Podcast Episode 183: Episode 156: RX23 Special Edition with Lisa Korrect

Description

Join us today for a special Rockcast edition recorded at RX23! Host Emily Forman and Lisa Korrect from The Crossing explore the impact of live feedback in their ministry and how it empowers youth amidst an ever-changing communication culture. Don't miss this insightful conversation! Show Notes:RX23 Content Subscription: https://community.rockrms.com/subscriptionsLisa’s title-How to Use Rock Mobile to Engage Live AudiencesThe Crossing- Lisa’s Church https://thecrossing.church/RX23 Images- https://rx.rockrms.com/rxphotosRock SponsorsWe are thankful for our Rock Sponsors and their support of the Rock Community. Visit their websites through the link above to learn how they can help your ministry and confirm that those you work with are as invested in the success of Rock as you are!

Transcribed Content

This episode of Rockcast is brought to you by Rock partner Triumph Tech, a full service specialist partner. Rock partners provide crucial support for Spark Development Network and important services for the Rock community. Connect with Triumph Tech today at rockrms.com/partners. Welcome to Rockcast, the podcast that explores the intersection of technology, ministry, and community with ROCCRMS. I'm Emily Forman, and here with me today is Lisa Correct, the Director of Communications from The Welcome, Lisa. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Well, we're excited because right now we're not in the recording studio. So if our audio sounds a little bit different, we're actually on-site here at Rx twenty three, the Rock Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. And you're from St. Louis, so you had to travel to be here. We sure did. Beautiful Saint beautiful Phoenix in July. So Beautiful Phoenix in July. Yes. We are testing commitments for sure. In the Rock community, it's been record setting temperatures. But thank you so much for joining us and for taking time out of your Rock experience to talk with us a little bit today. Oh, happy to do it. It's been a great conference. We're excited to be here. We've got six people from our team. Oh, wow. So, been learning a lot and meeting a lot of people. So, it's been a good experience. There's a lot to take in here. But, you didn't just come to take in information, you came to share some as well. We did. Yes. Yeah. We have a new feature that we sponsored that is in Rock Mobile, and I just came from a session where I got to share a little bit about that feature and how we use it at our church. That's so exciting. So your session, I believe, was called how to use Rock Mobile to engage live audiences. That sounds a really exciting topic. Tell us a little bit about this feature. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'll go way back because our church is one of those churches that loves to have interaction in our services, in our weekend teaches, where our pastors are asking questions of our attenders and getting live feedback and responding to those in the moment. And so, ago, we built an app with a third party vendor that a functionality that allowed us to do that, even across campuses. Oh, We have four campuses throughout the St. Louis area and online presence. And we built this app so that our teacher could not only get the responses from a room that was with them, but also from these other campuses. And so we've been using something that for a long time for a number of years, but we were here at RX when the Rock Mobile announcement was made. And I remember looking at my coworkers and going, oh, it would be so great to have our app on Rock. And so we started on this path of engaging in conversations, inviting you guys into the conversation and saying, we would love to be on Rock Mobile, but we know we can't launch a new app unless it has this feature, this functionality that our church uses and is important to us. Could we sponsor that? Because we want it to be in core, because we love the idea of this feature being available for other churches to use as well as ours. So And that's the story of how this feature started to come into existence was really that vision casting of a feature that you needed that required some functionality that Rockcore Mobile did not have. And so that resulted in the core team building a real time engine, which is gonna be used all over the place in our next generation technology, and building this interactive feature. So, Lisa, do you have an example of how this might be used right now at The Crossing? Yeah. Absolutely. In our session today, we got to share some of those. So, if folks have the subscription and go back and watch that, they can do that. We actually pulled clips of our services. But, we try to have variety in how we do it. We try and do it different week to week. So, one week it might be a pastor just posing a question. So, one of the ones we watched today, he asked, why are you at church today? Why are you here? What brought you here? Tell Tell us through the app. And then he's inviting people to interact with people around them and things that. And then a couple minutes later in the service, he has those answers from all four campuses and online on his phone and he's reading through them. Now, what we shared in our session is that those answers are moderated for him. He's not getting the raw data because that would be hundreds and hundreds of answers. Yes, it would. We have another pastor that's approving specific ones and curating the right list and then our pastor is able to read through those and have some diversity of answers, have campus representation. But right there in that moment, he's able to go, someone at Mid River said, they're here with a friend today. Or someone at our Grands Trail campus is here because of this. And I can't tell you what that does at the sites. We get feedback all of the time from our campuses who are going, I feel seen Mhmm. Because I'm able to participate even though I'm miles and miles away. Oh. That's just one of the ways. Incredible engagement tool. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So are there other ways that this feature can be used that you've explored at the crossing? Absolutely. We can services is the main way that we use it currently, but we do use this in our classes as well. Oh, interesting. We have a couple classes that we have panels where people can ask a panel of pastors their burning questions about our church, or the Bible, or Jesus, or whatever that might be. And, previously, it used to be raise your hand and ask your question. In a big old room of people. And we know that that can be intimidating, especially for those of us who are more introverted. In fact, we've been having conversations about one of our classes specifically, where we've noticed a trend over the last few years, even post COVID, we've kind of seen a shift in that most of the people who are raising their hand to ask this big bold question about whatever they might have, to be 50 to 60 year olds. We are not hearing questions being asked in these rooms very often from our 20 and 30 or even 40. So, it's interesting. We're trying to pay attention to that shift and the app has been a solve for us. Really? Yeah. So, you're seeing an increase in engagement, live engagement from that age group? We are, we are. So, people can pull out their app rather than raising their hand and being vulnerable in front of a whole bunch of people, and they can ask their question there in a safe way, anonymous, and that answer gets right to our pastors and they're able to respond. So, we've seen a lot of success with that. That's really intriguing. The communication patterns change over the generations. I mean, we know that's the case. Absolutely. And so this app is really answering some of the needs that younger generations have that older generations didn't. Mhmm. Right. Right. That's really incredible. Yeah. So in your q and a time at the session you just had, what were some of the things that people are in the Rock community are specifically most interested in this feature for? Yeah. I think some of the creative ways that we're using it. They were asking for new ideas and different ideas because we know not every pastor teaches this way. That's true. We're talking to a room of communications folks and IT folks, and we're not saying go back to your church and tell your pastor they have to do this. Right? That's Maybe, maybe it works for them. But, there are different ways throughout our services. So, we brainstorm some of those. For example, we use this in announcements from time to time. I think this coming weekend, we're talking about our backpack collection that we have coming up. So, as folks enter service, there'll be a slide on screen that says something about back to school and share your favorite back to school memory with us. Then, a couple minutes later in service, our announcement communicator will step up and they'll share a couple of memories that they got, they heard, and then make that transition to backpack. So it doesn't always have to be in the service, and those are some of the questions we had from the group in our session today. What else? Let's see. We had questions about functionality and can people ask, can we limit it to one question or can they ask multiple questions? And the answer is yes. We get to choose that. Can select It's all in Rock. So lots of options just most Rock features have. It's very configurable. Well, that's really exciting. I know from a core perspective, this is a feature we feel can fit a wide variety of church styles, as you mentioned, of, class and session opportunities. It just seems something that can be configured to meet a lot of needs, but really isn't something that was even on our radar I love that. Until you brought that up. And I think that's part of the magic of this event that we're sitting at today as well. It is, so many real time ministry needs collide with the vision of where we're going, and it's just the it's fertilized by the community. And it's that in person experience that really makes a big difference. And I hear so many hallway conversations here about ideas that are starting to come to life just this one. So we're excited to capture this kind of story from end to end because it began at an Rx in the past, and then you were able to showcase it at an Rx now. Right. And I can imagine next year at Rx sitting around the table at lunch with other churches who challenge us, who come back to us with their ideas of how they've implemented this and creative ways they're doing it that we get to be inspired by. And likely, of them will come back to the core team and say, we need some enhancements to this feature. And I think that's the magic sauce of what makes everything in Rock so innovative and so forward thinking. Absolutely. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for taking time out of your Rock experience to join us for a quick podcast and download some of the things you've been talking about here and really share the story of how The Crossing brought this incredible feature to life, in partnership with Happy to do it. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us for this podcast episode. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we will see you next time. 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.