Podcast Episode 179: Episode 152: Special Edition- Tommy Prater

Description

Join Tommy Prater from Church on the Rock in MO as he talks with Emily Forman and Lorrie Yoakum on RockCast, where they delve into his experiences as early adopters of Rock and reveal how it has empowered them to become adept solution finders for their thriving church community.Show Notes: Church on the Rock- https://www.cotr.org/Meet Tommy at RX23- https://rx.rockrms.com/rxregister/rx2023RX23 Speakers- https://rx.rockrms.com/speakersDocumentation: https://community.rockrms.com/documentationRock Recipes: https://community.rockrms.com/recipesRock 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. We love to take you behind the scenes with some of the community members that are showcasing how technology and their ministries are intersecting. So joining us today, of course, on our team, we have Laurie Yocum, and our special guest today is Tommy Prater with Church on the Rock. Tommy oversees all things operations and finance on their side and has been a member of The Rock community, very engaged for many years. Welcome, Tommy. Thanks, Emily. It's good to be here. We are so excited to have you. Now, Tommy, you work at Church on the Rock in the Saint Peter's, Missouri area, which is kind of Saint Louis area. Right? Right. A church of about 3,000 and you've been running on Rock for a long time. if we go back in history of what is Rock and how long you've been doing it, you were really in that early adopter crowd, is that right? Yeah, I still remember it was 2015, we started looking at it real early on and it was just kind of stumbled upon it. And then I still remember the conversation I had with someone who's saying, it's just this little project that I'm not sure if it's really gonna go anywhere, if it's gonna do much. And then ever since that comment, it seemed over the next six months, it just kinda I kept hearing more and more. And then we just said, what? Let's do it. And March of twenty sixteen, we I mean, we pulled the trigger. That was our go live. And for us that go live wasn't even a Some churches do a whole year kind of plan that thing And I mean, we kind of did a three month or six months , okay, here's what's gonna We gotta buy new hardware. Okay, good. And we're just gonna pull the trigger. So let's do a dry run on migrating our data and then we always got to go. And that's kind of how we went. We just pulled the trigger. And I mean, we didn't move so fast that we lost stuff, but we didn't, we just said, we're gonna do it and let's go. And you mentioned back in there that I think you said at 2015, started exploring it. And so really, it was a a small project at that time. , was not an incorrect thing that your friend said to you because Rock was a small project with a very large dream. I know v one came out in late twenty fourteen. So when you say you were looking at it in 2015, it probably didn't even have a full suite of the basic admin tools at that point. So you really were able to understand the vision of where it was going. Right, but back then it was for us, I hate to say this, but it still had the tool sets that brought everything together. It was ministry focused, it was ministry minded. Because before we went to Rock and we were running five, six different databases across different platforms to kids checking in, that's another system. We're running our giving, that's another system. Membership management, okay, that's another system. And a lot of those systems didn't talk. They were all manual. So Rock was just , man, this was pulling it all together. But then I saw the roadmap as well. That's one thing I love that you guys, as far as Rock does, is they keep laying a roadmap out and say, hey, this is on our map. We're going to get there. And it's not, I mean, yes, some of it's dreaming, but a lot of it is, no, is what we're gonna do. It's not just we're thinking about it, we're gonna make it happen. And this whole process, I mean, the whole time we've been on it, every year, but every few months, okay, we released a new update. Well, yeah, we heard from the community, we needed this. Okay, we fast tracked that. That was gonna be a year from now, but well, saw, okay, we need to fast track it. It was an early project for I mean, realized it was early on, but it still gave us I mean, just from the very beginning, Rock was an upgrade. Even when we went live, I had staff members come to us and say, Wow, this is a major upgrade. We can do more now. We can make things happen better now. It's just so many positive comments. That's incredible. Now you've been around the Rock community for so long that a lot of the community already knows who you are, but we do have a lot of new members. So what are some of the things that you've been involved in? How will people recognize you or how will they meet you this year? Oh, man. Well, Brock Conference, I try not to miss those. I don't think I've missed one yet. I mean, those are just a highlight. That's , kind of a family reunion. You get together with everybody because everybody in the Rock community is They just love working with each other. That's one thing that's really awesome. And I hope I'm answering the question right, but it's you don't feel nobody's got a chip on their shoulder. I'm better than you. , I don't want to talk to you. I mean, the biggest churches to the smallest churches, Everybody has that mindset of I can learn something. And for us here at our church, that's something we see all the time as we're lifelong learners. But that seriously is so anyways, to meet me Rock conferences, I try to be in rocket chat. Sometimes I miss messages and then I have to apologize to people and say I didn't mean to miss it, with life and daily, just things you have to get done, but yeah, rocket chat and conference and emails. A lot of the people know if he doesn't respond there, I email him. That's fair. And you have actually been a speaker at Rock, the Rock conference. Has it been every year now? I don't remember. I believe it is. And we're we're counting on you again for this year so people will get to hear what you have to say in a session at Rx twenty three. So we're looking forward to that. I remember your first presentation at a conference, Tommy. I remember I was sitting in the room and you had told me ahead of time you were so nervous about it and you did such a fantastic job. People were coming up afterwards just really engaged with what you were saying and it to me, that really is a message of hope for some of our new speakers who are lined up this year that are a little concerned about their presentations too. It's not a a group of professional speakers. So there's no need to be totally worried about it. Just get up, be your authentic self and share your story. That's what you did and you did a great job. Yeah, I agree with that. And yeah, every year since, I've probably gotten more nervous every time. It doesn't go away. Yeah. It doesn't go away, but I think to me that helps me stay on my toes a little bit because anytime something I learned a long time ago, if you're going to share something, make it impactful. Don't just talk the talk. Don't just I mean, if you're going to actually share something with somebody, make it worth their time, not just your time, make it worth their time because you're giving, it just needs to be worth receiving. So I don't know anyways, but it doesn't get easier. I was really nervous then and I'll probably be even more nervous this time. Well, if you're not nervous about something, you're not trying anything new. Gotta stay uncomfortable. That's right. That's right. So, Tommy, we were talking a little bit earlier and you said something that really struck me. You said that you love to be a solution finder and that everybody needs tools to do what God has called us to do and Rock is one of those tools for you. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? That was just really striking to us. Yeah, just one of the things that our pastor teaches us is be a solution finder. Don't be someone that is always bringing problems, always bringing criticism, always bringing what's not working. I mean, I've been taught for a long time, if you're going to bring a problem, you better bring a solution. Need to follow that up with be a solution finder. And I think with Rock that in so many ways, from early on, when I was saying, we're on different databases, we've got different things we're doing. I mean, one thing that we've always strived to do is how can we do something better, right? How can we be, whether it's more efficient and not just be more efficient, but be more impactful. How can we make a greater impact? How can we reach more people, fulfill the mission that God's given us? And you need tools in your tool belt to do that, right? Need to fulfill what God's called you to do. You can't do it by yourself. You can't do it just on your own. You need people, you need processes, you need tools. And I think Rock's one of the greatest things that I've used is because it brought so much together. It aligns so many tools of, hey, we need to communicate with our congregation. We need allow check-in. We need to do follow-up. There's so many things that you want to close the back door, right? I mean, I've heard that for a long time. The church space, close the back door, close the back door, don't let people fall through the cracks. I mean, not saying anything's perfect. Rock's not perfect with that. It's still you have your processes and you have your culture, how you run things. But Rock is just, , it's a tool that what you want to get done. To me, Rock helps facilitate that, make it go faster and so forth. What would you say is one of your favorite features that you've leveraged in Rock or something you're working toward right now? Favorite features? Gosh, there's a lot. One of them is personalization. Love the personalization stuff that it's nice having one database, one system that can manage your website, manage your mobile app. We're looking at launching a Apple TV that's tied into Rock, but all of that goes back to, it allows personalization, but it allows us to connect better with our congregation. It's not personalization for them, but it's for us to connect with them, right? , I mean, just in our staff meeting yesterday, as a staff, we were talking about, again, we went back to some fundamentals of, Hey, if this happens, we do a lot of if thens. We do a lot of, , if this happens, what do you do? Well, it was kind of one of those things, I'm just using this as, I guess, an illustration to share my point on it, but what do you do if you have somebody that comes into your volunteer corps meeting and they're not one of your volunteers? Well, mean, do you make them leave? What do you do? Well, one of the things we said, well, first you want to look them up, right? I mean, do it discreetly, but it's the power right there in your hand. I mean, on your phone, I can put the person's name in and see, well, are they involved in our church? Do they have kids? Are they married? All the information now, I mean, you have to put that information into it, garbage in garbage out or good in, good But all that information that's in there, it then allows us to minister better. I mean, if I can tell you, if I can ask you, hey, Emily, how's your kids doing? And actually name them by name versus, oh, do you have kids? It makes you feel more, man, these people know me. They make me feel more of a belonging, not just, , I came in and I came out. But I think that's one of the coolest features is it allows us to connect better. , I even remember during COVID, in the height of it, we started making phone calls to anybody that in the last few weeks or a few months had any kind of connection with us, right? Whether it's they filled out a connection card online, they did something with us. Well, Rock helped facilitate that with the call campaign. That was a newer feature that came out during COVID. And it was so cool, for that time where we could spin up these calls and have volunteers come in and, hey, call this person, ? And then we could track, we call them, get updates on them. So I think that's one of the things is just, it's the connection from the ministry to the peer or the individual that we stay better connected. Yeah, Rock has that ability to make a big church feel small so that the people who are there, one, you said, don't fall through the cracks, but also have the ability to feel known, which is what everybody is looking for when they walk through the doors of a church is to find that family. And then, I guess I'd tag on that. It goes back to even with the connection, the personalization, since we've launched our mobile app on Rock, I mean, our website's been on Rock for a few years now, but we've continually added more things to give you a reason to log in, to give you a reason to not just, well, hey, log in because it's a good idea to check your giving history. Goes beyond just now giving history. It's, hey, did I go through growth track? Have I finished that? , , and for us, that's our assimilation process, right? That's to get you plugged in, get you on our serving team. And it's so cool because if somebody sees, hey, didn't man, why does it say I didn't finish step three? They're calling and asking, right? , did I not take it? How do I get signed up? And so, , it adds that other layer of even for the individual, it puts it in front of them that they need to do that, right? And then for our serving team, it gives us the ability using Rock, I mean, in our mobile app, we release a leadership podcast every month that's specifically for our serving team. And so that's from our senior pastor and we don't want to just put it out there and say, Hey, this is open, tell everybody about it. We want to target those in our serving teams. And in our mobile app, we can do that. When you're logged in, you're on a serving team. As soon as it's released, it's in the homepage of the app for you, but not for everybody else. That's incredible. Now, a lot of conversations have started around strategy, digital strategy, etcetera. And I know that you and I have talked before that you have four gauges that you use for your church's strategy. That helps you determine where you're going. Would you share with the community what those four gauges are that Church on the Rock uses determine their strategy? Internally we call that our dashboard because you kind of have to know, what does success mean for you? And for us, those four gauges, we kind of look at it if you're looking at your car, the gauges , okay, do I have gas? Do I have oil or temperature? We use that as an analogy internally, but one's decisions, somebody making the decision for Christ. And we say decisions because it's more for integrity, because some people will raise their hand at an altar call and got saved five years ago. So it's not a first time salvation, but God was speaking to them, whether it was a rededication, they just felt , what, I need to ask God to forgive me for something. He showed me something in today's message that I needed to change. And yeah, I'm recommitting my life or whatever. So that's decisions is number one, and that shows us is are people being impacted, right? Is God doing something in their life? Second is growth track. Are people wanting to get assimilated to the church? Are they wanting to find out more information? And Growth Track is two things that it allows us to get to know the person, but it allows the person to get to know the ministry. , we go through history, background, how long we've been in our community, , what we're doing, where we're going, what our mission is, what God's called us for. And so are people going through growth track? Are people joining a serving team, our dream team? Are they signing up to volunteer? Are they committing that, what, I'm going to be a greeter, an usher, whatever the case may be. And then four is small groups. Are people joining small groups? Saying we do that two or three times a year, we'll do ten week sessions and are they joining? So for us, if somebody is moving along that, and if you notice, kind of Not all of them go in the same direction, but for us, I mean, decision is number one. Somebody has to make a decision, will they need to get through a growth track after that to get assimilated? Well, then, you small groups kind of falls anywhere in between, and then we want to get them serving. So that's dashboard. So Tommy, you mentioned a little earlier that people can, it seems interact with or see their status on your external Rock applications for web and mobile. Can you just give a really quick overview of what that would look if say, I'm a member of the Church on the Rock community and I'm partially engaged in some areas of those spiritual discipleship tracks that you have? How does that present to me across those applications? How am I able to engage with your church differently because of that Rock toolset? Yeah, I mean, if they're logged in and they haven't taken Growth Track, it's gonna tell them, Hey, you need to take Growth Track. I mean, we do it in a real nice presentable way, but we say, Hey, you're missing this or you're missing one of the steps. And if you're not on a serving team, we'll just say, Hey, you're not on a serving team. Now for us to get on a serving team, send you through a growth track. But it's just been kind of that, we needed a good pathway, Well, hey, you can join a team and then we'll try to get you accustomed to the church. It's kind of in St. Louis, if you guys know the Cardinals, the Cardinals have the cardinal way, right? And so that's just when you're a part of their team, whether you're a janitor or you're a ball player, it's the Cardinal way. That's just how they operate. Well, for us, it's the church on the Rock way. It's a culture thing and businesses, ministries, mean, that's just, you want that for your ministry is the way you operate. And we send you through Growth Track, but that's how it's displayed externally is we're just showing you if you're part of something, we're showing you how to connect better. If you're not, we're showing you how to get connected. if you're not part of a small group, hey, click here, sign up today, join a small group, find a small group. So that makes the sign up process pretty simple. They don't have to go digging around on your website for it. You say, Hey, don't forget you're not doing this and you could, here's how. Right. That's right. So you also have a pretty cool experience for parents. You want to tell us a little bit about that on your external site? Yeah, so that was a cool thing that we added within the last year or so. We call it parent corner and we wanted a way that as a parent, I've got a seven year old that's in, gosh, it's probably bad, I'm trying to remember, second grade or going into second grade. And it's a way now that I can log into our website and click on parent corner and it shows me what she's learning that week. Whether it's a handout that they may be handing out that I didn't get, what are some devotionals that I can do? But then we're also taking, because we wanna encourage the parents, don't just leave this to the church to try to disciple your child, to pour into your child, to spiritually grow your child. We wanna give you resources as a parent so that we're partnering together. So at home at night, you've got a plan or you've got a way that, okay, I can do this. But we've got kids. And I say kids, I mean, of them are in our kids' ministry, some of them are teenagers in our youth ministry, but they record devotionals that we released weekly that we encourage, hey parents, we've got a section for you to learn what your kids are doing, but then we've got a section for your kids that we want you to pull up and play this devotional video and then talk about it with them, right? And then we link over to YouVersion and we pull some of those devotionals to kind of extend that, but we have a kid record that and then we publish that so that it's not just an adult telling you, well, I want to walk you through this Bible story. It's another kid and kids listen to kids sometimes better than adults, right? , oh, that's my friend. I know you. I know you from church. So we love the Parent Corner. I mean, we've heard great stories from that and just resources to parents, but it's goes back to personalization. It shows me when I'm logged in, hey, this is what my daughter's name is Lily. This is what Lily is learning. This is specifically for Lily versus not just to say, hey, they're getting this in kids ministry. So it makes me feel more connected , Hey, they know who I am. So Tommy, if there's a church right now that's considering Rock and they're trying to balance, is this a good move? Is this not? Making the move to another platform, it takes time. It it takes a financial investment. It can seem a little overwhelming. What what would be the reason to go through that pain or expense? How do you gauge if that's the right move for you? You have to know your why. Why are we going to do it? Some people don't change until there's enough pain for them to change. And whether it's you're looking at a new platform because the old one we're on was painful, it didn't meet our needs, it didn't do what we needed it to do. That's the thing I love about Rock. I mean, for us, I said in the beginning, it brought so many tool sets together. It allowed us to do what we were doing in three or four or five different systems in one system. But it's also extendable to where you can extend Rock if, well, hey, that feature is not quite there yet, or we want it to do this because every church is different, right? I mean, church operates a little differently, whether it's their small groups, serving teams, whatever it is. That's what I love about Rock is it doesn't box you in and say, well, here's how it works And sorry, you can't do anything outside of this. John said this probably at every conference, I'm probably going to butcher it. So you may have to step in, Emily, on this one. It's a box of Legos. Now the core functions, the core features are there. I mean, you can jump on Rock and not have to do any customization, If you're a church that says, I just need a database that I can manage my people, with people. There's so many tools that are just right out of the box. It works. But there's some that say, yeah, but what about this? And what about that? And how do I accomplish this? Well, for all of those, kind of go back to your why of, okay, well, I want to do that and I'm willing to go through the pain. Because yeah, now I say the pain to change, right, because you don't your old system or whatever it is, it doesn't do this. But there's also the pain of change, right? You have to know because when you're in the middle of process, that's why I say you have to know your why. Why am I doing this? Oh, yeah, because I'm going to reach more people. I'm going to take this further. I'm going to communicate better. I'm going be able to manage our, whatever. My staff's going to love this better, right? Once we get through this process of migration of change, because, I mean, nobody loves change. I mean, everybody says, I love change. Most people, when it comes to change, you don't want to change. A lot of people don't want to change, but then when your why, you're willing to do it. When why you're going through that, you're willing to do it. So I hope that answered the question. That's why if you're looking at a platform and you said it, Emily, Rock's not the platform for every church, but I honestly believe it's one of the greatest ones out there, whether you're a big, big church, mega church, I mean, big, big, or you're a small church. I know a lot of churches that run 100, two, three, three hundred people and they're running rocking. Love it. That was really helpful. Community is amazing. I don't know if this, I'm probably don't wanna muddy the waters there, but the community, I've never been involved. There's only one other community that I've been involved in that's as powerful, but even Rock, I feel sometimes it just the community. We couldn't have done what we've done without the community. I mean, that's one thing. So when I look at Rock compared to other, and again, I don't know what other platforms offer because we've been on Rock for so long now, but the community, even from the beginning, I still remember it was that first year we were on Rock. We had vacation bible school and we were doing something. I had to have check-in working right, but it had to verify that they had already paid and because that time we were charging, we don't charge anymore. But at that time, that specific year we had charged. And so I still remember I messaged someone, I think it was eleven or 12:00 at night. I put a message now, I don't think we're on Rocket Chat then, it might've been Slack or those are the platforms. But whatever it was, I put a message out to somebody. And I kid you not, you talk about the community. Thirty minutes later, and it's the middle of responds to me. It wasn't the next day. It wasn't , hey, the next week. He responded to me that night and said, Hey, this is what you need to do. Because back in the early stages, I mean, documentation has grown significantly. And sometimes now it's just, I don't know because I didn't go read. Guys don't read directions all the time. But then I just couldn't find it. I was , I know I've read all the documentation. I know I've tried. What am I missing? And he's , Oh, you need to do this one simple thing and it solved my problem. But it was the community that helped me. It wasn't, Okay, I got to go find a vendor, a consultant, what do I do? And I got faster support than, I mean, I've got paid products that we use. And it's , okay, I'm waiting for them to get back to me where the community is. Yeah, I guess my advice, if someone's considering Rock, really do some homework on the community, even if it's just go to one of the road shows, go to something that where Rock is involved and just listen to the community because that's where some of the greatest impact And the recipes, my gosh, if you're looking for ideas, if you're saying, man, I'm struggling. I was trying to figure out something the other week and I was on there and I was looking for something for me. And then I'm finding other stuff and I'm shooting emails , hey, I think you guys might be interested in this seriously. And then I thought, oh, this is great. Love this. Awesome. We want to do this now. But where'd that come from? It wasn't a manual. It wasn't documentation. It was a recipe or an idea that somebody posted that said, hey, we did this. It was really cool for us. So, yeah, if you're considering Rock, to me, that's some of the I hope I answered that. Super helpful. And I think that's why the Rock conference feels a big family reunion, I think is how you described it. Because people are helping each other literally with that level of speed, consistency, and just joy, because they love to help all the time. And it blows my mind. And I know Lori and I, we probably sound cheerleaders on this constantly about the community. So hearing your specifics of how it's helped you, that's why that's why we're so passionate about it. Yeah. Well, Tommy, thank you so much for joining us and telling us a little bit about your story. I know your name and face will be familiar to many in the community. And if not, they will have the opportunity now to know a little bit about you when they run into you at the conference this year and strike up a new friendship. It's always fun to bring new friends into the Rockfold. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate your story. You're welcome. Thank you. It's great to be here with you guys. 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.