Podcast Episode 171: Episode 144:Two Misconceptions in the Rock Community: Part 1 Your role is pivotal

Description

Today hear from Jon, Emily and Nick as they talk about “Who are you in the Rock Community?” They share different ways to discover your voice: Classes, RX2023, V14.1 and Roadshows -making a comeback in 2023.Show Notes: MasterClass: https://www.rockrms.com/masterclassAll Classes: https://community.rockrms.com/classesRX2023: https://rx.rockrms.com/rxregister/rx2023 Hotel for RX2023: https://rx.rockrms.com/venueRoadshow: https://www.rockrms.com/roadshow

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 episode of Rockcast. I'm Emily Forman. I have Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo here with me today, and we are going to dig in to everything about Rock. Now we have to get started with the latest update. So Nick, where are we right now? We are with 14.1 and it has gone beta. So we had a really good alpha program and a bunch of alpha testers. We had, I think it was probably the record number of alpha testers. Wow. And it was really good and got some good feedback and made some fixes and then ended up delaying beta just because they were still rolling in some fixes or findings. Got those fixed and we started our beta on a Wednesday. It'll go for about two weeks. And there's some really good little nugget features in there. You wanna read the release notes and then bunch of bug fixes. But the bug fixes weren't major things that were in 14 o. So if you were holding back moving to 14 o, waiting for fourteen one or fourteen two, I would say go. Go to fourteen one now. Yeah. I was reviewing the release notes for a tweet that I put out earlier this week and I was really I mean, knew fourteen one was big, but I was really surprised at how many items were on that release notes. So definitely releases release notes. There's some pretty cool stuff in there. And I should mention that. Yeah. We as we were working on 14.1, I'm , man, if we don't get this out, it's just going to get bigger and bigger. So we started obviously putting things in 15. So 15 will be really next up within a month or so. We should probably be going to alpha with 15. Yeah. Some great new features in 15 and that'll be here before we know it. Alright. So hurry and grab 14 before 15 comes along. Exactly. That's what I'm hearing. Alright. , we took a break right here to record this podcast in the middle of a masterclass week, which is so fun. First masterclass of the year. And another exciting thing is it's just the first of lots of classes this year. So we work really hard to develop new curriculum as needed. And this year, we're able to roll out a finance class, a check-in class. Both of these are virtual options online now. So because they're individualized on feature or subject matter, and they're optionally, they're actually entirely virtual, it really opens up who can attend these and who can get this information. So those were based really on demand and request of what features people are wanting to understand. Also, the masterclass this year is great. It's been completely revamped for version 14. So we've already seen actually one person who's taking masterclass a second time to get access to the updated feature training. And because the the first time they took it, it was prelaunch for their church and now post launch, and it just seemed a really good fit. So we're really excited about classes. Of course, we have our Rock 100 series and our sequel for Rock class in addition to the others we've mentioned here. And they are all kicking off starting now and rolling heavily through first quarter. So definitely encourage you if you have that on your list of things to do this year. There's a lot of great content out there. Get started early because you may need to take more than one. And I would say too, a masterclass is a mini RX, a very much smaller one, usually between 12 to 24 people. But the amount of relationships that are built in those classes is actually unique. For instance, I was out late last night at the hotel just talking with people. We have little office hours one night in the hotel lobby where everybody stays. And we were there late just talking about features, talking about how to implement some stuff, doing some work on people's instances. And even the first night we have dinner out together. So it's amazing to see the connections that people make at a master class that last for years. In fact, I know a lot of you listening to this can relate to those relationships that you built at a masterclass and then have just gotten stronger and stronger with every year being at the RX. So it's more than a class. It's definitely a ton of knowledge. I think everybody to a T in there would say, hey, it's drinking of a fire hose. Yes. It's also a relationship building experience. So definitely think it's worth it. If you're on the fence, just do it. You won't regret it. That's right. So there are lots of opportunities for relationship building. The classes are a great one. John, you mentioned the conference. That registration's also open. And if this is the time of year you're usually getting a ticket, you're behind the game right now because our conference is coming up much earlier than normal. So make sure that ticket's being purchased. And again, we're gonna have to say it all year. The hotel room, capacity at this hotel is lower than the conference attendance. So if you want to stay right on-site and really take advantage of the full Rock experience, you'll want to get that hotel room ticket purchased early as well. Yeah. It's a great hotel to stay at. It's for the price, which is why we have it in the summer. That's It's an amazing deal. That's right. And just last time, you come in to the hotel, you get your rental car or your ride share over to the the hotel event center, and you don't have to leave. So it really doesn't matter what the temperature is outside. We're having lots of fun inside and you don't have to go anywhere. Yep. Well, Nick, you mentioned this was the largest alpha testing group that we've had, which is very exciting. And it kind of just ties into this general topic. We want to introduce you to part one of a couple of topics that we're going to have over the next couple of podcasts. And the first one we'd to talk with you about today is all about who we are in the Rock community. What's our role? And it sounds some people have been jumping on that from the alpha testing capacity, but what are some other ways we should be looking at this? Well, as I think about it, there's two visions that I think we need to adjust. And the first one, you said, Emily, is the vision of what is my role within what we're doing. And I think it doesn't take much thought to think about what is the impact Rock is having in this world. I mean, first of all, the world's gone a little, it's a little off access, perhaps upside down. And it doesn't take much every day to realize that. I mean, if you're awake and you're paying attention to what's going on in the world, it just feels closer and closer or further and further away from God, really, closer and closer to being upside down. So I also feel very encouraged, though, at the same time because I'm seeing churches speak more and more into this void. And void is actually, in some ways, it's almost easier because everybody's getting confused. Sure, there's some resistance. , there's some strong resistance, but I think a lot of people are just , this is so crazy. Where throw me a rope. Let me latch onto something certain that I can hold onto. And God's truth is completely that. We all know that. So as I work with churches and I see what their churches are doing, and as I'm engaged in my church and in many churches that I will attend over the next year as visitor, I'm encouraged by what I see. But the digital piece of that is so important. And literally, Rock is changing the world. Rock is definitely changing lives and eternities. We all know that. But I constantly hear almost on a weekly basis, , we couldn't do our ministry without Rock. And they're they're serious. They are serious. That's not just a a saying. They're saying that. So you might hear that and say, Hey, you're a part of something that's changing the world. But I also think if we think about the vision statement or the vision that we're picturing, what is our role in that? You might be thinking, Oh, that's great. It's kind of fun to watch that. It's kind of fun to see the core team is changing the world through this. And I want to tell you that we don't see it that way at all. each and every one of you is so important. You might think, maybe Nick's role is bigger than my role or Emily's role in this is bigger than my role. It's not. We can't do this. We didn't get here because of three, four, five, six, seven people doing stuff. We got here because the community people got serious and got energized. And I think COVID in some ways took some wind out of our sails. Part of that was maybe some emotional stuff that happened, but a lot of it was just we were really busy. all of us as a community were busy doing our thing, But we can't let up now. There's so many more churches that need this tool, that deserve this tool, that aren't gonna be able to do and reach people without this tool, that we need each and every one of you to step up and see that you are a valuable piece of this and that we couldn't do it without you. Again, I just mentioned that I was out late last night in the hotel lobby working with churches. We were coming up with some great features. Those features are going into Rock soon. I think some part of the side conversation we're having is what makes Rock so special is that there's not just one person in a room, an office, determining how this thing should work. That's right. Mhmm. There's a thousand people out there all crafting it in a unique and subtle way. And so I'm not saying that the only way to get involved is to be part of the product direction part. No, it's communicating Rock. It's sharing your best practices. It's getting better yourself. It starts with you. Level up your skills, level up your communication, level up your leadership. Start there. Second, help bring other people in, share what you've Reach out. Communicate with the other churches, even if they're not communicating with you. Yeah, I would do this for sure. Go drive in a 10 mile radius around your church and find other churches. Go in there and say, Hey, who's the person that runs the database and build a relationship and then host a roadshow? Well, I know that happened locally here in town when I was working at CCV and it was just as easy as another person in their church emailed me and said, Hey, I'm the IT director over at this church. And of course, I know that church. It's a big church. But even if it wasn't, oh, you're local and you work in the same kind of space? Yeah, I'm definitely gonna meet with you. And I think there are a lot of churches who do things that. , Emily, I think you're flying out in a couple weeks to go to Christ Fellowship who's having a big conference That's right. Of churches where they're trying to share what they do as a ministry, and a big piece of that this year is gonna be about Rock. That's true. And it's incredible that they're able to do that on that scale. Yeah. But I'd also say it doesn't take that scale to be impactful. So if that's not the scale that you're operating in, look where you are. God's positioned you where you are. You're having impact in your role. You've seen the inside of the Rock community and the exponential ministry impact there. Where have you been positioned to be able to impact people and to reach them? And your community extends beyond the Rock community. It might be in a large scale. It might not be in a large scale, but it's on a critical one. And so those communications that you can have with other churches, the relationships you can build, the road shows you can host, those are all essential to helping meet the needs of churches with something that is right in the trenches. This is not just a sterile platform that creeps along in a direction of what someone, you said, John, in a room is determining they want to do. This is ministry in the trenches that we're doing together. I think we're all gonna look back in a few years and just say, wow. Mean, even if we look today, if we would go back a few years, we would never would have thought it's this big, but I think we're just getting started. In fact, know we're just getting started and the impact it's gonna have is something that's gonna be really impressive. And I think if you can be say, hey, was a part of that. And and many of you, , I mean, I could probably name a hundred who we wouldn't be here if they hadn't done what they did. I just want to keep encouragement that I think our vision's off. I think our vision is way too small, especially about the individual impact that each one of you has in what we do. And we just want you to be a part of that. We don't want you to have regrets that you could have been more of a piece of this. And I think I kinda wonder when we get to heaven, , we'll see clearly about the impact. And I think it'll be really rewarding to think we were part of that. And I don't know. I think we're kind of not I don't know how many more years we got or decades we have until Jesus comes back, but we're going to fight all the way to the last day. And we want you fighting along with us. Yeah. And Emily, you were talking about scale. Don't wait for your boss, your leadership to suggest, hey, why don't you do something? Just do it. And I wasn't kidding about driving around to the churches. John said emailing be good too. I did that. I drove around and dropped off a little, if I couldn't talk to somebody, gave them a little piece of paper with what I was wanting to do. Just to again, and build that relationship. You don't need permission. You can just go do that and then invite them over for lunch. Yeah. And and to wait for permission from us too. No. In a lot of things, if you wanna do a roadshow, we're gonna be back hitting that up and and trying to encourage you to do roadshows. But don't wait for us. , how how do we get you more Right. We have resources to help you. Yeah. You can do it unsanctioned, but if you wanna tell us you're gonna have a roadshow, if you go to the roadshow slash roadshow page, there's a a link down there. You can just let us know, and then we'll we'll publish it for you on the Rock site. But that that alone isn't really gonna make it happen. You need to get out and share. Well, that's what we know about roadshows. We provide the tools, the presentation. You don't need to be nervous about what do I say? How do I make sure I say the things? We help out with that. That makes it super easy. And we'll create some outward reaching communications. But what we know is the successful roadshows are successful because of personal invites. It is no different from anything else we're doing. So yes, we'll lend the resources that we have on that front, the experience that we have in working with that. But it's really your passion and your personal invite and your desire to bring others into community with us that makes that big growth difference. But you could also be saying, okay, great. You give me the PowerPoints. That's not my fear. My fear is actually standing up and doing it. And I would encourage if that's you, that was me too. Right. Yeah. And the only way to to steer through that is to realize you're on a little bit of a diving board and you're that kid on the edge of the platform and you're shaking and that's okay. , just do it. Jump. And when you make that jump, you're gonna realize that you're ready for that bigger jump and a bigger jump and a bigger jump. Yeah. And you're you're just helping the other person you at at another church. There's nothing to be nervous about. Right. But I realize that we all sometimes feel those nerves and that's okay. We do. That's true. But you gotta see your way through it. , it brings me it it reminds me of the story that I was once at CCV, I had a volunteer and she was amazing. she was an amazing writer. And so she was engaging in a volunteer ministry to get people to come write for the church. And so we had this volunteer meeting. It was kind of funny. We had five other writers coming to this meeting. And I was just going along because I was on staff and I needed to be there to open doors and stuff that. So I was walking with her over to the meeting. I'm , Hey, so how do you feel about this meeting? It's kind of exciting. We have some volunteers, And she looked at me and she says, I am so nervous. I'm , why? She's , I'm gonna have to talk in front of these people. I'm , okay, there's only five of them. She's , I know, my mouth is all dry, I don't even know what to say, I couldn't sleep last night. I'm , oh, you're gonna do fine. You're gonna be so great. , I know. , you're the one of the best writers I know. That person is now works for a very popular news outlet, which I probably won't say the name because I don't wanna out who this is, and speaks. I've seen her on Fox News. I've seen her on other things doing live interviews. And I'm so proud that she went from where she was to where she is now only because she was willing to take that risk. She had to step out. And I'm not saying you need to go all that far. Okay, she's jumping off the high board. You don't have to go that high. Just get up a few levels. Take the next step. Well, John, you were her posse in that situation, but these people, anyone out here listening, you can also form your own posse. Many of you are in a community locally, maybe a regional community or maybe a loose conglomerate of other churches nearby. And we usually hear from someone who might be hosting saying, hey, can I have my buddies from the church around the corner come over and help host it? And, of course, yes. So reach out. Get that little support network in place, whether that's from a nearby church that's running on Rock and might be able to help you, or you can tag team it if you're really nervous, or maybe someone else on staff, a colleague of yours. Don't feel you have to step out alone. A lot of the Rock community is about doing things together, but somebody's gotta make the step. And and you'll always kinda be a backseat to it until you decide that I'm gonna do it today. Yep. So that's one vision that I think we need to reset. We have one other vision to talk about, which we will save for the next podcast. That's right. But you won't want to miss that. No. And to make sure you don't miss it, make sure you subscribe to our podcast feed wherever you receive your podcasts, as well as following us on social media because in both those cases, we'll make sure that podcast is right in front of you. Can I can I plug my own social media? Yes. I put out a lot of content on Twitter. And I asked some people the other day, are you on Twitter? And they all said no. And I wanna plug Twitter for just a second. I know this is a very unpopular thing because there's a lot of garbage on Twitter. It's all who you follow. There's so much great content. My career gets better because of the technical content and the communication content and the creative content I get off of Twitter. So I would say if you're not getting it, some poor sales, go to Twitter, follow the right people. I put out a lot of stuff about Rock and about technology and it might be of interest to you. And if not, there's other people who will be of interest to you. So if you're not getting a daily dose of leadership or communication, find someplace, and I would recommend Twitter. There's some garbage, but I'm sure you're smart enough to stay away from that. Well, and while you're plugging, your feed, you do a lot of curating. So someone could follow you and get a lot of access to many topics of many kinds if they were so inclined. Yeah. Someone did say this week that they they did it and they only went on Twitter for for it. So that made me feel better. Oh, that's great. Yeah. I've I think up , in the last six months, I'm plus actually, I think I'm minus one person on my feed. So All right guys, we can do better. Yeah, so we'll look at click subscribe and smash the button. That's right. That's YouTube, but okay, yeah. Thanks Nick. Same thing. Wow. I knew that, that was a joke. Okay. I knew you knew. I just always wanted to say it. Unless we're gonna have a camera in here recording us, and then we could put this on YouTube, I wanna say Yeah. I would say Twitter too in the last few months has changed quite a bit too. Yeah. Well, that's for sure. And there's new features coming, long form text. I'm looking forward to that. It's gonna be very interesting. Yeah. All right. So we've talked about quite a few things today, but remember, this is part one of things that need to change in our vision of The Rock community. So don't miss us. Do all the subscribing we just talked about, and we will be back next time so you can hear what we might be thinking about part two. Stay tuned. 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.