Podcast Episode 175: Episode 148: Special Edition- Jason Jones

Description

In this episode of RockCast, we are joined by special guest Jason Jones of Cedar Creek Church, who shares his experience of using Rock RMS to help get Purpose Arizona Church up and running. Jason explains how Rock RMS, helped him streamline their operations and focus on building community and fostering relationships within this brand new church.Show Notes:Jason's Church: https://cedarcreek.tv/Church Jason helped launch on Rock: http://purposearizona.com/ New to Rock page Jason helped create: https://www.rockrms.com/welcome Rock hosting: https://www.rockrms.com/hostingRX Registration: https://rx.rockrms.com/attendingGet involved Page: https://community.rockrms.com/get-involved

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. I'm Emily Forman, and I have Laurie Yoakum here today with me. We also have a very special guest. Jason Jones from Cedar Creek Church in Ohio is joining us today. Welcome, Jason. Hi, thanks so much for having me. We're so excited to have you here today. The topic that we're going to talk about is one that's very close to all of our hearts here on the conversation, and I think the community is gonna be really excited about it. But first, let's talk a little bit about who you are and what you're doing at the church that you're with today. So you're the executive project manager at Cedar Creek Church in Ohio. You've been running on Rock since 2018. Right? Why don't you tell us a little about what you do today and how your involvement with Rock evolved? Yeah. Wow. So today, as executive project manager, part of my role is to really work with all of our teams across the church with systems, resources, and strategies. So all different teams are coming up with different implementations and strategies to do different ministries, and work with our guests. And I'm kinda coming alongside of them to see how we can best streamline, how we can pull in resources, how we can use the technology we have to serve them best and make their jobs just a little bit easier. And I'm doing that from a high level instead of just, tucked away in one corner. And that allows me to really see what's going on a lot better. It's changed a lot over the years too. So initially, I came on staff really serving with students and then pretty quickly serving with our ministries team. So kids, students, next steps. And I was doing that for them where I was , hey, We got really talented staff thinking about how to best connect with guests and how to, come up with curriculum and content resource them, but who's resourcing our staff? Who's taking all of this that they're doing and categorizing it and making it sustainable so they don't have to keep working and carving at the wheel. We just can move forward. So I did that with kids, students, and next steps for five or six years. And I've just recently moved into a new role executive project manager where I can do that same type of work, but also for our campus masters, or also for our visual media team, or also for marketing. So most recently, I've been kind of helping our marketing and communications team, who do a great job of reaching people, but also coming alongside of them saying, we actually have this great tool called Rock. Well, Rock's for small groups and check-in and finance. Actually, there's a whole another component that we can utilize, and it's just being able to see that perspective and helping our teams be resourceful with what we have. Well, that's exciting. You get to see the full gamut of technology and ministry relationships working together and help envision ways to make that smoother and more engaging. That's a really exciting role to be in. Oh my gosh. It's so much fun. And, , I I get to connect with lots of other churches too that are doing some things well, or maybe they don't what they're doing, but learning from each other and then taking that implementation back into our church, and being that voice at the table. Honestly, , I'm kinda thriving. I love being able to connect in that way. You don't people at all, do you? I do working in the office connecting with people. The idea of, , jumping in the lobby and shake a thousand people's hands. I'm , , I get a little nervous. So this is this is just a different way to use those gifts similarly. Right. God gave you a different skill set and has allowed you to use those to further the ministry of everyone in your congregation and your staff. That's incredible. Yeah. And it's a lot of fun even when people say , oh, got that email and it was so easy to click something. It's , I didn't do that. But I was able to help resource a team of people who came up with the idea to use an email with, , whatever, , fill in the gap. And that's a lot of fun. Yeah. That's very exciting. So Jason, you're right now in the community seen as someone who's an an ambassador for people who are new to Rock and helping them be comfortable with moving into, , using Rock for the first time or exploring Rock. How did that get started for you? Yeah. So I love Rock, and I think, , anybody that knows me knows that or connects with me because I talk about it in one way or another. I think, not only is the technology and the platform great, the people who you get to interact with every day are great, but the idea behind the community and we're all in this together is something you don't see anywhere else. It's phenomenal. We all try to find our way to help people. And in some ways, you are really good at coding in CSS or HTML or Lava or SQL, and everybody has a GIF set. And I always found myself, not that I'm not good at it, it just doesn't come natural. , that GIF doesn't come natural. I I find myself coding with command c and command v a lot, , just copy and paste. I'm , oh, yeah. That worked. Yeah. And then I learned from that, and I'm sure everybody does too, but it just isn't as natural for me. And what I found an area where I could be helpful, because I wanna be helpful, but I'm just not I didn't find myself gifted in the same areas other people were, was just welcoming people and say, I'm pretty busy at work throughout the week too, so jumping in chat as often as I'd to, just I wasn't. So being able to be part of the welcome team and just say, hey. Welcome to Rocket Chat. Here's Rock. Here are how some things work in the community. If you have any questions, ask. , I felt that was just an easy front door for people to say, maybe I'm uncomfortable to jump in the general chat, but I do have a question over here in this quiet area. Always guiding them back to the general chat or another one because one off conversations are great, but man, that community chat is so much more powerful. And I just felt that was an area that I could actually be helpful. Well, and to get their their toes in the pool. Right? Just to have easy, easy introduction. Hey. I'm I'm friendly. Here's a lot of things to know that I learned because you learned Rock that way yourself. It wasn't something that somebody taught you. You taught yourself Rock. Yeah. Me and a coworker, we spent a lot of hours just slowly teaching ourselves day in and day out, Rock. And, I think why I love being part of the welcome , committee or the ambassador is because, , I was terrified. And I remember it was, , six months in on us being live on Rock, and I was realizing I couldn't ask our developer who helped migrate us. I couldn't ask them questions anymore because we weren't paying them anymore. They migrated us. I was , I am not getting in chat. , that thing moves fast. That's , , I'm , no. I don't even know how to ask my question right. ? I'm , let alone ? So I was that person, and I was actually even the person on our staff who was the most apprehensive to moving to Rock. So for me now, five or five years later or wherever we are, , I look at that, and I'm , I love these conversations. , I just love talking to people who are new or who are timid to jump into chat or are nervous about their first step. , I'm , yeah. I love that because I was that person. And here you are today, a Rock star on our Rock star leadership team in the community. And and you've leaned into that in a way where you said the, , the New to Rock channel felt accessible to you and that you knew you had something to offer there. And I think that's just so incredible because the diversity in our community, if we apply our strengths and our wirings correctly, we're all able to pitch in and help. And I can say that as you decided to really take stewardship of that area and focus on it, you were able to come back and assist the core team because we're we're spread pretty thin and we can't come up with all the ideas, and we can't do all the things. And so you're welcome has been a wonderful on ramp for churches, but you also came back to us and said, hey, guys. I need a website, and it needs to or a page on your website. It needs to have these things on it so I can point people to a quick place to get these things they need. I've talked to enough churches. I know this is what they need. And that was Yeah. You were completely right, and it was a great opportunity that we could help facilitate together. And so the the together part of that is what really, I think, is where that little bit of magic happened on that front. But the topic we really wanna get into today is one where you really went above and beyond in welcoming and helping one church in particular go from a church that had never existed before to one that's a startup that's up and running, that's launched and launched on Rock from the very first Sunday, and in fact, quite a bit before that. And that's thanks to the efforts of many, many people, but you were a serious and specific contributor to that as well. And we're just very interested to learn and share more about your role in that with the rest of the community who are often getting the same kinds of requests from other churches. Yeah. I think, the one thing I wanna say before I tell the story is, , find your, unique contribution. We all have one. And I think it's so easy to want to provide more than your unique contribution that you're , what's the best biggest thing I can do? And it's , actually, the best biggest thing you can do is the easiest thing that comes natural for you. What is the easiest thing? And I think sometimes it's easy for us to go, that's not good enough. That's just sharpening pencils. It's actually we need somebody doing that because we're all short staffed. We're all limited on our resources daily. So if that is what you'd bring, bring that and do it well. So I would offer that as I as I kinda tell you how it came about. So, yeah, Purpose Church located in Phoenix, just outside of Phoenix, is was launched by a buddy of mine, and he told me that he was launching launching his church. He was on staff with us. And the minute he said, I'm launching my church, I started thinking, how can I help? , I wanna be a part of this. How often do you get to be a part of a church launching or a church starting? And I knew that the easiest thing for me to do with the limited time I have was manage a database or at least spin it up for them. Because I they've been on they've been launched for about three months now, and I'm doing less and less every single day because they have a team. But that's that was my unique contribution. , I'm in Rock every day. It's so natural for me. Mhmm. I can help you over here. And he loved that idea, and we just worked on that together. And that came easy for me. So it didn't feel it was taking a ton of time. But the unique contribution it brought to him was exponential, probably unmeasurable. Mhmm. Yes. Absolutely. Everything we've heard on that same front, I would I would agree with that. That would have been something that he wasn't gifted at. Right? His role in starting the church was a different one and also incredibly important. But your role that you contributed and volunteered to do is just something that would have made for a totally different launch had you not been a part of it. And this is something I think can really resonate with the people in the community. So tell us a little bit about you you spun up a Rock instance for them, the servers for them, and then you started telling him what how how should this be used? How did you help facilitate the lead up to launch? Yeah. So I knew the first thing we needed to do was get a Rock instance. And then immediately, I jumped to, , all of my technical apprehensions. , I'm I'm not the guy here at Cedar Creek who manages our server or our infrastructure or, , behind the scenes, our Azure instance. I'm , okay. Don't know how to do any of that. Do I have the time to do that? Probably not if I'm using my time well. And but I know they need Rock. Well, you guys offer a cloud based Rock instance. So that was perfect. I remember that from a conference. I reached out and said, hey. How do we get this set up so easy? , it was literally , give us a day. Give us, , the name of your church, and here's your login credentials. And we started paying for the Rock Cloud. It was , there's no way that's that easy, and it was. So within a few weeks, we had a Rock instant spun up, and I connected with my buddy who was starting the church. And I said, alright. This is what we're gonna do. Every single person you meet, every single person you connect with, send me a text message with their name. Because the other thing I know is he's out there walking into coffee shops. He's meeting with people. , does he have time to open up his laptop and start doing all of the administrative work? Probably not. He could. Super talented. Great administrative person as well. But I'm , that's how I can help. Let me help. This is how I'm gonna feel helpful. Text me their name. Text me their phone number. I'm gonna put it in Rock. I'm gonna put some notes. And we started working that way. Well, then it it's turned into, hey. I'm gonna have a meeting this weekend with 25 people just so those names are gonna come in. I'm , wait a minute. Let's create a digital connect card. You send them all to a link, and we did that. ? So we created connect cards, then that created connections where he could do future follow-up in six weeks. Right? We're , literally, this software platform, I think, is easy for people to say, oh, this is a database for established churches. Mhmm. But it became a database for him to start his church. Every person that he met was in there. Every connection, every follow-up was in there. Every next step that he had for people, he was meeting deals , I'm gonna attend. I don't know Jesus very well. I wanna get baptized. It's , we could start tracking all of that. So when the time came Mhmm. He had all of these follow ups available to him. Wow. Wow. What a way to start a church. That's that's incredible. Oh, man. Yeah. You're not kidding. And the communication. Right? , has a Twilio, SMS number in there. He has email. He had some of that when he was on staff with us. So he knew that well. He knew some of that well, but I knew it well enough too to say, hey. Let's spin you up some of these things. The cost is low, and but the impact is great. Now you have an ability to have a two way conversation with people. You have the email where they the email knows who they are already or what step in the process they are. We were able to start segmenting people whether they were just coming in to help launch Mhmm. Whether they were just visiting for the first time, or maybe he was connecting with them to be on a serving team. So it was just it was perfect. That's really incredible. I can see the vision for how to take this relationship management system and turn it into something that helps facilitate and manage that toward, , the big weekend. And our team some of our team was really privileged to be able to join you and the Purpose Church staff, volunteers, and congregation for launch weekend, and the energy was really incredible. Mhmm. I agree. Yeah. And I think, , one of the things one of my takeaways in all of this, I didn't fully know or understand how I was helping either or how Rock was helping them until that launch day. We walked away and immediately a flood of people going, how was it? How tense was it? Did anything go wrong? And I'm , that was a great day. It was a great day. And I started looking back at why was it a great day. And I think it's because we put into place not only a ton of people in the right place at the right time, but we put systems in place. Mhmm. And it just took one or two people to say, I'm gonna own this piece. I'm good in this area. And and they ran with it. There's a couple phenomenal volunteers out there that are running with us as well that I've been training and and they're running. But all it needs is the system and the people Mhmm. To have an experience that's great. The lead pastor and some of the volunteers there, they could focus on the relationships because we had a management system behind them that was storing all of the information. Mhmm. , you don't have to worry about remembering every single detail of the people you met that day because they filled out a card, and we already collected it. So there's this trust in a management system. It's , I'll come back to that on Tuesday because it's already being stored somewhere. And you launched with check-in on the very first weekend of the church, Ride and Rock. Oh, how could you not? Oh, man. Right. It was so exciting. And the website, you had a Rock based website that was welcoming people ahead of time. And it was just really incredible to see the tools used in such a high impact way. And then we ran across something that you're the pastor there, the senior pastor said about the systems. Can you share that insight with us? Yeah. Let me pull that up. So his comment he posted on social media just a couple weeks ago, but he said, unless you're in this world let me see. Unless you're in this world, you can't fully understand how much work it is to help people take next steps in their journey, to give online, to check-in their kids, to view a website, sign up, be baptized, or take growth track in the systems of your church. We have heard, so many comments from people who are shocked by how young our church is because of how mature our systems are and how smooth they ran. So I think, , it's it's feedback and comments that that make you realize, , it's not just a database sitting in a server for administrative staff. It is powering your church, whether it is giving, whether it is your website, whether it's helping people take next steps. We are only one person. Every one of our staff is only one person, but this relationship management system is a powerhouse behind all of that. It takes all of our abilities and exponentially takes it a step further. Further. Without the Rock website being launched the way that we did and the time we did, everybody's digital interaction with his church would have been through social media, and that's his posting. So he would have to take time, and he was posting a lot. But it's him posting, him taking the time to do that. Whereas a a landing page on a website, we were able to get hits from visitors, and we were able to have contact forms on there. And people would fill out a contact form and go Rock and we're , we don't know you, but we're having coffee with you next Thursday. , , now it's it's it exponentially takes your staff. I often say, there's a few churches I connect regularly with with, Rock and some coding. And I'm , man, you're basically our IT staff because the one hour you just gave me would have taken me six or eight hours. So thank you for that. In the same way that Rock, especially for a small church, exponentially, changes the amount of staff you have because it'll it it just automates so much and gives the ability for new people to connect to you much quicker. So, Jason, if you look back over the months you were working on this prior to launch, which how long was that approximately? Shoot. We spun it up we spun Rock up in March, I think, last year. Okay. So March of twenty twenty two. They launched in January of twenty twenty three. So they had Rock for, I mean, nine months, close to a year. And very simple stuff the first few months. I would say by August, we were deep in what are we doing for a website? How are we doing all these connect cards? They started weekly or biweekly meetings locally there in interest parties. So by August, we had connect cards. We had connections being fired off. We had weekly emails going out. And I would say by September, I was on a weekly call with a couple volunteers out there, and we were training them, , answering questions. How can we build new things? Let me train you how to do this, build this workflow so that it wasn't fully dependent on me, but somebody could be on-site and local there with some knowledge on how the systems were running. So you would kind of build things for them and then train their people on how to administrate them or extend them if they needed? Yeah, that's right. So I would The first couple of calls were , Hey, I built this thing. Let me show you how it works. Mhmm. And then it started turning into, this is how I would build it, but, , take a stab at it. And then they would look at things that I've done or look at the manuals or Rock view videos. And then they would build something and have me kinda proof it, and I would look at look it over. And then it turned into them just kind of doing. So it's the, , I do, you watch. I do, you help. You do, I help, and now you do, and I watch. That's amazing. What an empowering experience. Yeah. Well, it's empowering both ways because I'm I'm watching them grow and think through things differently because I'm jaded by the way that I've done it or I'm jaded by the way I wish I had done it. They're completely fresh. So we're learning together. They will ask questions , why didn't you build it this way? And some of the answers are, well, that's not the best use of the system. But in other ways, you're , yeah. I don't know. That's a good question. Go back and do that in my own database. Yeah. So that's great. That's really incredible. So you've spent time replicating yourself into other people and passing your knowledge on. You said you started spending time with them every Saturday as you were getting them prepped and ready to go. And you have just about handed everything off completely and you're almost a I call you when I need some extra help with the people that are working on-site. So you've you've got a couple of proteges almost. Yeah. And and I love it. They're they're phenomenal. They're building new things. And what I love most is when I will get an email. It's , hey. We built this. I was , oh, I didn't even know this was coming. , it's they're actually working locally and it's you're watching a church be born. I mean, you're watching a new church be born, a new population of people be served, and it's great. Exciting. That is very exciting. So how feasible is this for someone else to do, Jason? It is it feels the simplest thing in the world. There are so many great tools out there to make this easy. It can be as easy as you want it to be. It can also be as hard as you want it to be. So our approach going in was there are great features out of the box that we don't need to mess with Mhmm. Because we're serving a specific population of people. We're not serving 10,000. We're not serving 7,500. We're not, here's the deal. I think in a lot of ways, we all, especially those, established in the community, we've all migrated our databases. We've migrated 500 people or 7,000 or 25,000 people, and they're giving and their connections and their check-in. And that's a lot of work. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot of work. There's a lot of strategy involved. There's a lot of mapping. There's it's just a lot. Right? And it can be stressful. In a new church, the the box is phenomenal, and there's no migration, and there's already connections, and there's already communication. I don't sit and and stay up all night to build these things. They already exist. It's here's your login credentials and let's add a person and let's create a connection for them. So I would say it's as easy or as hard as you want it to be. And we made it as easy as we wanted it to be. And it was a lot of fun. That's really smart when you're talking about a new, small, or young church. Why overcomplicate it? And I think sometimes it's hard for those churches in particular if they're asking around the community or looking into chat, thinking, oh, you have to be a developer or, oh, these systems are really hard. And Rock is very configurable, which is great. Yep. But it also can be a hurdle that is a barrier to entry for small churches when Rock features work just right out of the box. You don't have to complicate it. So I think that's an excellent point that you're making is don't try to over tailor something when simple might be the best approach, especially for the smaller, newer, and younger churches. That's right. And there's a ton of well, first of all, the documentation is phenomenal. The Rocky videos are out of this world. , I don't even know how there you guys have the time to to keep creating all of this content, but it's awesome. So you can easily I I think I was able to answer almost every single question that the volunteers had there by pointing them back to a manual or pointing them back to a Rock You video. And I think the the number one best piece about those resources is that they're worded from the ground up. They're not worded with well, if as long as you have a prerequisite of, , 5,000 credit hours in this language or this knowledge, they're all they're all from the ground up. I love how almost every manual starts. In order to do this, click here to go back to this area and learn here. So it's not even you're left out in the middle of the field alone. There's always ways that walk you through it. And it talks about the why Mhmm. Behind how something works. And that's really important because I think a lot of us are creators. A lot of us are wanderers. So we're , I wonder if it can do this. And the manuals and the videos always say, this was designed for. The idea behind this is you can still mold things and create your own, but there's always a this is the premise behind that, and it makes it really easy for someone just starting up. And that's what made this easy. I think a lot of people are, astounded in both, Josh, the lead pastor's community, that he has a database that feels so mature. There's a lot of people in the tech world that are , man, you spent that much time. It's , oh, there's this great feature out there that's just comes as is and does wonderful things. We're just all a little bit jaded because we've been around a little bit longer and built into it, and we know how much time that takes. It's , I don't have to put five years of work in this six months. It's great as is. And the truth is they didn't need any of that either. That would have overwhelmed them. They're just trying to relationally connect with people, and we have a relational management system out of the box to help support him. , it just went hand in hand. We didn't have to think too hard out of it either. Jason, would you have thought your five year ago self would your five year ago self have thought that you would have been a part of something this? There's not a single chance that I would have thought anything about this. I I tell people all the time. The first conference I went to, I think it was 02/2017 at Willow Creek, and we took a van over to Willow. It's a four hour drive from here. And I spent the whole four hour drive back writing an email about why this was the worst decision we'd ever make. And I never sent that email because I was , I better not. This probably isn't healthy. I better just sleep on it overnight. , , you never actually sleep on it overnight. But I was , this one, I better I better just give it a once over over the weekend. And I came in Monday morning, I was , we're doing this, then I'm all in. We're gonna have to learn a lot and we're great. We did , we're we're surviving. We're thriving. Not surviving. We're thriving. I love that because there's so much of overcoming fear. There's so much personal growth. There's just a commitment to doing something and doing it well. And those are decisions that we can make. Those are not states of being. And so I I just love to consider how we can all grow through. And because of the circumstances we find ourselves in, it's really about that commitment. And and then again, it's about the teamwork, and the community just offers such an approach to that that you don't find in a lot of places. Yep. I agree entirely. You're there to cheer each other on and to give a hand when it's needed or some advice or try this, which I think the community one of my favorite things when I get to talk to churches or organizations is, the thing that makes us different is the community. It's people you. It's people, that we get to to meet through Rock that make this what it is. And it is an incredible tool, but it's it's just incredible to be a part of. Yeah. The community, what you guys have created, what we're all creating together really just makes this so much fun and has changed all of our personalities. Right? , it makes you want to help more. I'm always astounded. Even now, when I ask a question, either who responds or the number of people that respond, but also the ideas people have. Sometimes people will ask, what are you using this for? And I'm , okay. I really just need the, , the the help fixing this, but actually wording out what it is that I'm using it for will either help me see a perspective I didn't see or you will get new perspectives , hey. Why don't you use this out of the box feature? And I'm , oh my gosh. I totally forgot that even existed. Or I'm , that's a great idea. So the community is phenomenal. I don't I don't know how any of us have the amount of time to spend in that community. We do, but, I'm certainly thankful for myself. I can't always be the guy providing SQL back to somebody else who has a SQL question. Even though I've taken SQL course, I I can read it really well now. I've written some really cool things, but sometimes things are just a little bit more confusing. So I just do what I can, and it's a lot of fun. And that's the thing to remember. We're all in the place we are with what we have right now at our disposal from experience and tool set. And if we use that, if we're generous with that, we will find ourselves growing more, having more, and being able to give away more. That's right. Well, Jason, the story I think, yeah. My my only my last part would be, , take a chance and answer a question every once in a while too, even if you don't feel you can. Or just take part as best you can because I know for me, I actually see how much I've learned when I answer something and watch myself respond. And I gain a lot of personal confidence that I didn't have five minutes before that. As our own personal confidence grows, ultimately, the the community's personal confidence grows because we're all helping people on a new level. So I would just recommend, even if you don't feel you have the right answer, jump into a thread once a month, once, , once a quarter if you're not in there and just ask or answer a question, a single question. I think you'll surprise yourself with how much . , the story of the launch of Purpose Church and your involvement in it is just really inspiring. And your heart for the people that are involved in the ministry involved, your humility and generosity, your curiosity and openness, they're inspirational. And there's something that we see happening in the community all across the board all the time. And so the opportunity to highlight that here today is something that we just feel very privileged to be able to do. Mhmm. Thank you for your continual investment in the community. Thank you for being real and being you and stepping in right where you are with what you have. Again, it is an inspiration, and we're so glad to be able to share that with others who might be facing some of the same considerations that you were back in March of last year. Somebody needs me to get involved. I feel slightly under equipped, but I'm gonna do it. And and I just hope that that's something that it can take wing after someone hears your story. Yeah. So cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us today for your second podcast interview over time. We appreciate it, and I look forward to seeing more contributions from Jason Jones and the community in the future. Thanks, Jason. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. You're welcome. 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.