Podcast Episode 143: Episode 116: Rock's Updated Funding Model

Description

On this episode of Rockcast, Jon, Nick and Emily talk plans for v.13, how valuable your ministry stories are, and the whys behind the recent update to the Rock funding model.

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, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes with Rock and Spark Development Network. I'm Emily Forman. I have Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo are here with me today, and we are going to tell you all about what's up with Rock right now. Nick, kick us off with an update on the current version and where we're at. Sure thing. We just released version 12.6, and it's a really tiny patch. And that's in line with our philosophy that we want to have smaller patches that. So 12.6 just came out. We're working on another patch, 12.7, just a couple of bug fixes in there. And we're probably going to be releasing that to alpha and beta sometime in the next X number of weeks. I don't exactly have a date yet, but before Thanksgiving, for sure. So in both those cases, it's bug fixes. There's no security patches. It's just bug fixes. Right, just bug fixes. The ones that we thought, well, we really need to fix these before V13 because some organizations won't be able to get onto V13 possibly for a while. Then can we talk about the release date of V13? Yeah, yeah. Sure. So the plan there is to have a nice long alpha and beta, but not stress anyone out at the end of the year, Christmas time with a release. So we're not gonna release it at Christmas. It'll be right sometime very shortly after Christmas, new year type. Yeah, I mean, we're kind of hitting that point where, you said, with a long alpha and beta, we are going to be releasing it right before Christmas. And that's just no fun for churches rolling it out. And also for the team that should there be an issue, we want to make sure that we're all available and bright eyed and ready to address those. So just thought it'd be best for both churches and for the internal Spark team. And so it will be released right first thing 2022. Sounds a good strategic plan. Christmas is already very hectic in the church world and we don't wanna add to that. No, can think of it as if you're an alpha and beta tester, you'll have time to play with the V13 features. And I know there's a lot of people looking forward to kicking the tires on that. I think that'll be fun. Yeah. And the other problem is V13 keeps growing. I mean, there's this new features being added to it almost on a daily basis. So I feel we have a pretty good line in the sand now, but even since the conference that several new things have been added that are exciting and good, but also make it a moving target. Right. And then we'll start put a line in the sand and say, that'll go in v 14. We'll start working on v 14 and v 14 will come out pretty quickly, hopefully, and we'll have bug fixes on v 13. That's the game plan. Yes. We are always looking ahead. There's always a lot going on. And so thanks. That's a great update. Good information. So on that front, with everything moving quickly, all the new features being added, there is definitely a need for additional core developers. Yeah. So we're definitely in a hiring kick. We want to keep growing and and we know that the needs that we're trying to achieve need more help and more bandwidth. And so we would just to help. , we're going all over the place looking, looking on every Rock, but we what we don't have and what I kinda do miss back from working in a church is we don't have that that lake or pool to fish from. Now, , it's not always the biggest pool. Right? It's not you're dealing with a million people in your congregation, but you have, , thousands and you probably have many more thousands than you than you consider. So if you could just help us by, , reaching out to those of of those that that have technical skills and maybe are in the secular world and try to sell the vision of what it can mean to apply those skills to something that really matters. I don't know about you, but when I am reading the news, looking at the news, there's just seems to be a significant change right now in employment. There's a lot of people who are quitting their jobs. And you can argue, well, why are they quitting? And I've been researching it quite a bit and there's no one reason, right? But one of the biggest reasons that I think is why people are changing is that they've gotten through the pandemic and they realize they just don't their job and they want a job with mission and somewhat that translate that to ministry. And so you're seeing a mass exodus from people are finding , hey, , take this job and shove it because I really just don't it. And the pandemic was the last straw and I feel I can go get something better. So , let's tap into that. And let's just say, hey, if you want something that's better and you have these technical skills, , apply them here. And if you can kinda help, , message that for us and point them our way, we'd be hugely indebted. I mean, if you had a digital job board or slides, , pre service slides, and you believed in what Rock, , what we're doing here, and you're willing to promote us , yeah, direct, maybe they're not joining your staff, but they're joining your virtual staff through Spark. Yeah, and I wouldn't even just limit it to necessarily just developers. Mean, there's a lot that goes on at Spark. We need help with documentation. Need help with video. We actually are kind of looking for someone who can do video production for us, to increase the quality of our ROCKU videos and to do more. We have ideas way beyond ROCKU of video content we wanna produce for the community. And right now we're just kind of limited a little bit in our capabilities there. Now, many of these would be required to be on-site because our video production is here. But, , for some developers, there could be a possibility. But but in in general, trying to create a local team with some off-site. So but Phoenix is a great place to live. It's a great destination. And to work. And none of the three of us were born here. We all decided Phoenix was the place for us. Yep. Yeah. I was in the suburb of Phoenix a little bit. Tucson. Does Tucson believe it's a suburb? You might that might be blasphemy. If you live in Phoenix, if you live in Phoenix, yes. Okay. Tucson Tucsonians wouldn't see it that way, but they are. A two hour suburb. Yes. Yeah. But yeah, most people who live in Phoenix were not born in Arizona. Yeah. Right. So it's a great place to move to. Yes. It is beautiful weather right now too. So help us out with that. We'd really appreciate it. We just need to keep this thing going and growing. Definitely. We have some opportunities for you and your staff to get connected with some additional training that are coming up. So I did wanna mention the Rock classes that we have coming up the next version of each one. If you are planning on training, need to use a little bit of your budget for some training for your staff at the end of the year, or have some new people joining that you need to get up to speed. These are all great options and reasons to to sign someone up for a class. Now we have, of course, the master class that most people are familiar with. That's going to happen again in February, February eighth through tenth, and that'll be right here in Phoenix. So you'll have an opportunity to connect live with our instructor and with other members of the community and really get those master class skills up and running in a whole week, an action packed week full of homework, activities, and lots of learning. So make sure to think about February as your next opportunity for that, and don't let that pass you by. Now, if you're looking for something that's a higher level, a survey level of what does Rock have, this is great sometimes for your ministry teams or for potentially an admin in another area that just interacts with Rock a little bit, or for a church that might be looking at Rock and needs to know a little more before they commit. If you're talking with some of those, the Rock 100 series class, that's Rock one hundred and one and one hundred two, takes place over the course of two weeks. And it's a much lighter, higher level survey kind of here's what you can find in Rock. It includes a demo instance, includes access for Q and A to a Rock instructor, and a chance to interact with others in the community. That's coming right up November. So it just takes a smaller commitment from your day, an hour of q and a time, a couple hours of watching curated videos in the morning. It's an excellent way to get a little bit of an insight into Rock. And if instead of that, you're looking to go deeper than masterclass, you might be looking for SQL for Rock. That's a great way to understand the data structure of Rock and really get down into the next level of what's possible. If that's the class for you, you'll want to pay attention to January. Both the Rock 100 series and sequel for Rock are done online, so you don't need to book travel arrangements for those. But these are great opportunities. There's been so much going on in the Rock world this fall that I wanted to make sure those didn't get lost and we pointed them out because this is a good time to get yourself and your staff or maybe some churches that are looking at Rock signed up to understand a little bit more about what they need. Now, we've also been talking a lot about ways that we can help enable the community, providing additional tools and ways that we can get some of that community information back out and share it in a new way. John, do you want to talk a little bit about ministry stories? Yeah. So as we look at community, we wanted to always be strategic in building that and and making sure that we can always keep it energetic and we can be sharing what's going on. And so part of that is our community point system. So we've worked on that quite a bit over the last few months and we rolled that out at the conference and there's lots of different ways to get points and we try to encourage people through points to kind of reward, , that effort. And so we're gonna be adding a new way to get points and that's to share stories. Because stories are really the fuel of the community and right now it's a little bit they get shared kind of haphazardly, I guess a little bit. We wanna really make that strategic because we get a lot out of it. And we feel that all of you do when you hear some of these stories. And so we've just released a new way for you guys to share your stories with us, which when you give it to us and we're gonna help spread it out to the community. And it's a great way to get points. And I I hope you see it as as a is it benefiting in two ways. One is, yeah, it can increase your points within the community, and you can do a good duty by sharing it with us and which then shares it with others. But the other thing I'd really kind of see this as, is it's an intentional way for you to go capture those stories. So often, stories are kind of a fish that we wait to jump in our boat. And it's important when you're fishing to get the fish. And sometimes we forget that we are fishing. So this is hopefully a way for you to intentionally go out to some of your ministry leaders and proactively just say, hey, can you just share a story about something that's going on with ministry that Rock had a piece of? Because that's gonna make your job so much more fulfilling, is when you can see the benefits of what you do. And I don't care how well plugged in you feel you are, just realize you only see a very small percentage of the of the of the impact that you're having. So anybody who feels maybe they're not having the impact, they need to look deeper because there's a huge impact. And if you think you are having impacts, just realize it's even bigger than you think. Don't let it go to your head, but what you do is super important, and don't let the enemy take that away or to cover it up and pretend it's not there. So stories are key. So go out there, please submit your stories. We're gonna be doing different things with them. So it could be that you share your story and you don't hear anything back from us for a while. Don't don't don't worry. we read all the stories. We can't share every story, but some stories are being held back for a very specific purpose, a big purpose. But we're gonna share, , throughout the year. So the one I wanted to share today is from Mike Mundy at Bedford Alliance. And he was describing how a specific feature, the connection campaign feature meant so much to their church. So what they did is they created a whole bunch of data views to create these campaigns, specifically targeting people people over the age of 20 I'm sorry, 65. ERAs and people who maybe who just left ERA and people who trying to target people who were maybe mostly hit by the pandemic. And so what they did is they got them together, and then they sent thank yous out to them and just saying, Hey, checking in with them. And there's just a lot of great feedback from that. One person even said that the fact that their kids are mentioned was really impactful. That just goes to show you the personalization capabilities that Rock can unleash. It's up to you to actually use it, but you can do that. That's a very simple personalization, but it means so much. So a lot of people just had great responses to this. In fact, some people are coming back and saying, hey, , haven't gotten one in a while. , I really liked those. , you should keep doing that. Now imagine if you didn't have a tool Rock to help do this. Obviously, there's a lot of personal effort that went into, , these these letters, but you also need a tool. And that's what you're gonna find is that never or not never, rarely is it going to be Rock that's the single hero of the story, but Rock is gonna play that support element in a lot of stories. And that's what we wanna have. We don't expect Rock to have sent an AI that kicks in and starts doing ministry for you. That would be unhealthy and that's not God's plan, right? God's plan was not make it as easy as possible for you to do ministry. No, he wanted to be as personal as possible to do ministry. And a tool Rock helps you to be an assistant to that. So great story, keep them coming. And don't just do it for us though. Do it for yourself. You're gonna get a lot out of of going to, , your leadership and asking for the stories. Or sometimes it's not just seeing the leadership. Sometimes it's just someone who's more in the trench on the weekend or during the week on the ministry side that's gonna have those stories that they don't even know to share. And so if I am someone in ministry, I want to share a story, I can go to my community profile. Right? And that's the best place to do that story sharing. Right where church discussions have been. Yep. If what church discussions are, it's right south of that. Yep. Just in your in your profile. So go take a look and see what's there. Think about what might be a good story to share. I love that you mentioned it's not Rock stepping in as a persona. It's that support to increase the personalization. And as our congregations grow and become more engaged online in other areas, that support is what helps us shepherd growing congregations in ways that still feel very caring and individualized. All right. So we recently, in addition to that communication, put out a communication that's kind of been a long time coming. As we've discussed with our board over time and with many of the leading churches in the Rock community, how do we make sure that Rock continues to be sustainable going forward? We have a unique model. That means that there really isn't a path paved for exactly how to do it going forward. And so we have to consult with the people who are most invested in what we're doing. We have to understand the realities that we're working with. And sometimes that means we have to adjust to make sure that we're appropriately pursuing that long term health of the community and of the product. And in this case, did put out a communication that will be raising the recommended donation rate for Rock from $1.5 per average weekend attendee per year to $3 And we just want to talk a little bit about what's behind that and why we believe that's an essential part to the long term health of Rock. And I think the best place to start is to look at the history of Rock. Where did we start? What did we start doing? And how did we start doing it? Yeah. I think it kinda reminds me a lot of of what you see God doing in people's lives. And he never I should stop saying never. He rarely shows you the full path. And I remember when I I haven't been a Christian all my life. It was in my adulthood that I became a Christian. And I remember one of most impactful books I was reading talked about his path for you. And it's almost walking up a mountain in the dark and you have a lantern and you can see a couple of steps ahead of you, but you can't see much further. And, , sometimes we especially as new Christians, we think, well, why doesn't he just show us the whole thing? , just, , why is this a big mystery? And a lot of times it's because it's scary where we're going and what he has plans for us and we might freak out. But if we trust him, he'll show you just enough that where you need to go and for the first next few steps, but the rest is gonna be a little bit of an exciting journey. And that's what Rock has been, an exciting journey. And as much as people go back and say, well, what was your vision for this? I can honestly say, I don't know. It's been God's vision, not necessarily my vision. And I think we can all see our parts as the same. Right? Because I don't think I could have ever expected it to be where it's gone. Right? In terms of size, scope, impact. And, , that's just being humble. We can all , pat ourselves on the back and take credit for this, but we're not. Sagabi the glory. He's the one who's pushing and envisioning in this and we're doing our effort. we're putting our effort in, but he's the one providing vision and opening doors to opportunities. There's even some opportunities that were shut to us in the very beginning, doors that said, No, I don't think this is for us. And that's okay. They were right. That was true. Those doors have since reopened. I think that's just great. And that's God working on the vision and working through us to make it more available. So I think we started with a smaller vision for And church management system and technology has changed a lot over the last ten years. Our vision for what a church management relationship management system should do back then was much smaller. Now I look at the capabilities, in fact, just off topic, right before the podcast, I was talking with Nick about some of that stuff that we're working on right now. I'm , dude, there's nothing else out there, nothing in the secular world that can do all of this stuff. , they can integrate with mobile apps and websites and CRM and workflow. I mean, and even some of the stuff that's coming up, which is crazy cool. There's nothing that does that. It's incredible to think. And by such a small team, which again shows you God's involved. Absolutely. And I think when we came up with these terms thoughts , well, how should the model work and what should the amount be? It was a much different animal, was a small animal that needed not as much care and feeding. And now it's huge and it has all these capabilities and it requires a bigger team. It does. And bigger teams require it become, , a little less efficient than a small team. That can because when you're small, you don't really need to communicate with yourself very often. Hopefully. And you're sitting right next to the only couple other people who might be involved. Right. And the hardest person to manage on the planet is yourself, but it takes more time to help manage others. And so as teams get bigger, that takes a little bit more resources to fund. And so one of the things that we've heard continuously over the last two years is, hey, this is so great. We love the community, we love Rock. Everything's just amazing what we can do, and our church is so reliant on this. And then the next comment, sometimes it's said, sometimes it's not said, but it's kind of almost implied inferred is , don't mess this up. We really need this to keep going. And we take that as a good burden. And when I hear those successful stories, part of me on the inside is cheering, the other part me is , oh gosh, this is another ministry that's so reliant upon what we're doing that we have to take that seriously. And our board has expressed that, you said, Emily, know, guys make sure this is sustainable. That is the most important thing that you have to look Fortunately, because of God's grace, we've never had to worry about marketing. We've never had to worry about putting fuel on growth. , okay, sell more ads because we need more. That's never been a problem. No. Our problem has been making sure that our model, it can fully fund what we have in our mouth today chewing. And so after doing some analysis and a lot of reflecting and praying, we just feel this is something that has to change. we have to increase that. And we feel the value, we've tripled, quadrupled, maybe 10 X improved the and the power of what this thing does and not to not to increase the funding to help the team support that is only gonna cause midterm to long term issues and and keeping it going. Definitely. And we want to stay in the trenches with churches. I mean, that's what from the very beginning, we've said we're ministry partners. Church needs change and have changed so drastically in the last ten years. There's no way the original vision could meet today's needs. And so there's no way that the original funding can meet today's needs. Not only are we maintaining everything that has been built to date, but there are so many more new needs that are coming and will continue to come. And we want to be well prepared to meet those because we know that we're serving churches and they're serving people. And this isn't about eternity. Yeah. And people come to us all the time and say, hey, we love your model as a nonprofit and optional payment. And we're gonna set something up just this. We're gonna move in this direction. And I kind of warm , yeah, I don't know. It's an option, but don't see it as such a great option without seeing the challenges too. But we feel called and led that this still is the right model that you shouldn't have to be forced to pay, that we still believe that the nonprofit is a good thing because it's a protection for the churches and we believe protecting churches is our biggest worry. So we still love the model. It's just a challenging model. And so, by moving to the $3 per average weekend attendee, we feel that gives us more sustainability both in the midterm and the long term. The short term is gonna take a while to transfer to this. But we also feel you still don't have to pay to use Rock. Right. , you can still get a grant. And that's new. The grant process is new because we know that we wanna protect the concept originally of this is needs to be accessible for new and small ministries. Mhmm. And so we've formalized a grant process. Yeah. Or maybe even a older ministry that's going through a leadership transition. there's certain cases that Sometimes I hear this large, big established churches and giving and then I'm , oh gosh, that's a bummer. And then I find out why. And it's , oh, I get it. That's a rough time. And for us, we're not here to judge. We're just here to do our technical jobs and to have a grant process, I think is great. And so that's there. It just shows that accessibility is still top of mind. Even beyond that though, if for some reason vivacious church that's growing and huge doesn't want to pay, well, they just don't get to use the latest features for a whole year. So it's , it's not that big of a deal. Right. But we hope that that doesn't happen. That's not something that we're encouraging because we're all better together. And if we don't see that we're all locked arms and arms, then there's gonna be pressure on those who are standing firm and those who are not. And that hold us all back. By all, I mean, the big C church. If we all are locked arms and we're all pulling together, we can move mountains. If we're not all pulling together, we can move some hills, but we can't move mountains. That's right. And that's what we're trying to do. Now we also know that a transition this can't be done overnight. You can't snap your fingers and everything just magically changes. We know that there's budget cycles. We get that. , that's another good thing that the grant process can help. We imagine the grant process will be bigger the first year as people have to go back and adjust budgets and everything. Here's what I would say though, is try though. If your budget just got approved, go back and say, Hey, this is really important. Is there anything that we can do? It doesn't hurt to try because I do know having worked at a church for thirteen years, are pools of money that are left in reserve because we know things change throughout the years. Yes. And those changes don't always line up with budget cycles. Right. So give it a try, and if that comes down to it, then let's talk about getting a grant till we can get through to the next budget cycle. One of the things that I think is difficult right now, it's working kind of against the process in a bit is , the pandemic is impacting the attribute that we hinge on that says, well, how do we price this? It's average weekend attendance. Well, that's really throwing a big question mark on how do you calculate that? It used to be pretty obvious how you'd calculate that. And so there, what I would say is , what would you tell your neighbor how big your church is if they were just ask you, Oh, you work at a church? Well, how big is your church? , that's the number I would put down in this weird time. If that means that in the first year you can't make it to the $3 it's probably best to try to figure out , how do we bridge that and put a communication plan in than to put an artificially low number of people being positively impacted by your church, who maybe aren't attending right in this moment, but are watching online, giving, are actively participating. if you walked up to them and said, Hey, are you an active participant at your church? Oh yeah. Are you attending in person? Not right now. Not yet. I'm watching online with my family, but we're still giving. And I know as we went through even the worst parts of the pandemic, my giving didn't change. It's , well, yeah, no, my attendance has to change because of laws and rules and stuff that. But , my heart hasn't necessarily changed in that. So I would say let's it's better to keep the numbers accurate as possible and not try to shift it down to make the $3 And then the pandemic is kind of the figure that changed it. Better to, I would say in my mind, better to go with the grant process and keep that number where it needs to be and then work on messaging , change that over the next year. I wouldn't look at your attendance as your variable to adjust an equation. I would look at it and say, gosh, has my reliance on and need for a good technology increased or decreased during this COVID era? And are people engaging with us differently? Has our online reach changed? And whether someone's sitting in a seat that is inside your four walls or their four walls, that's not really the indication of the multiplier or the digit related to that attendance. So I think that's exactly what you said, John, is just, , we wouldn't adjust attendance too much right now as pencil count of who's inside of the sanctuary. It's more about stick with your pre COVID number if you can for now and realize that your your digital tools are critical now, even more critical than they were before that. And I go to leadership and say, hey, listen, in economics, it's value based pricing. So has the value of Rock gone up or down during the pandemic? Well, it's gone up. I think everybody agrees the value of Rock has gone up. Well, did the attendance go up or down during the pandemic? It went down. Okay. So we don't wanna lower the support of what we give that has gone up in value because a different metric has gone down. And that's where we struggle a bit too. Is this the best metric, attendance to hinge on? It's honestly the easiest metric and it's been the best metric over time that might shift and might need to transfer to something else that tries to compare the value that Rock is providing to the value that is put towards support. But right now we just don't have a different number. We've kind of brainstormed some of that. We've even brainstormed with some people in the community over that. And I just don't think, I think over time we might be able to come up with something, but right now there isn't. So hinge it on value. Yes. Is is Rock having more or less value in your ministry? And let's support it in the same way that it's being valued, that the value is coming from. Definitely. And if you if that causes a short term issue with getting to that number because of budget cycles or planning or the time to implement a change that at your organization, that's okay. Reach out through the grant process. This isn't intended to be a short term quick fix. This is intended to be a step in the direction to get us to the long term sustainability of where we need to be to support what churches are are wanting from us right now. Yeah. And I was just talking recently with another. They they are a vendor to churches of software that does a very small piece of a church. It's not ministry related. It's it's administrative related. And they told me how much it cost a church, and I belt fell out of my chair. I didn't really I I hope I was deadpan, but I was , oh my gosh, I think they're paying more for this product. It's just purely ministry. It only does this one thing than all of Rock for a church. It's , the value proposition is so different, but there wasn't an eye blinked at this other cost. And I was , it kind of floored me. Was , wow, that's amazing. But I also think it shows sometimes why we have to scramble so much and and have to put so much effort into getting everything going the way it does is because we are extremely under resourced. I hope that has helped clear up some of the communications and the history behind why that change has been necessary and is something our board honestly has been asking us to do for a very long time. Yeah. But but also thank you because in that communication, we heard nothing but positive comments. And, , as you put that communication out, it's a little bit walking on a tight rope and you're not sure if someone's gonna come in and start shaking it on the other side that they're not happy. And I was just amazed and blown away and so appreciative of the response. When there was concern, it was a % about, oh, but my budget cycle just got approved. And I totally get that that, no problem. , I totally get that. Try to go back and maybe still ask, but I understand that. But it was so great and so rewarding that to have heard any complaints , we're raising the price. Was cool. There was no one saying, hey, this isn't valuable enough to us. Right. Right. So, and I think that's really good. And that's something that we should all be proud of as a community. We see the value of what we've all worked on together. And I know we all still wanna be a part of that. Well, that wraps up our talking points for today. Thank you so much for joining us. We love connecting with the community and being able to share some of the things that otherwise we wouldn't have the opportunity to. We're so appreciative of the Rock community and so thankful we got to spend time together at the conference this year. We're already looking forward to next year and just certainly appreciate the encouragement and support that has always been apparent through this Rock community. Thanks for joining us today, and we will catch you next time on the next Rockcast. 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.