Podcast Episode 161: Episode 134: Just Get In the Log

Description

There's a lot happening in the Spark office recently, and we have so much to share on this episode of Rock Cast. Listen in to learn about the two recent version updates, the things we're working on right now, the annual PEN security testing we've just completed, and about requesting photos as a way to put a face to your ministry. Then, we'll dive into the four C's of leadership and why you should "just get in the log."

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, and today we have Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo. We are here to talk about Rock. And, of course, that's one of our favorite subjects, but let's get up to speed on where we are and what's going on with the core team and the product. Fill us in, Nick. We have had a lot of interesting action in the last couple weeks. Our alpha testers and beta testers were awesome. They jumped in and we had super quick turnaround on these last two. We patched a bug in '13, a release of 13.5. It had to do with the checker background check. So if you weren't using checker, really didn't impact you. And we turned that around really quickly. And then the next, I think it was the next week, we found another bug that's been there since 13.4 and it had to do with ERA start dates, the estimated regular attender, and they were basically getting reset. So if you were an ERA, it was saying, as of today, you're an ERA. Thankfully, we were able to figure out how to retrieve what it was from a couple of different places, the history. And if that wasn't available, which in most cases it was there from the history logs, we were able to derive it from another spot. But in thirteen point six then that bug is fixed and we repaired the data, which was, again, it was a challenge. When I first asked the person who was working on it, I said, Hey, do you have any ideas? And they said, Well, can we get a backup of their data? I said, For every Rock instance? No. You wanna write C that automagically looks for a backup, restores it to another place and then pulls it in? It's just fun. , that was the humor side. Have to laugh when certain situations and it was all good. Then we got creative and we found a couple of different paths and we went down one, it wasn't perfect. We found a better path and he was the one who actually came up with the better idea. So it was all good in the end, but I really appreciate a bunch of alpha testers and beta testers kind of stepping up. And because again, it was such a small patch, we wanted to move as quickly as possible, but we do need somebody to test and shout out to Leah. She actually helped us find a deficiency with the first go around on one of those fixes. An incredible set of volunteers that have been helping out with that. I'm always so impressed by the responsiveness and excitement of that team. Helps us so much. I mean, it's a critical function. Yeah. Help is not even the right word. , I'm getting goosebumps because how if we didn't have that kind of assistance for these sorts of things where we're now looking at the shape of actual servers data and testing it there with their cooperation, , we might've missed the mark and that just doesn't sit well with me. So totally vital and essential to our community to have such a great team. But also shows how much harder it is when you have a distributed application. if you work for a company and your company deploys it to one server, it's pretty easy to do whatever you want and restore a backup and do that kind of thing. But when you have it at 600 different environments that you have no access to or control over, which is a good thing, that's a selling point of Rock. It is. That's from a privacy perspective, plus, and it's much, much harder. And if you're a SaaS solution, well, you still have control over all that. You could still do a backup yourself behind the And they hopefully, they all are. And also shows not only that it's hard, but it's also I'm so appreciative of you, Nick, and the team who just doesn't mind doing the hard thing and fixing these things quick and right. Because there's always that debate, , Well, can we just wait till the next release? And it's , No, we need to fix this now. We could rest on the laurels and just say, well, bugs happen. And they do, but we have to elevate some of these and just have a very responsive posture. Yeah, and I think that's the kind of exciting firefighter side of the job is when we know we've got to go, we can't let it go. And it's gonna mean certain things are gonna pile up on our task list, but we have to do it. there's just no easy way around it. And that's okay. Take a deep breath and go for it. Jump right in there. Jump in. And you said something about environments. Somebody once suggested, well, can't we just do a backup before the update of Rock? I said, some of these systems are 100 gigabytes of data. Where would we store that? It's just not possible. Right. Plus it's Azure SQL. All SQL Server, regular SQL Server, who knows? And I said we did briefly debate that way back version one, and we kind of ruled it out. I'm glad we did because now we'd be in a bind. As systems got bigger and bigger, we'd be , okay, now what do we do? We would have problems that we shouldn't have to worry about. And we'd have another area that we could have bugs in too. That's a good point. It did raise a question of, should we be more vocal about when you click that update button, have you backed up your data before you press update? we might want to amp that up at some point in the future. But we've gotten to version 13 without needing to, , have somebody sign in blood that they backed up their server. Yeah. And kind of to that point that you just mentioned, , remind people to back up. It's so important to back up, please back up your stuff. But those backups really sometimes are not that helpful because what are you going to do? Restore over and lose all the data that's happened since the You can't really do that. So then you have to restore it to another database and literally do precise laser surgery to get the data over. So I'm not saying don't do it, and I'm not saying that you might not have to do that someday, but that's a level of complexity that most churches couldn't do without paying somebody. A % agree. I view backups as the in the moment, if we can't get this server fixed, we've got to be able to go back to the running version, the old version. That's how I always viewed backup. But usually don't need that if you've tested it in a staging environment, it's a rinse and So Yeah, when you have to use that backup, you're gonna have tears because you have to do it, but it prevents you from jumping off a bridge because you don't have anything. Yes, do we need the suicide prevention hotline? Oh my goodness. I mean, has happened. I've heard that has happened that someone in environments have done things, not through Rock, but through their cloud providers and they have lost it all. And that, oh my gosh, that just hurts to think about. Shutter. Yeah. But at the same time, we all make mistakes, accidents happen. So but be careful. Definitely. It's interesting as we talk through all of this. Nick, you were mentioning, , we've gotta put some things on the back burner. We've gotta figure out an approach to this, connecting and collaborating with the developer working on something. How are we gonna approach it? It's probably a a majorly undersold life skill that creative problem solving becomes a huge component of what you do in the workforce once you've been inside your career track for a little while. Absolutely. I I think that's the only person we wanna even look at being on the team are creative problem solvers. Everything's a problem that needs to be solved creatively. Yep. It's so interesting, the different approaches. So very cool team. And thank you again to the testers that have been assisting with that because it's one thing for our team to go, okay, put on the afterburners, we gotta do this. And then to have the community support inside that is just really incredible, and we're very grateful for that. Alright, John, tell us a little bit about what we've been working on lately. Oh, wow. Well, a lot, but the two major themes I would probably say that we're working on is first off, RX, the lot of effort being put into that presentations, and just the amazing amount of details that go into just all the things that you wouldn't think are things but are things. So that's a huge, huge thing. And so the countdown is on. If you haven't registered, you need to register. Yes, please. And if you're not considering coming, you need to come. It'll change your view of Rock. It'll inspire you. And I know there's money involved in that and we can't downplay that's a thing, but what you're going to get out of it, what your organization is going to get out of it is going to make that money look real cheap. When you hear all the presentations and all the ideas that you're going to get, that is the cheapest- Force multiplier. Yes. It's going to jumpstart what you're able to do. And you're going to be able to get stuff from those presentations that you don't have to do work. You can just get their takeaways and implement. And then you have the relationships on top of that that are gonna give you relationships with churches that you can collaborate with for three sixty five. And it's also going to give you something personally. It's going to let you grow personally. Hopefully it recharges you spiritually a bit in terms of understanding the spiritual impact that you're having. So again, I understand that there's budgets involved and I understand that it's hard, but I would encourage you to try to fight for that, not only for yourself, but also for the organization. I think you just need to Sometimes it's selling it in terms of the value that you're going to get that's important. So don't downplay that. So Rx is a big thing, but also fourteen. Fourteen is coming very close, and so we're in that kind of fit and finish stage. And that's both very exciting and also very frustrating sometimes because you're , you get it to where you're gonna start to the fit and finish, you're , oh, I can't wait to try this. And then you trip on something and then you trip on something, you trip on something. And so we're constantly in there polishing and sometimes the polish occasionally will break something else. And so it's that stage is both very, very exciting and somewhat frustrating. But we're really proud of the team and what they've been able to accomplish with 14. There's just so much that we can't wait to share about it. And there's a lot of things that we've talked about and there's quite a few things that we haven't talked about that are in 14 and we're super excited about. So we're kind of in that stage right now trying to knock out those last things. And sometimes, again, when you use it, you're , oh, this is exactly right. And this works exactly as it was supposed to. And then you realize, oops, but it's also supposed to do this. And you don't realize that till you're using it. It's , oh, it has to have this other feature. It just won't even make sense without that other feature. But when you're in the design mode, you would never think But now you're actually using it the way it's supposed to, and you realize this is exactly right. But the first question everybody's gonna have is, well, how do I see that? Some of the personalization, for example, it's , this is working exactly right. But my first question when I made my first personalization filter kind of thing was, What? It says there's 14 people Who are they? In that criteria. I have to know who those people are. Because you didn't account for that. Part of it is I got to validate that it's right. , I think everybody else is gonna wanna do that too, and they're gonna be insanely curious. Yes. It's not and it wasn't the main point. The main point is now you can provide personalized content to those 14 people, but the curiosity of invalidation needs. Who's looked at the baptism page four times in the last two months? , it's Yeah. Well, who are they? Right. And again, I'm not sure what you're gonna do with that information. I mean, probably some creative things, but it's just a natural tendency that you have to see that data. We didn't or I should say, I didn't think about that when, we're doing the designs, but now that I'm using it, it's , this cannot go out without seeing this list. And part of it's , well, I probably could wait, but everybody's first thing is going to be , how did you forget that? And it's , Yeah, I know, in hindsight it makes sense, but you're sitting in a Figma with a white screen. It's not the first thing that comes to mind. So there's a lot of that. And I'm sure sometimes can be a little bit frustrating for the team to say, we were done and now we have to add that. And it's We're never done. There's always more. So yeah, right, we're never done. That's how I look at it. It's the best way to look at it. And there's probably a million other things that we could talk about that we are working on that is exciting, probably don't have time to go into all that. One other thing that I'll just kind of check the box on and we want to make sure that we publicize and communicate is, and that we are working on right now is that we're doing our twenty twenty two pen test. So that's our penetration test that we do. It's a security test where we go out and we hire people to come from the outside, extreme experts to just say, okay, try to break it. Obviously, we do a lot of that ourselves, but the danger is if you do it yourself, you're testing it the way to test it and they test it in weird, unholy ways. And that's good. Yeah. They do things that were , how do we reproduce that? Yeah. Sometimes you have to have special tools to reproduce it because you can't reproduce it In a normal environment. With a normal browser. Mhmm. And and that's good because the people who are gonna be mischievous are not necessarily gonna use the normal browser. They're gonna use the tools that these guys use. Yeah. I do wanna say that the company we're using is amazing and came highly referred to us by somebody in the security industry who is amazingly well known and amazingly connected and does amazing projects that keeps our world very safe. Just a series of connections happened that we were able to talk to this person. And while they weren't able to help us directly because of, we're kind of small beings, they gave us a really good recommendation for a company, and we're really excited about them. So now we're about the 2022 pen test. We're really excited that we have an organization that is gonna get better because every year they're gonna be doing it with us. That said, had some people who knew our framework type, dot net web forms really well, that they came to this with a lot of understanding. And I think the one thing that impressed them the most was they're , Holy cow, this thing is very extensible, and it's not just this page does this. This is a huge framework. Think Rock impressed them. And so I wanted to just communicate to you, check the box, we did it for 2022. This year was a little bit more expensive because the caliber of this company is higher, but we talked about it as a team and said, it's worth it. And so check the box, it's done. After a pentest, we're always gonna have a few things that we're gonna be changing. You can look for an update. Nick, I believe you said you wanted to update thirteen, twelve, and 11. Right. We'll do those major versions. Mhmm. So when you see that those security ones come out, every time there's a security update, we'd recommend that you update as soon as possible. So, we're excited that that's done too. That always takes a lot of work because we have to handhold them because they obviously don't understand a lot of things and have a lot of questions. And it's still ongoing, so we're not done done yet. But I believe most of the testing's done and now we're in the report write up state. But they've already reported anything that was a larger issue. So it shouldn't be too bad for us to get that update. We just had to get through some, a couple other little things. So exciting. That is exciting and nice that we have a good go forward contact relationship there. Definitely. That can only improve over time. That's And it's just the level of professionalism that they brought to the project with their tools and even just the client tools that we were using to discuss the stuff. They would send us some stuff that was How to verify and test that? They don't just send email to us. They put it through a special security , portal and Mhmm. It's it was kinda neat to see that, , how they do it. Yep. Definitely worth the investment with this organization. Yeah. Mhmm. So one thing we're always talking about, John, is how we are making ministry personal. I mean, we're a relationship management system. We're not a church management system. Some of the things you can do to personalize ministry are really complex. Right? And so you can string features together in different ways, and you can do some really incredible things in Rock. And it's awesome that you can use the extensibility framework and the feature set together to make it very, very personalized to your organization and people, but some are super simple. And so we always wanna make sure we're highlighting some of the simplicity and and what small things we can do right now quickly that will help bring some of that personalization to the forefront. And and you had brought up recently what one of those things was. Do you wanna share that? Yeah. I mean, someone asked me recently, , well, what are some ways that Rock can makes ministry personal? And I almost couldn't answer the question because it's that's pretty much what all Rock is, is it's all about personalization. It's what we call a relationship management system, not a church management system. But one small teeny tiny feature that I think is greatly underutilized is the photos within Rock. So most churches don't have a lot of photos. I actually went and ran some queries across churches that we work with, that really is the case. There's a few outliers. There's a few churches that do actually have a lot of photos. They tend though to be ones that have been on it the longest. But there are features in Rock that you can just move to the front of the line in terms of who has the most photos. And you can do mass emails to your congregation, and a block you can put on a page that makes it super easy for anybody who gets that email to upload an image for every person in their family. And you might be thinking, well, that's kind of an awkward email to send. I've done it many, many times when I was at CCV. It's not. People love it. They get really excited by it. And you might think, well, it's just a photo. And I would probably wanna challenge that and say it's not. Go to a person profile page with a photo and a person profile page with a photo. Wait, wait, one without and one with. Put them side by side and tell me which one you feel more connected to. As humans, we are so wired to want to see faces. I mean, there's studies, can read it. When you go to those records, it's so much more personal. When I worked at CC, there's sometimes as the communication director before you came on, Emily, that I had to make really awkward calls. that was part of my job when someone had a beef, I had to call them. And when they had a photo, it changed my outlook. I'm , this is a person. This person has concerns, they may or may not be valid or they may or may not be healthily the way they're articulating them, but they're a person. As I go about doing that, it just changes it. And having those photos is super important. And I know you probably have a million things on your plate, and I know that you might or might not have to get approvals to do that kind of thing, but it's such a simple project, and your staff will notice the difference. And that's ridiculously easy. I mean, the hardest thing is perhaps having to go get permission from somebody. But if you're kind of on the fence, whether you need permission, just do it. I'm not a big person that says, ask for forgiveness, because I prefer to stay within the boundaries, but that's something that impacts ministry. And I think you can write that. I think it comes with a default email template too. It says , we want to make our ministry more personal. And one of the ways we can do that is to get photos. Please upload your photos. And again, most people get, , they actually really it. And there's tools too to kinda process through those photos to make sure that they're appropriate. And in some cases too, , you can it makes it easy to recrop them because sometimes it'll upload somebody from a distance and it makes easy to crop them. And I can tell you again from experience, I've never had one that came in that was inappropriate. There were some that were kind of weird, some guy holding a fish, so I just cropped. We still learn a lot about him. Yeah, and that was cool. I mean, at certain points, it is kind of cool because it tells you about his personality. if you're gonna have a phone call with him, you're gonna probably gonna ask him about his fishing. Hey, I I heard that you're a fisherman. So anyways, I know there's a thousand reasons that might go through your mind of , are you gonna do this or not? But I would encourage you if use the tool, increase your ministry. Then if not for you, but for all of your staff and volunteers who have access to this, it totally changes it. And so one of those simple tools, but use it. And people are used to uploading profile pictures all over the place all the time. So it doesn't seem odd. It's , have to do it. Every time I see that my profile picture is just the default, I'm , Yep. And the benefits you outlined are both internal for your staff. I mean, it is totally different to minister to a person than it is to minister to a concept of a person. And externally, as as more and more people are using Rock for their web and mobile interactions, having those profile pages where someone can see themselves and potentially their family members, it's just a very different, very personalized experience. And we put that picture. It's not just on the profile page, it's everywhere, right? you're doing connections. Anytime that person is linked to something, try to show their picture and that helps bring that connection, that personal connection. But it also, it actually helps with navigation too. Because sometimes you're , Oh yeah, someone with the red background. your brain is thinking that even though you're not consciously thinking about it, your brain is , oh yeah, it was the one right below the dark background one. So just do it. Don't skip that in your move toward personalization. Yeah, and it's not hard. This is not a project. This is a We would talk a lot about that too. We all in our heads say, Oh, that's a project. It's , No, it's a task. I can get this done before lunch if I wanted to, or I could at least get it very far. And I would say too, your first time you do it, don't send it to everybody in the database. Start with your staff people or maybe a leadership team that's very small that you have a connection to, 12 people, test it. Did you have the page right? Did the email go out right? Don't send it to 10,000 people on the first try. But then once you have tested it once or twice, send it to everybody. Who cares? Worst case, they tell you they're inactive and they cleaned up your data for you. , there you go. Also not bad. Yeah. I'm also shocked at how many, and it's not all of them, but there are quite a few churches that don't inactivate anybody. If you look at their inactivation percentage of all records, it's kind of low. That's not necessarily helpful either. And you may have seen us sending out emails this, right? before our master classes or before conferences, we do photo requests because we know that that's a great way to help connect people. Yeah. I think organically, as people start using websites that are Rock powered, they tend to, as they, connect and see their profile page, they tend to fill it out. That's why churches who've been on Rock longer tend to have those. But yeah, these tools are a jumpstart, move to the front of the line in terms of who's on the leaderboard for most pictures. And it's something as we work with clients, we run that query and we suggest this now as part of our suggestions is , Hey, it appears you don't have a lot of photos. We can really help you with that Yep. Or help yourself. You don't even really need us. No. And on the list of things that take time and money, this is one of the low hanging fruit options. And I say you have to put a block on a page. I do believe the Rock ships with that page already there and the route. It's set up to be super simple. You could just do it right now, but if you want to polish it or something, could But at the end of the day, just do it, don't worry for perfection. Sometimes you just need to ship it. Right? I mean Yeah. Mean, you're looking over at me and I don't want to ship it until it's perfect. Well, I don't either, but sometimes it's , No, it's a product. We got it. It works. Go. Next time we do it because at CCV, we would do it every six months or something. Would you send them out to people who you already had photos for as well to get an updated one? I think it's smart enough. It won't send it out if we already have a photo. So you're not going to bother people that You might bother the person who's got the request twice, but it's worst case, hit delete. To me, was actually insanely fun because I send that out and then I would just watch the pictures come in. Yeah. And I just kind of keep that tab and just hit refresh. Because again, why was it fun to me? Because these are people, you get to see people, these are the people who are impacted by what you do. And it was just joyful to be able to see that. And those are the people that are on it, they're doing it right away. Yeah, sometimes it is surprising. you send the emails, all of sudden you have five, you're , wow. Sign those people up for a team. That's right, are they serving? And then they'll drip in, you'll get one sixty days later and it's , okay. That was me. That dovetails into something else we want to talk about, which is we'd to bring leadership conversations too. And I think this feature is somewhat of a leadership thing. It's , are you gonna step up to the plate to go to the next level, to go do the things that you don't have to do because there's no one above you who's read the documentation, who knows of this feature, right? Imagine most of the senior pastors have not read our documentation and are not gonna say, Hey, why aren't we using the photo tool? And then they're probably not listening to the podcast to get the inspiration behind it. But that's kind of where you come in. And I was fortunate to work at CCV with our senior pastor at the time, the founding senior pastor who has since retired. His leadership talks and knowledge and wisdom was just off the chart. And one of the things I wanna talk about today is something that he would always talk about in terms of evaluating on hiring, but also evaluating on performance. And it started out being called the three Cs and then it got moved to four Cs because we added one or he added one. And the first two are kind of the easy ones. Character, obviously it's important that people have good character. That's an easy one because it's kind of easy to determine if someone has good character or not. You may not see it they're in the interview, but within a month or two, , and it's easy to make that determination of whether they stay on staff or not based on that character. , , if you steal the copier, you're probably getting fired. Another easy one is chemistry. And I love the way he defined it. Chemistry as defined by when you drive into the parking lot in the morning and you see that person's car, what is your emotional reaction? Are you , oh my gosh, I'm so glad they're here and I get to work with them. Or are you , oh no, okay. we all in our careers have run across a couple people who are challenging for us. And it's not to say that they're bad or it's just our personalities don't Mesh necessarily But by the parking lot analogy whether they have good chemistry. Chemistry is pretty easy because you don't really make a lot of decisions based on chemistry. You wouldn't fire someone because you didn't them. Maybe just a lunchtime seating chart. Yeah, you may not sit next to them at lunch, but you're not really gonna fire them for that. But it's also true the reverse. You typically are not gonna keep someone on staff if all they bring to the team is chemistry. If that's all they bring to the team, it's But that's a tough one because a lot of people on the team will go, Pup, we them. We them. Okay, but they didn't do their job. And they had bad character or they had bad They couldn't do the job. Which leads us to the two that we talk a lot about, which is competency. You gotta be able to do the job. And the last one is capacity. You have to be able to do enough of the job. So we tend to talk a lot about competency within our team, grow, learn, figure out new things because in the area that we're in, technology, always going, always moving. If you're at the top and you stay still, you're now going backwards. But we don't talk as much about capacity. We talk a little bit about capacity, but not as much. But that's a topic that we're starting to bring into some of the leadership, the conversations that we have more and more. And I think it's especially true in startup cultures and cultures that are trying to take the city. Our challenge at CCV was win the valley for Christ. Phoenix Valley is very big. It's four or 5,000,000 people. So obviously we had a startup culture. We had a move culture, momentum culture. And so capacity was super important. And when people come into that kind of culture, you cannot explain it. People coming into our team, we cannot explain what we're . It's hard because we talk, one of the things I say is , we're trying to climb Everest. We're only about , a quarter of the way up. It's really hard. We're carrying big packs. We're climbing, we're climbing. We need people who can climb. And sometimes we even say in the interview, if you come on and you can't hold your weight and you can't climb with us, we're gonna coach you. We're gonna train you, we're gonna give you time because we know day one, you're not gonna be able to run up the mountain. We'll carry some of your weight for a bit, but at a certain point, there's gonna be a day where if you don't want to do that, we're going to kindly leave you at the next friendly village. We're not gonna cut rope and kick you off the mountain. That would be rude and not Christlike, but we are gonna find the next friendly village for you because capacity to us, we only have two choices at that point. We need to lower the bar as a team, which means we need to defocus our mission and say, well, we're just gonna be slightly better than our competitors, which their bars aren't necessarily super high. And we believe that the church needs this at a level that we are currently not delivering at. We're delivering maybe better than some of the competition, but we still are underperforming for what the church needs to fulfill their mission to reach people for Christ. And we just won't lower that bar. And that's okay. It's not a judgment call on people who don't fit. They're uniquely and wonderfully made, but not everybody's uniquely and wonderfully made for the same thing. Right. And as much as you can interview for that and you need to, and we keep trying to up our game there, not everybody's gonna fit because you got what? Two to twelve hours with somebody, you can't determine if their career for the next twenty years is gonna match this very difficult thing. And they can't determine that about the organization either. Right. Because you can say Everest and they don't know. If you've never been and climbed Everest, you don't know how hard it is. I've never climbed Everest. I don't know how hard it is. I have climbed other peaks that were not Everest, but they were serious peaks. And I was surprised at how hard it was. And I was surprised at how much exposure there is. And by exposure, I mean, , you slip, you die. I think I talked about that in Rx once about my my uncle Joe and his differing opinion about when you needed a rope. And he told me, John, you may want a rope, but you don't need a rope. And that was a differing of opinion, especially when I was , I think 14 at the time. But anyways, you don't know what you don't know and you cannot describe it. It's not , if you wanted to know how hard, how much being punched hurts, it's pretty easy to describe that, and then you can actually show that pretty easily. Okay, well, now hold on, here it comes. Just to note, this is not in our interview process. No, we don't. Okay. Yeah, there's no physical violence in our organization. But how it's gonna feel in a work pace, it's a little harder. But when the person comes in, it's about capacity. And so naturally, all of us, we can't join any organization or launch any challenge and be a professional at it, be perfect at it. So the picture is, we have visuals for this in video that we show, but you're gonna have to picture with me. Picture a little kid, he's probably about three years old and he's on a pretty low diving board at home. And he's shaking a leaf. And dad's behind him, him, mom's in the pool, arms up to catch, but shaking a leaf and doesn't wanna jump and just won't jump. I mean, that's in all of us, to a certain level. Some people are gonna be that and they're gonna be , Ken, they're gonna do it anyways. They will jump. Some people won't. And the difference is just courage. Courage is an absence of fear. It's basically saying, my mission is more important than my fear, and I'm willing to do it because I need to. And so then the cool thing is that we a video of the same boy not much later, probably. He just looks the same age and the same, wearing the same swimsuit, so it must be very similar, but he's on a much higher board and he just walks off to the end and looks to make sure that everybody's looking at him. He's not stopping because he's afraid, right? He's stopping because he wants to , Are we ready to see this? And then he jumps , and it's , Yes, go kid, right? That's awesome. And so the more you take the small things, you can move your way up. But the way we talk from our organization and I think it's much the same in your organization is , that's great kid, but the platform, the 30 foot platform is right there, so keep going. You're not done yet. Congratulations, pat on the back, take the next one. And I think if you look to your career, you'll see that. It started for me in college, I knew I needed to do something about leadership. I'm very introverted. And there was a club called the Data Processing Management Association, which is the nerdiest club name probably ever. And so I was in the club because I honestly, I wanted to put it on my resume. That's all the reason why I was there. And they said, hey, next next meeting in a month, we're gonna elect the new president because I'm graduating. So be thinking if you guys all wanna anybody out there wants to do it, , let us know. And I was really troubled for thirty days thinking, I know I should raise my hand at that next meeting, but I don't want to. I was that kid for thirty days, kind of shaking. I didn't even wanna think about it. Right? And I think a lot of people would probably would just say, well, I'm not doing it. So move on. , I don't have to think about it. But there was that thing in my head, dude, you need to do it. , and I can remember to this day, that meeting, I almost had to lift my other arm up because I didn't wanna do it. But I just said, what? Lift your arm and just figure it out as it goes. And maybe you wanna even get elected. But I knew that was probably not the case because I don't think anybody else was gonna raise their hand. And one other person did, but they were new. No one knew them. So I got elected and then I was , well, that stinks. But I felt that kid, right? And I think, we can all Nick, Emily, when we get up on the stage on RX, that's not a natural place for us. That's not something We're not looking forward necessarily to that event, right? I mean, we'll do it, but it's not as natural as maybe it appears, which I don't even know if it appears natural for me. And I don't know if people know, but I'll be transparent. In my life, there's two seasons. And I'm not This sounds weird, but it's not. This is straight truth. There's a season probably from August to December, which I feel at peace because I know that RX is a long ways away. But in January, my life actually changes. If I'm in January and I'm planning say maybe a vacation in July, I'm , Oh my gosh, when that vacation comes, there's only gonna be a month or two left till RX. And that goes on for eight months. everything in life is compared to how close it is to having to do the RX thing again. And it's not all the work about ordering the t shirts. I mean, that's just tasks. It's a work, it's not fun, but we do it. It's about having to craft the messaging, get on the stage, and then, , dance monkey dance. That's kinda how I feel It's true. The tasks are much simpler to identify, complete, keep up with, and that's great. And we love the relationship building. Right? Right. We love the connection with the people. Oh, that's the fun That's what we go for. Right? But the, getting up on stage thing, , none of us right here are loving that. Right. But we do it because we're so excited and passionate about the information we have to share and we know how valuable it is. Well, we do it because the mission trumps the the uncomfortableness. Yeah. Because I it could be at this point that, okay, well, luckily, don't have to do it anymore. I'll get someone else to do it. And maybe that would be okay, but no, I feel the mission is so important. The vision of where we need to go has to be done. And I don't say that to say, congratulate us for doing it. I'm saying, I hope it inspires you. Just do it. Put yourself in that situation. Have a term for it too called ride the log. I didn't grow up going on roller coasters. So sorry, Splash Mountain to me when I was in college was a big I'm not doing that. My wife was a little bit more into that. So I'm , okay, well, all I have to do is get in line. All and then all I have to do is get in the log. Once you're on the log, you have to go through that whole, , , I'm not a big fan of that sound of the song of the South kind of stuff. But once you're in that, you can't get off the log. And I knew, , oh, oh, it's coming, but ride the log, John. Doesn't matter. Just ride the log. Now Splash Mountain's nothing. It's not called that anymore. Don't think they're even doing it right now. But the first four times I did it, it was a big thing. It's , but once you get in the log, just ride it. And that's what I did when I was at the president of DPMA is , you're riding the log, every meeting was torture, but you got better every time and you extended it every time. So I would just encourage you to ride the log, but first you got to get into that log. You got to raise your hand. You got to push your way in. But if you keep your same capacity, you're robbing yourself and you're kind of robbing God's plan. I don't think God's plan is , you need to do this job this way, but his plan is you need to do something and you need to grow and you need to get better and you need to We are put here to actually kind of work, in the garden even, we had chores and we were supposed to kind of rule over that. So I think you're robbing God's plan if you're not increasing your capacity, if you're not going up a notch of diving boards every so often. And so maybe this photo thing is a way to just say, I mean, I don't think it's putting out there too much. It might be that you have to get in front of leadership and prove it. And that might mean making two PowerPoint slides to show what it is, and you might get shot down. That's okay. That little boy, what's the worst that's gonna happen to that little boy if he jumps off and belly flops? Temporary sting. Yeah, a smack and some sting. But what do you do when you're a kid? You just get back on and you do it. When I did martial arts, we had a rule in our dojo, the Sensei's had a rule that no matter what happened to you in sparring, you had to stand back up and spar again, immediately. So if you got the wind knocked out of you, it didn't matter. You had maybe ten seconds, but they're , Get up. No matter how bad it was, , Stand up. And they would get in your face about it if in the beginning, if you didn't know, and they didn't make you fight for another five minutes, but you had at least have contact with another person and then they would let you go. I even saw a guy who seriously injured his knee, in a bad way, but they got him up, that he had help and someone put their arm around him and held him up. And they said, which means start. And the other person went and touched him and they said, okay, but it's the point. But no matter what happens, you're getting back up. And I think that kind of goes , you belly flop, you get up. Definitely. , I had a personal experience when I was 16. I just got my license. It wasn't too long after that and I got in a car accident. And I remember my dad came down. I was a minor. Was by myself. They took me to the hospital. It was this whole thing. I was fine, but it was a whole thing. Right? And it and it terrified me. And my dad, who's very typically quiet and reserved, was a little more pushy than usual. And he said, you're getting back in the car tomorrow and you're driving again. And I said, no. I'm never driving again. And he said, no. You're driving tomorrow. So he gave me the night to get over it, and then I had to get back in and start driving the next day. And later I looked back and I was , that is the smartest thing, , that he did in that circumstance because I didn't have your world either gets smaller or larger depending on every choice you make. And sometimes choices don't feel an active choice. It's a passing of something. But when you pass those things, you are putting your own ceiling in place. And so often we limit ourselves in things by not being quite comfortable enough with something or, , not being ready, we said earlier, to ship something until it's perfect. Imagine where Rock would be right now if we never shipped anything until it was perfect. 0.1. Yeah. But one more thing. Right. But even if the RX example too, , well, RX started as 60 people. And even before that, I had spoken at other conferences, but they were much, much smaller. 30 people and 20 people. Yeah. Luckily you get to go up slowly. If someone said you had to go to talk to a group of 50,000, that would be not a healthy next step for me. I'm not sure that would be the right step. That would be an unhealthy step. Don't go swing if you've not jumped off the small board, don't go for the 30 meter board. Good point. , yeah, that's probably not right for you. But you might jump up to you could probably skip two levels, if you're brave. And most of the speakers at our conference in all of the breakouts will tell you the same thing about themselves. Right? Oh, for sure. Absolutely. So you're in really good company at the conference if that's your next step of growth. Well, sometimes I it's it's kind of fun to think on that first night before the conference, I'm , there's so many people in this hotel that are not sleeping right now, including me. And but it there's there's, , a reassurance there that, , yeah, we're all the same, but all those people get up there. And why do they do it? Why? Mission. Yep. The the the ability to and I can guarantee you there's it's not about pride in our community, at No one's going, yeah. I'm doing this because everyone I want everybody to see how good I am. No, they're up there because they raised their hand, and now it's , want to help people. I want to show them what I've learned, and I want to show them something I've done that I think can help them. And that's what's so cool about our conference is a lot of conferences you could go to, and it really is a pride thing. It's , well, I'm going to show them how good I am. They can't sleep because they're on the edge of the diving board. It's time to jump. Yep. Yep. So definitely evaluate where you are right now. What are you doing in the rest of this year? Right? December is not that far away. How are you going to make a step to be someone in a growth pattern by the end of the year compared to where you are now? And it might even be, maybe you're thinking, I'm not going to Rx because I'm not even going to attend because I have to go alone. There's no two people here at my church who would even make sense to send, or we can't afford to send. I feel they might be able to send one person, but they're not going send two, so then I'm not going to go. Because that would be a little nerve wracking not to know anybody and to try, well, how am I going make connections? Am I going to be sitting by myself? I'll tell you right now, that's not going to happen. You'll have to push a teeny bit, but all I do is, hey, can sit with you guys? And they're going to be , oh, heck yeah. And you're going to have so many friendships. I know so many people who've come by themselves and left. Last year, was somebody who came by themselves and they were the princess of the party. By the time at the end, were And it was so cool. They had met so many people. Everybody had met them. And I'm not sure they were specifically that outgoing either. And I think she even talked about that. She said, I'm pushing myself. Do who I'm talking about? I'm pushing myself to just grow and- To get on the log. Yeah. Yeah. So I would say too, maybe you're sitting there thinking, Yeah, I probably could go to RX, but there's no way I'm going by myself and putting myself through that. Here it is. God's calling You're robbing from yourself for sure. You're going to miss out. It's so great. And you're robbing from the community because I don't know how long you've been on Rock, you have something to offer. Have something of value and maybe you're not presenting, okay? So that makes sense. It's But maybe next year, but this year, you're robbing yourself, you're robbing us of your presence your unique insights and Very true, very good point. Every church is different. And some people may not be attending because they've never been granted the budget. And so the first time something important comes up, sometimes you have to go advocate for why there's value there. So it might mean that you have to go one or two levels up and make a pitch for why this would be valuable to the organization. And that seems a little daunting. Right? That's not something that you've done or maybe you're not sure that anyone in your position at the organization has done something that. But that's a great growth moment as well. If you can step out there, do it, demonstrate the value, and then come back with some valuable things that you can make suggestions to leadership. , that would be incredible. I don't know a leadership team that would be , oh, suggestions for improvement? , I don't. And you should definitely build a list. And then, , even if it's not in front of your leadership, the next be meeting with your boss, your your supervisor, bring that list and say, hey, I think these are things we should we should jump on. Yes. And think strategically. It's Good point. It's only a month and I know this because it's on my clock, eighteen days. And you might go, There's no way I'm going to get this approved. Still take it to your leadership because you want to get that no now so that next year it's , okay. Well, how about next year? Mhmm. Okay. I get it. And so this year, no, we can't do it, but can I get it next year? Mhmm. Can we buy the subscription if there is one? Oh, yeah. There will be. Yes. But I do wanna point out there has been a little confusion. Last two years ago, we did a virtual conference. Last year, we had to do a hybrid because there was still some weird stuff going on. This year, it is a live conference. There is not a virtual, , live broadcast option. Right. So we did find out there was a little confusion about that. If you thought you were waiting for a live broadcast option, it's not coming. So a content subscription is great, but that doesn't replace the attendance at the conference. In fact, there are so many breakouts you can't you can't cover all the content, so it's best to attend and then get a subscription back You don't to clean out and get the relationships. No. It's not the same thing at all. Get a third of things the value of Rx is a hundred, you're gonna get five units of benefit. But going back to that strategy, push hard, try for the yes. -huh. But in some organizations, there's gonna be a no before there's a yes. Get your no in right now Yes. So that you're , okay. But how about next year? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Next year is good. So now, yeah, you're a yes. So get rid of your no, but you might you might be surprised. I might actually say yes. That's right. And don't take a no for a as a forever no. Right? Right. So Well, I would say follow-up with, , immediately, well, can I go next year then? Right. And if they say maybe , well, what? , I this is really important to us. I'm passionate about that. Can we not say maybe? Can we make our decision now for next year? And don't be pokey, but do stand up. And that's the shaking on the board maybe. It is. And don't make the assumption that just because it's never been done before, it never will be. And don't do it through email. Mm-mm. No. True. I mean, that's the easy path. That's an easy way to get your nose. Yeah. Just put together two slides and print them out and then catch them. Even if you have to go, what time When do they leave to go home and walk to the car with them? I've had to do that occasionally. , okay, well, know when time they leave, I'm going to keep my eye out and go. That's my elevator pitch. It's really for the elevator because they're busy too. So there's a little bit about capacity. Yep. Well, thanks. Those are some really great thoughts and it's true. It has to be intentional. The cool thing about the Rock community is there are a lot of people who have made the that intentional decision to to increase their capacity and to try out new aspects of leadership or to try things they were concerned about. So you're in great company in the community, and and it's incredible to be a part of something that has a a desire for growth learning. And no better place to demonstrate that than at Rx. So I know we've probably covered it sufficiently here, but there are over 400 attendees coming so far that's we we're seeing registrations just coming in constantly. We're in sort of that last phase. And I will tell you if you're still thinking, let's get in there, do it now because we're having to lock in head counts and orders on things. So help us out. Don't delay. Vacation's over. , fall kickoff is here. Let's just get back in the swing of things and get that in. We have quite a few new sponsors that are just coming in. We're getting all the exciting stuff lined up. And if you happen to talk to one of us here, between now and the actual conference, if we look a little glazed over, just know we're we're neck deep in conference details, and it's really exciting. And so, , recently, the conference price did go up. Right? It did. Went from what to what? Oh, I have a pop quiz. I think it went from $6.99 to $7.49. Okay. I'm just gonna make a call right now. Yeah. So if you use the discount code capacity, we'll we'll take 50% off. 50%? I'm sorry. $50 off. $50 off. Just quick clarification. A % No. 50. But only use it, integrity, character. Only use it if this is the capacity thing for you. If this is the thing , hey, I'm gonna challenge myself. Because now not only that, we're gonna help you with that, but you can take that to your leadership and say, hey, can get a $50 I can get a discount. Don't tell them how big it is. I can get a discount, but it's time based. So capacity is the discount code. Expires in two weeks? One week. Two weeks sounds good to me. Two weeks from publishing. From publication of this All right. So sorry, that was a little awkward, but it just came to me right now that So now you don't have an excuse of, well, we just missed the deadline. Right. Right? The other deadline. Yep. Step out in faith, come join us, see what you would have missed otherwise. It's a lot. You cannot get this experience by just subscribing to content. And if you're a capacity person, come and talk to John, me, or Emily. Oh, I'm gonna be looking in Rock for the capacity for sure. That's for sure. That's a metric I wanna Because we want to meet you. We want to help connect people with people. , it is the absolute best part of the conference the connections, and we're all about helping with that. And if you see someone jumping off the 30 meter platform, they jumped and had the same fears at the smaller platforms too. So, , no one's different. Anybody who has, who pretends not to is fake. That's true. Maybe I'm I'm sure Jesus could have jumped off the 30 meter platform, , as a, two week old, but the rest of us, everybody else. And realize they're probably nervous even if they're really good at not showing it. So Right. Tell them good job. Mhmm. Alright. So we also have the best practices workshop pre day, which is filling right up too. So lots of cool things. We have a kickoff party the night before. Don't miss it. We have a lot of great connections. There are a couple other things you might wanna make note of that are coming up here soon. We have, a master class the week before the conference, so you can do your travel one time and stay from the master class through the conference. So if that's gonna be beneficial to you, check that out. We have just a few seats left, left, so you'd want to grab those pretty soon. That's coming up, September, again, right before the conference. And then we have Rock 100 and sequel classes both coming up in October that have seats available. So the the 100 series class is a one zero one, one zero two, two week, kind of more of a a minimal requirements class. So you're not gonna spend all day getting beaten with a a fire hose of information. You're gonna get more of a survey level view with some curated videos, some q and a, and a test Rock instance. Great option if you're exploring Rock for the first time. You have new people on staff. You have ministry or leadership that kinda needs to understand what all Rock can do without having to know the administration details. And then SQL for Rock, of course, is that that next level of really understanding the data structure and how to access it. So think about which of these things is your next capacity step and make sure you get that signed up for soon because there's plenty of room for growth in this community. All right. It was a long one. That was a long one. Yep. Great though. Three commutes to work instead of just the usual two and a half, one and a half. Yes. I feel we should talk for another fifty seconds so we hit the one hour mark. Are we gonna hit the one hour mark in fifty seconds? I think that might be our longest, I think. Well, was a good discussion. Yeah, don't need to delay. No, but what we've done is kind of built on this understanding of my current capacity is not my future limit. And so what am I gonna do? Because the mission's important to get from here to there. So sharing that is also important to us. This might be that milestone that you look back at in your life to ten years from now and you say, wow, that was the day when I made that decision to kind of push myself and it changed everything because it will. Yep. Well, thank you so much for tuning in for an extra long time for this podcast session here today. We look forward so much to seeing you at Rx. We know you're gonna be there. So go get that request in, and we'll see you there soon. 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.