Podcast Episode 110: Episode 84: Special Edition with Red Rocks

Description

Join Jon & Emily as they speak with Adam Rowe & Travis Hall from Red Rocks Church.

Transcribed Content

This episode of Rockcast is brought to you by Rock partner Triumph Tech, a full service specialist partner. Rock partners provide crucial support for Spark Development Network and important services for the Rock community. Connect with Triumph Tech today at rockrms.com/partners. Welcome to this special edition of Rockcast. I'm Emily Forman, and I have Jon Edmiston here with me today. And also with us, we have two very special guests from the Rock community. We have two staff members from Red Rocks Church in Colorado. Help me welcome Adam Roe and Travis Hall. We're so thankful to have you guys with us today. Thanks for having So Adam, your role is IT and Rock admin and Travis, you're in operations, correct? Yep. And why is it you guys are in Phoenix on-site here this week? We're here at the masterclass to we go live in about six, eight weeks or trying to learn all we can in a little bit of time and then go back and train everybody. That's pretty exciting. So you're on the countdown. Yep. Well, we're thankful you're here with us and we were hoping that we could just help introduce the community to you a little bit. Those who haven't met you, and you could share your story a little about how you ran across the Rock community, what that looks to you right now, what it looks in your organization, and just tell us a bit about how Red Rock's plans to use Rock. Yeah, so we first got introduced to Rock about two years ago at a conference, and we just got excited for the things that it could do mainly, previously before this role, I was kind of oversaw our website and our app. And so the things that CCV was doing at the time, using Rock and integrating with their web and app, I was just getting very fired up about the, I even saw an example for steps back then, which was, , looked very early on but very cool. Because at the time we didn't really use a church management system very well, know, things move very fast at Red Rocks and so people just kind of have to go out and do things how they need to get them done, and our current platform was not the way that anybody wanted to get anything done, so. It seems in a lot of churches, church management system can be a Rolodex for looking up information and maybe check-in. Is that more in the state that you guys are in? Were you doing even more than that or? Definitely, I mean, we use check-in and kind of our directory giving, but then I don't It was mostly check-in and finances. Okay. For the most part, I mean, you're right. So the administrative side of church. Yeah. So what do you see will be different in your use of Rock? You'll obviously replace those features and use the same ones, but are you gonna be doing other things? Yeah, so everything will be moving over to Rock. So when we had our discovery, we brought in kind of the core of every ministry and just right from the get go, everybody was just so excited. They're , wait, I can do what? Can , that's gonna change my life. And one of the best statements that I brought out of discovery because me and Travis said in all of them, was that one of our staff members said, Oh, so Jason, you're just coming in, you're just gonna take all of our jobs. And he said, No, I'm coming in so you can actually start to do ministry again. And that's really what it was. I mean, you have people who, hours and hours are just ate up from, , filling out a spreadsheet and organizing information and taking these forms that people signed and that's not really what we wanna be spending our time on. we say at Red Rocks, we exist to make heaven more crowded and able to do that, it's hard when you're just fumbling through a spreadsheet for three hours. That's a great tagline. Yeah. How fun. So it sounds you had an opportunity to review your processes and maybe improve and stabilize those a little bit in this move to Rock as well. The discovery part was good because, I mean, there's so many processes that you use that you don't know are processes, , formally. Right. Just because that's the way you do it. And so getting every ministry to think about exactly all the details, every single step they take, and having Jason out, and now with Luke, being able to figure out , oh yeah, we can definitely automate that. It's one of those things that people don't even think about the fact they can automate something. It's pretty exciting. Yeah, I send the same email every single week to the same person or the same group of people. It's a canned response, but you still have to do it. You still have to trigger it. Right. Or we can actually take that away. That's really great. So we hear from a lot of churches and we heard from some on a recent trip, I guess a few months ago, that in the process of their move, they were able to do some of those same things where they established process. And maybe there were things that one person on staff did because they were that one person, but if something were to happen to that individual, no one else would be able to carry on the same. So it helped add a little bit of illumination into what was being done. Yeah, same. We noticed that a lot. Our staff is very thin considering our congregation size. And so not intentionally, but that's just what happens sometimes is , I don't really have time to explain how I do something, just , I do it. I'm the only one who is able to do that. I think it's been interesting for me that Adam and I talked about is a lot of our processes that we currently have are established because of the confines of our previous church management system. So they've just been passed down of this is how we do it, when in reality we've never been able to dream up, maybe that's not how we really want to do it, It's just the way we do it because we were told that's the walls. Yeah. And then we just made it a reality, and it works, but that part's been interesting, kind of looking past the way we currently do things and more looking at why. Mhmm. And figuring out what's the ultimate why, and can we create a better process around that? Oh, that's a really good point. I have heard, you probably have too, John, from some churches that they'll just come and say, well, this is how we do this thing. We wanna do it the same way in Rock. How do we manipulate Rock to get the process to be the same? And they may not step back and ask why. Right. Or you get the opposite, which is just tell me the way I have to do it in Rock. And it can almost be frustrating to people because when you say, well, they come and say, what's the best way to do this in Rock? Well, what's your ministry pattern? , there's lots of ways you can do it, but sometimes it's almost they want to be told how they have to do it in Rock, and because there's no have to, it can be a little overwhelming at times, , because you have to figure it out. Oh, and they're used to that. Yeah. It's almost pull me back in an empty You have met boundary. I'm leaving this cage. What's your cage look ? Right. And it's , well, there's no cage. Well, that's the benefit of the community because every church is a little bit unique and every ministry inside the church is a little unique. So being able to bounce off the ideas of what's worked for someone else, and then see that in context with a lot of organizations can kind of help spur on that ideation, I think. So what is one of the most exciting features that you are ready to use at Red Rocks when you go live? I have to pick. I mean, now mine's check-in just because I've been working a lot with it. We use iPads for all of our check-in except our man stations. So I've been working on swapping all those out. So when we go live, it's just a software update and not hardware. Updating all of our iPads, changing all of our printers, all of that stuff. So as of today, would say check-in and check-in for us is a very complicated process mainly because of what Travis said about when we have a new family, our new family, they have to go to the man check-in counter their first week and then also the second week because that they're, it's don't ask, just even that. And when I kind of explained to them , Oh, you're not gonna have to go to your classrooms and count kids heads anymore and you're not gonna have to do all these things, they just get excited about it. So I would say check-in and then just our staff being able to help them, just do their job better. our leaders say that no matter if you're on stage or not, you're all pastors and again, it's hard to do that when you're just sitting by on a computer. To be able to kind of loosen them up and get them out there to whatever it is, take phone calls or go meet with people or just be pastors, that's so exciting. Right, most people don't take a church job to do spreadsheets. Exactly. That's not the motivation. Travis, do you agree, or is there anything different that you're looking forward to? I mean, I definitely agree, but I have one area that can't wait for it to be done, and just to see it in action. We have a couple campuses called God Behind Bars. We partner with a company called God Behind Bars, so they're prison ministries, and it's fully volunteer run, and the process to become a volunteer is super tedious, and it's very long, and there's a lot of back and forth with the DOC, lots of red tape and lots of paperwork. And so, through this, we've been able to figure out an actual process, and Luke's been able to build it into our instance. And it's unreal, how much time it's gonna actually save. So, I mean, thankfully I don't have to do it myself, but it's just gonna, I can't wait to see it. That's great. Awesome. When you can impact volunteers' time as well as staff, it's pretty fantastic. It's going to be amazing. And even taking a system, because the Department of Corrections, their process is all paper and obviously we can't build an integration into Rock with the Department of Corrections in Colorado. We could try. We could try. But even the way that Rock is kind of bringing that in just that process, being able to work with the Department of Corrections, what they already have set up and making our process easier. Well, cool part is getting to be able to share that. Yeah. Because we're not the only church that has God behind bars. A whole bunch of locations, and so it's And it might not be the same process everywhere, but it's going to be a tedious process everywhere. And so being able to share that that's already created, let's send it out. That's great. I mean, that's really what rocks about, the community and sharing, and it's just, it's so encouraging every day to see the level of sharing that goes on every single day in chat or on, , private meetups that they have in their regions. I think that's our favorite part is just seeing that level of sharing. That's awesome. Well, talk to us a little bit about growth. It sounds you've experienced a lot of it at Red Rocks over the years. What does that look for you? Growth in the congregation, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, so we're actually at a very exciting time right now. Our lead pastor just got back from sabbatical and we've went through a lot of changes and had a ton of meetings on process and everything. So it's a great time for Rock for us, and so it's just a very exciting time for me to be at Red Rocks. Yeah, it's gonna be a big learning curve. There's gonna be a lot of, probably tough days and lots of figuring out and all that but I think it's a perfect time for us to be on Rock and kind of hit that trajectory with our growth. I think we had our largest weekend ever his first weekend back is 16,500, something that. So our largest non Christmas Easter. Yeah, that's gonna be very encouraging. I mean, you come back from sabbatical and that's the largest. Oh, so encouraging. That's so cool. Yeah. That's awesome. That's good. Well, I hope that your instance will allow you inside Rock to grow and scale as your organization does. Sounds you guys should be set up for a lot of success. Thank you so much for joining us today. We've been thrilled to have you. Thank you. We're thankful that you're able to join us for the masterclass, and we're looking forward to connecting with you and the rest of the community at the conference later this year. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having us. 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.