Podcast Episode 140: Episode 113: Special Edition with Jerrod Stewart

Description

Does your church's management system rely on a single person? Jon and Emily talk with Jerrod Stewart from Church on the Move about their choice to move from a custom church management system to Rock as a way to ensure that the technological needs of an ever-growing church don't rest on one person. Jerrod shares some insights on how he chose his implementation team and why community is so key.

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 back to Rockcast. We have a special edition here where we're interviewing a member of the community. I'm Emily Forman. I have Jon Edmiston, and we are lucky enough to have Jared Stewart, the director of IT at Church on the Move here with us this morning. Welcome, Jared. Hey. Thanks for having me. Excited to be on this. Talk to you guys. We're excited to have you too. You are going to be a very new member of the Rock community here as you are launching on Rock coming up in a couple weeks, which might be around the time this podcast actually publishes. So that's exciting. It is stressful, exciting, a lot of anxiety, but then also looking past all that, just the benefits on the backside of it. We're really excited about it. Well, thanks for pulling your head up out of the craziness that is all things, implementation to to chat with us a little bit. You have a very interesting story systems wise for Church on the Move, where you've come from and where you're going. And I think there's a lot that we can learn just by hearing you discuss where you've been and what your goals are now as far as your systems and church management system go. Right. So kind of, I think one of the things that was unique about Church on the Move and our approach towards, I'll just throw the terminology out there, church management system. Over a decade ago, I think about fourteen or fifteen years, we had a very talented developer kind of start the process of building our own custom solution. Exceptional talent. I think what is amazing is what this gentleman was able to produce a stable platform that it served our church well for many, many years. I came into the church about thirteen years ago. So we had a team called Development at the time, and it was kind of on their own. It wasn't under the IT umbrella. So they kinda were running their own play at the time. But through the years, what we saw was when you can do custom development and you can solve problems through the use of software, you can get yourself pretty thin in a hurry and start spinning up a lot of different platforms. So it wasn't just church management system that he was creating. He was creating ticketing systems for us, and we created our own giving solution. And so when you start to think about the life cycle software in general, you in not really building the team around what you've produced at that point, you start to see fractures happening. And so what we were feeling as an organization was our system called Move currently extremely stable, but we started identifying, okay, we'd to have these features. He would do an amazing as far as building in features and things that. But even what I would say feature requests, what was the formalized system behind that and how did we understand what the roadmap for the platform and what would that look going forward? So about three years ago, we just started experiencing a lot of this. And then the reality of there's all this technical expertise wrapped up into one individual. And he's extremely invested in our church. I mean, he's a twenty seven year member employee of our organization. So he's all in a church on the move. But when you think about business continuity strategies and what might sink the ship is , man, we're pretty exposed here. So about three years ago, the decision was kind of made , hey, we're gonna get out of custom development. We really never put the resources around this individual to grow the team. And then you're at a lot of competition with just other organizations and the ebbs and flows of what happens with just any, I would say, IT or dev type position in a ministry. It's , you'd have to have a lot of work. You might get some things caught up, but then now what do you do with people? And you definitely don't wanna off board people. Looking through various ways of having, how do we approach this going forward? And was kind of , okay, we did a merger. We brought that team in under me under IT umbrella. And then kind of what we've used in IT up to this point, so I've always been responsible for the infrastructure data center side of the house. But one of the things when I came in the organization, I just said, it's not all gonna live and die on my shoulders. if I need to go on or that we need to make a change, Church on the Move can still exist, can still go forward. So we're gonna invest in enterprise class technologies that you can, there's people going out there getting certified in these disciplines. You can call consultants down the road. I mean, they're gonna be familiar with these technologies and it's just not all gonna be on my shoulders. And so that's kind of the approach that we took with our development. So we knew we needed to start sunsetting some of these things. And when you think about Church Management System and the tight integrations that he had created, it was , woah, this touches a lot real quickly. It's kind of the thread that's loose on your shirt. You start pulling up that thing and all of sudden it just falls apart. And so what we did just through a lot of discussions, I mean, it's a paradigm shift. I mean, culturally, we're changing the way that we just function. And so even getting him on board and things that, understanding it's you've definitely done nothing wrong here. It's just we need to make this shift. And he got it. He understood. I think he was feeling the weight of it too. Ultimately, it's , it's a bad place to be. I know I was there early on in my IT career and, , at 2AM, you're kind of standing there and there's nobody to turn to and you're going, what what is this? , did I actually sign up for this? So I think he was ready for the change, which is awesome. But then we, yeah, we just, we kind of took a fresh approach and we said, what we don't want to do, kind of the internal communication that I kept saying was, is we don't need to create MOVE two point zero. We kind of need a fresh take at this and we wanna bring other people's perspectives into the fold so that we can basically leverage other people's experiences too, we might be missing the boat on a better way to do ministry. And so that was really our approach. Definitely have needs every other ministry, and we created a focus group. We sat down. We didn't look at software. We just said, what does this thing need to do? , this is core to our systems, and then let's go from there. We didn't wanna get glazed over with some fancy feature that's , oh, I gotta have that. But then we miss 30 or 40% of the other things we actually need the system to do. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. Hopefully that's helpful. Sorry to ramble on. No. That's incredibly helpful. And it's so interesting. You talk about that perspective shift of all things custom, which usually leads to whatever a ministry says they want is created before the road map. It's the requests, land before the road map, and you you can't it's hard to drive that ship to coming back and saying, no. We're gonna really synthesize this and spend time in this planning phase and then go simple before we get very custom and bring an outside perspective. , that's a that's a huge step to do before you even launch into something new when you also have the tension of your systems might be becoming outdated. Your your features might need to be refreshed. And so you're balancing that tension of necessary speed with the the stop, pause, and completely refactor the approach. That's just really fascinating. Yeah. And, , anybody that's been in technology for any time, they're familiar with the whole BYOT, and that's what was happening. I mean, in today's world of SaaS applications, if you got a credit card, you got an application. And so what we're feeling, the other pain points were is that if the platform wasn't up to a feature or something that a ministry team felt they needed, well, you just gotta swipe a credit card and all of a sudden, now you've created another data silo. Or we start to talk about the sprawl of all that data all over the place and trying to rein that in, the potential of DLP scenarios and things that. We were just going, man, we gotta get a handle on it. And so we knew that we were gonna have to do hard work. I said, a lot of people, I know the pandemic was challenging for a lot of ministries and you take a good hard look at your systems. I'm thankful that we were kind of already making that determination before the pandemic. Because I think with all the other challenges the pandemic had presented to us that might have been enough to spin me out at that point. But no, it's been good. And I think the big thing too is just when you step back, what I had been saying was , we're not listen, we're not gonna go back behind the secret door in IT and try to dream something up and sprinkle some magic pixie dust on something, come out with this amazing solution. This is an all skate. We're all gonna be unified around this decision. And so that was a lot of preliminary work, getting executive campus pastors and ministry teams on board with it, really unifying and living out one of our core values, which is one team. And that's from the beginning, that was the desire of mine. It's just , we're all in on this thing because it's gonna take all of us pulling on the rope in the same direction to make this happen. Takes an incredible amount of education, of team, and then of leadership buy in, especially if you're taking away the the individual systems and tools that people have put in place and and currently rely on because they haven't gotten any centralized assistance that they believe they need. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it sounds you have a lot of work behind you and some work ahead of you too. What are you most looking forward to in Rock when you have your cutover coming up here soon? Well, , I think we talked about a paradigm shift. We had I won't say intentionally, but we had just created a lot of gatekeepers in our legacy system. And so it was , hey, we could do some things, but we would have to go run things to ground through this person or through this person. And everything, agile is a big word in the business world, but agile needs to be that way in the ministry world as well. I mean, you're dealing with people. That's the variable, right? So when you're in the people business, you just, I mean, you've gotta be able to kinda move and spin things in a hurry. And we're being restricted by kind of this gatekeeper mentality. So I think probably what we're most excited about is really extending a lot more capability out to campus teams and really letting them run the play, probably more so than they've ever been able to in the past and really utilizing Rock too. I I don't wanna say I kinda knew, but there's always those moments where it's when you guys call your system at RMS, was , it's not about the system, it's about the relationship. And I think as as an IT guy myself, man, we love systems. We love black and white, and we'll tell , what's all good and bad about specific things. But it's really that gray area and dealing with people and the ability to just extend Rock out to these ministry teams, , allows them to really deal with the gray, help them where they're at on their journey. And so I would just say, yeah, that the extensibility and the power out to the ministry teams is what I'm most looking forward to. Not any any one individual feature, just the whole whole kit and caboodle. What, as you've been putting all this together, you've been having to kinda construct the foundation of your Rock team. How have you put that together? It seems every church has a different approach to what their Rock team looks and how the number of people on it, what the reporting structure is. What does that look on Church on the Move? Yeah. So I would say it's still a little bit fluid, but we definitely have some core people on the team. What we've elected to do, well, let me back up a little bit. So our developer of all of our systems at this point, the good thing and the healthy thing through all of this is he's on my team, and he's now stepped into a data engineer position. And we're looking at really utilizing some of his amazing skill set into, , business intelligence and the analytics side of the of the world world and really helping us catapult our efforts in that direction. So he's all in. he's been helping from day one. He provides extremely great insight. He's kind of been through this. He understands a lot of the challenges. So he's an invaluable resource to have on the team. A couple of years ago, I made the decision to hire an individual. I'm an IT guy. I spent my first half of my career in enterprise. And it was just really interesting when I came into ministry. There's just certain things that I'm not gonna be great at and I don't need to be great at. But one thing that I really needed on my team, I've got great system admin, I've got guys, tech support guys, we're covered from an IT hard skills perspective, we're covered. But I didn't really have anybody to kind of help with the PR. And so I got a great opportunity. We put a job description together, and we call it a customer success manager. And I was , I don't really need anybody that has IT experience. I need somebody that's good with people, that can be adaptable and learn IT and some of the basic lingo. But it just so happened we were able to hire a lady that had worked campus life before. She's a real go getter. And I'm telling you, understanding campus life and some of these ministry components that I am just not privy to, That might be shamefully admitting, but it's been kind of a thread that's really been helpful. And it's , okay, when this team's saying this, what are they meaning? And having that go between has been just invaluable for us. And then another gentleman that actually is in our finance team, but he has really been one of the individuals through the years with our legacy system, handled a lot of the giving and the finances, and we've been able to bring him along for the ride too. So it's primarily us four right now. And then obviously partner help as well. I mean, that's been a big component of it. We know there's probably gonna be a day where we're gonna have somebody staffed up and Rock is their primary responsibility. But we're kind of waiting until kind of the dust settles a little bit to see exactly what we need. We're covered on a lot of different fronts right now just because we have some go getters and we do have core technical capabilities. But yeah. So maybe when that time comes, I'll be asking you guys maybe for some recommendations. We definitely have a community job posting spot too where you could fit that up if you need to. But that sounds a great flexible approach to let's see what we need and and build it to match. So you're bringing your team to to Rx at the August. Right? Correct. Yeah. We're we're excited about it. And and I know everybody that's probably lesson on this, they get this, but this was a lesson and it's funny because we should know this. As a church, it's , man, we're pushing small groups and community and life's better in community. And it's , I'm just telling you when when that finally, that light went on for us about the community and Rock and it's , okay, this is what this is supposed to feel . You're not supposed to go at this alone. And it was just a huge, , moment. And and I'm sure a lot of people, they might not as difficult to sway as maybe I am. But as soon as that they just all hit. I was , okay, this is good. And that we're not sitting here kind of on a single viewpoint or single perspective. We're able to leverage people. And I can't tell you how benefit, I've got peers at other ministry that now I'm , they're probably tired of hearing about me now. It's , hey, I got this single sign on question, and this is how I anticipate it to work. How are you guys implementing and things that? And so it's just that's been huge as opposed to just figure it out ourselves and kinda push through and come up with something, but is it the best way to do it? We're always trying to kinda continuously improve and make things better. So that's just been amazing. So we're looking forward to the community aspect, networking with other ministries and yeah, just seeing what it's all about. Well and this is your first experience at the community conference. Right? Or did you do the the virtual last year? We didn't go to the virtual one. We just bought it after the fact. We hadn't made the decision at that point that we were gonna move to Rock. And so, yeah, we were taken we hadn't signed on the dotted line, so to speak, as going forward, but we were going to one zero one, one zero two, and trying to get an idea what's this whole Rock thing about. And so it yeah. We that that was enough. We figured it out. , okay. Yeah. This is this is where we wanna go. I think one of the challenges is there's so many definitions for the word community, and, we really envision and see, and in fact, it is a community that's more the communities inside churches. That's what we have in Rock. But if you compare community to, another product or platform or something that you would find more in the vendor world rather than the ministry world. If that's the type of community you envision, it isn't necessarily as helpful. And so I don't think it's unusual probably to have one definition of community that you come in anticipating, and then it takes a little bit to kinda get the light on, as you said, and and see what it really is on the inside. Yeah. And I think kinda to your point, it's it's even in the ministry world, but my whole IT career, it's you have these vendors, these technology vendors and whoever they may be. And there's just maybe it's a sales rep or something, but you just connect with. They've got the technology, but now it's about the relationship. And so you kind of have that perspective. It's , I feel , honestly, one of the things I was a little bit leery and that depends on your viewpoint on stuff. But it's when you hear open source, oh man, you don't want this to spin out. I don't want this to be another kind of stale project on SourceForge or something that. And it's , whatever happened to that? And then somebody forks it and it turns into 15 different things. And so there's always that concern. But then when you feel , Okay, there's a lot of people, there's a board behind this thing, it's all about the capital C Church, it starts to make a lot of sense. And so I felt we have the flexibility to truly build software for ministry and there's a user voice to it. People are able to submit feature requests or whatever. You're very transparent with the roadmap and what's happening with it. But then, yeah, kind of have that insurance policy. It's there's a lot of different consultants that have developed a business model in and around supporting this. So it's that you get that kind of for profit software as well type benefits. , well, I just need an insurance policy. If this thing goes awry, who am I going to call if I can't figure out? I gotta have that insurance policy that don't want to you just don't want to make a decision just because you don't have the technical aptitude or something to fix it. It can't sink the ship. It all goes back to that business continuity. It goes back to not falling on any one individual or just even a small team to try to make the play happen. Yeah. I wonder in the secular world, there's a lot of talk about community, but I actually think it's not in the vendor's best interest to have community because where there's community, there's power. A lot times you don't want your customers all rallying together to tell you that you kind of stink. But in the church world, I think that's just kind of our natural go to. We always wanna be in community, and and it's kind of flipping the the coin on on into the other side and saying, hey. No. We we wanna support community from the very beginning. Yeah. No, most definitely. And yeah, it's it's fine. Just the ability, when you come together, you're minded individuals, you're coming together for the common purpose. And just amazing things can happen. I know we've worked with several people and we're very, I don't know, maybe I'm a, I don't know if you guys do Myers Briggs, but I'm a P. I'll just kind of keep taking in a lot of information and it doesn't bother me. I'll just keep taking in information, taking information, taking information. And then it's up until the very last moment, it's , boom, that's the decision. And then I'm good with it. Because I feel I've taken in everything that I need to. I know all the perspectives. So we kind of think about our processes sometimes that way, maybe at a fault sometimes where it's just , man, is this every perspective that we covered all of it. I think when you get community together, you're able to bounce ideas back and forth off people. Man, you can really spark some amazing creativity and where you can take some things. And I just, I think having that is super beneficial to me. I mean, I know I feed off that type of energy and we had a conversation with a vendor that we're moving our giving solution to. And I had one of those moments yesterday with him, and he's , great idea. And it's , we're kind of feeding off of each other. What if it could do this? What if it do that? And it's just , oh, let me write some of this stuff down. It's , great. This is what I to hear. I to hear that the willingness to go after something and can't make any promises, but I'd love to dig into that with you versus the, well, this is the platform, and this is what it does. And if you don't it, then you need to go somewhere else. So this is why I really think Rock, specifically the way that it's built, kind of coming back around. It's just the best of both worlds. When it comes down to it, I mean, we're in a really good spot. And so I'm excited about the future. I'm excited about where this is gonna be able to take our ministry. And , obviously, the biggest thing that I'm excited about is just, taking care of our people. And I think that Rock's gonna enable us to just kinda move it to a whole new level. So excited about it. Well, when people run into you at the conference, what are some things they should know about you? What are your hobbies and interests? What kind of things do you do in your free time? Oh, man. Well, first of all, I have a wife who is a, high school girls basketball coach. She was played division one college basketball. So basketball is our life. And, , I told her early on that if we were gonna be married, I was gonna support her. So I go to I don't even know what the number of basketball games is a year because her season is basketball's a long season. It's, , six months long starting to finish. But then but then my daughter, who's 13 now, she plays competitive basketball and then basketball for school. So all summer long, which after I get off this call, we're gonna go to Oklahoma City for maybe nationals for her. So Exciting. We'll be doing that. And then I've got a six year old son who is just now getting started in football. And then I've got a four year old son, and he's the wild one of the bunch. So that keeps me pretty busy. If it's just personal time, if I've got a little margin for that, I'm just an avid outdoorsman. I love going to the mountains, hiking, backpacking, doing those types of things. And then I've actually got a side business, but I won't go into that and plug it shamelessly on your podcast. But I do to hunt, and I do a lot of upland hunting. So we'll go at the September. We're gonna go to North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming on a two week loop. Oh, wow. It's just the adventure. I'm a pea. I the adventure of all of it and having new experiences and meeting new people. So Well, that's pretty great. Thanks for sharing. And thanks for spending time with us today. We've been really intrigued about the process that you've taken, and your experience is maybe a little unique compared to the the typical community experience of moving from one outside platform to another, but I think you've learned some great things. So we appreciate you sharing those with the community today. Yeah. Absolutely. It's been a pleasure to join you guys. Well, thank you so much, and thank you to our listeners for tuning in with us again. We will talk to you next time. 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 features. Are you ready to take the next step or share with another local church? Visit rockrms.com/hosting today.