely as it would be to have that built community in person over time. And already with some of these conversations that we've had, there's a lot of excitement. But also what came out of it, which I wasn't expecting, although I probably should have, is it's actually ignited some ideas for features within Rock. For instance, talking with some of the generosity leaderships, they're , Oh, what? It would be great. I'd love to talk about some of these reports that we have and that we do in our dashboarding tools. And their idea was , Hey, it'd be great to get that into CORE. And looking at those reports, it was , Woah, those are really good ideas. Not easy, but we are doing it. we already started working on providing three of the reports so that then they have content to share. Not only are they sharing the best practice, but it's actually going to be in their core version so they can just update and get it. So it's pretty exciting how all that works in a nice circle of life type thing. Never looking for more things to do, but when it's that good of an idea, it's great. So again, what is your task? Go talk to those three parties, which again is generosity and finance, communications, and engagement and discipleship. Talk to them now, especially because there's a discount to get before September. Spend next year's money today with this year's budget if you've got a little extra. That's good budgeting. But do it now. At least plant the seed and say, Hey, book these dates. I think you should be there. And I think it was going be peers, cast the vision, do it now, because we really want to get to a thousand, not just because it's a good four digit number, but because we want the impact of Rock to grow. And that means including more types of ministries into what we do. Definitely, we are very excited about And we'll all be celebrating Rock's birthday, which the tenth birthday comes around once. All right, that's really exciting about the conference. What else have we been thinking and working on around here, John? Well, think coming out the conference is a good time to reflect on what's going well and what challenges do we have looking into the future. And as we just talked about, Rock has so much impact, just so many different types of ministries. And in fact, if I go back in a time machine, there's no way, I don't think any of us would have thought that we would have this kind of capabilities and this kind of feature sets. Naive me thought at one point, gosh, someday, in ten years, we're just about to celebrate tenth, If we had enough funding to support three people, what else would we ever need? That would be just be perfect. And now look flash forward ahead and it's the team's 10x that, not all working on core, but all having a hand in parts of core. We have all these churches, very influential and doing amazing things. And it's mind blowing. And then if you think about the capabilities of Rock, again, I never would have thought, back then it was all church management. We purposely didn't call it that because we had a different vision about people and not organizations, not about entities, but about people. So we didn't call it that, but it was checking, giving groups reports and you're done kind of, know, oh, maybe a few other little things, but for the most part that was it. But who would have imagined the needs and the capabilities, especially around digital ministry, driving websites, driving mobile apps, driving TV apps. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And I think one of the things that if we look at one of the biggest struggles that we have is how do we keep feeding the beast? It's a great beast. It's a powerful beast. It's a beast that helps each and every one of us do our ministry and to win people to Christ, but it's gotten very big. And it has a lot of value. We keep hearing that over and over and over again. At the conference, I heard it a million times, we couldn't do what we do without this. And I know that's such a, it's a rewarding thing to hear, right? But if I'm honest, I hear two messages there. , Hey, thanks for doing this. that's what goes to the heart, but there's another message that goes to the head, which is not intentional, but is equally true. , don't mess this up. That's kind of what I hear too, because we're relying on this, we can't mess up. But as the beast grows and grows and grows, that value costs money. And so it costs money not just to develop, which I think is a cost that we can all relate to. Oh, it costs money to develop this. Yes, yes it does. But it also costs a ton of money just to support it. To keep all the feature sets going. Micro features are very expensive because they can tend to lead to issues. You you change something over here, something over there changes. The only software that never breaks is software that never changes. And even if the underlying operating system, anything in your environment changes, it changes along with it. And so when you have change, it just costs a lot of money. And so as that value increases, so does the cost, we need to just as a community, look at that and it's time for us to raise the average weekend attendee amount exclusively just to help pay for the value that's been added that we needed to support. And so today, of course, I think everybody knows it's $3 and we've had a lot of conversations, some even at the conference, just trying to get some input on what we think we should do with this. And we feel where we need to be is $4.1 per average weekend attendee. So if you have a thousand people, it's $4,100 a year. And that's just to help us keep doing what we're doing, keep paying for what we've already developed. I mean, it's crazy when you think we're actually developing two products right now. there's the original Rock and then there's the next gen Rock. And that's not even including that. somehow God makes this workable, but we're just talking about even just to support what we're doing today is in the four ten area. Now what I think is unique and special, and that we have to keep going back to, because this is very unique, there's nothing else this, especially in the church community, is every other business in the world, , look at Apple, they just released a whole bunch of new iPhones and watches and stuff. They create so that they can make money, right? They create a new phone, they create a new product so that they can make money. This is very different. we raise money so that we can create. So it's a 180. And I think we take that for granted because we don't reflect on it. I would even say, even within our community, we should be evaluating all of the people who work with Rock in those ways, because it's not that you have to be a nonprofit to do that, right? If you're a nonprofit, it almost becomes that because there's no way to make money. That's what a nonprofit is. But for profit could actually be in those norms too, but you have to judge by the fruit. And that's what the Bible would tell us, judge a tree by its fruit. So those who give away a lot of things, you can see, oh, well, it's not necessarily about the money. You can't use words because words are cheap, but you have to look at the fruits that come out. Is there a lot of stuff coming out for free? Does this organization appear to be creating so that they can make money, or do they make money so that they can create? And I think we should push all of our evaluations through that mindset, both in our Rock space, but also outside of Rock space too, in our personal lives, in our non Rock related ministry lives. Because I think that's in God's economy, that's what matters. But it very much speaks loudly for Spark. we raise money so that we can create, and that's so different than Apple who's creating so that they can make money. And so I think there's something unique here within the community, and we just want to be able to continue doing this at a quality level that the churches expect. Yeah, that's an incredible distinction, John, about why we create, that's why the community is so important to all of this, We all have our rules and coming together. And the things that are created are the things that churches need. They're not things in a black box that no one can use. So it's just a really incredible dynamic and having the funding and support for that is just so important. And what an incredible community that's come alongside us at our current donation rate and really stepped up and joined us in that. And we just know that the value that they continue to provide, way they recognize what's being done in Rock is just so important and we appreciate them very much. Yeah, and then looking through some of the numbers, as we make this decision, because it wasn't a number that was just drawn out of the air. Looking through some of the numbers, there's been a few churches recently, kind of smaller churches, would say, compared to our size in our community. And I would look at their commitment level and I'd be , what is this? , this number is huge. And I'd go back, get the backstory. Oh, well, that's what they're paying for their last product. So they just decided, well, why would they pay less? Because this does better, this is so much more powerful. So they decided, well, we could at least pay what we used to pay. And I was , that is so cool. And I think it's important that we remind ourselves that this number that we give, three or now it's going to 4.1 in 2024, that's the baseline. we shouldn't always just think of the baseline and say, okay, well, that's what I'm going to do. Sometimes that's all we can do, I understand that, but don't use that as , okay, well that's the number, that's just the baseline. And it's so encouraging to see, even some of these smaller churches who could probably use the money. Mean, we could all talk ourselves and there's other things we could do, but , no, we get it. This value costs money, and we want to have more value. So here's a little bit more money because we are already paying for it in the other system. So just don't think of the $4.10 as the number, it's the bottom number. And again, sometimes that's all you can do, we understand that. But if there's the ability to do more, we will be able to do And we can do more, that's right. So John, when does this take effect? Well, this takes effect in January. I'm sure there's a million questions, because I get it, there's different fiscal periods and there's different situations. The blog post that we put out on the same day that this ships has a lot of FAQs in there, And so we have a little statement at the top, we're trying to keep it really concise because we know you're busy and honestly none of us read. We skim, and so we made it very skimmable. But at the bottom there's a lot of FAQs. And I think the message that we want to give out first and foremost is , no church will be left behind. Yes. Our first core value is always accessibility. We want this technology to be accessible by every church on the planet. But we do feel this donation model get early access, we feel this does meet the need of accessibility, because if there's no money, the accessibility of nothing is still not very good. Right. But no church will be left behind. If you have a special situation, there's instructions on what to do there. We will work with you. We understand fiscal budgets. We're trying to get this out for all those who have the budget at the end of the year. We've been working crazy. It might seem easy to put this out, but we had to run this past multiple people and the board, we had to get a communication plan in place, we have a ton of technology issues to change behind the scenes. So there's a lot of different things. And we talk a little bit about future, where we kind of see future going, you can start planning for that. We can't read the future, so it's a little hard to talk about these things. Again, if you asked me to read the future, a couple of years to ten years ago, I would have gotten it totally wrong. God had a different plan, which shows you who's in charge. So we're trying to do our best though. Great. So for any questions, refer to the blog post for the FAQs, start there, and there will be a link in the podcast show notes for that. And then if that doesn't answer your questions, please feel free to reach out to us and we will work with you and your individual situation. Yeah. And just know, no church will be left behind. That's right. Great. Well, we are so grateful to this community and really appreciate the time where we can share what's happening here with Rock at Spark Development Network. Thank you so much for tuning in and be sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you can stay in the loop going forward. 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.