Podcast Episode 93: Episode 65: Special Edition with Luke Taylor, a.k.a. The Smoked Brisket Guy

Description

In this special edition of Rockcast, we talk with Luke Taylor, a long-time supporter of Rock and the community. We're excited to announce that he's joined us on staff at Spark Development Network as a Ministry Analyst and Trainer. Learn more about Luke, how he joined the team, and why he's called The Smoked Brisket Guy.

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. Hello, and welcome to another special edition of our Rockcast podcast, where the Rock and Spark team come together to share a little bit about what's going on. And this time, we have a really special guest with us. I'm Emily Forman. I've Jon Edmiston, Nick Airdo, and our special guest today, Luke Taylor. Welcome, Luke. Thank you. We have a lot of exciting ground to cover today, and we're able to bring a variety of people to meet the community through this podcast. Sometimes people that are currently, in a role at a church or a role on staff. And today, we have a kind of a hybrid and a little bit of an announcement. We're really excited to be welcoming Luke to the Spark staff, and many of you would know him from the community. So we're gonna give you some behind the scenes on on that story. And this is really what Luke, is this your third day with us? This is my third day here. And he still showed up again today. So it it's going well. We saved the good stuff for week two. Just for the that's what I figured. Yeah. That's right. Alright. Well, Luke, I think the community is gonna be really familiar with you if they've hung out in Rock chat very much. Been to a conference two years ago was your first stage debut. Right? Yeah. I, it was my first public speaking gig ever. Ever? Ever. Emily asked me to present on event registrations at the RX twenty seventeen podcast at Willow Creek. And you did a great job. That's what my parents say. My parents lived in Detroit and they drove from Detroit to Chicago on their fortieth winning anniversary to watch me speak at the Rock Conference. Aw. That is love right there. Yeah. My my mom said I was great. I agree with your mom. I think you did a great job. I know you I remember you came off the stage and you said, oh, that was horrible, which is the same thing I say every time I have come off stage. True. And probably what everyone says. Right? If you're humble, I think. Yeah. But you did a great job, and you came back. So and now you're back for more internal abuse, I guess. Here, welcome. Thank you. So we wanna run through a few things. I'm sure the first question, top of mind for everyone who's a listener here is gonna be, what's going on? How did Luke, make this move? Why? And and just gonna wanna know the details on the story. So Luke, why don't you tell us first of all, what were you hired to do here? I'm hired to come here and do a lot of training both internally as Spark grows to figure out how to get new people who aren't as com as comfortable with the Rock community and the Rock system, just developers and people who are really talented on their own right, but to get them up to speed with how Rock and Spark work and what it means in the community, as well as to do whatever training, that the community needs me to do. Definitely. So the community may intersect with you on projects for training or for other types of projects that come in through the the ways that we support churches through through paid work. Right. Perfect. So now before you came here, so four days ago, where were you and what were you doing there? So for the past eleven years, I have been on staff at Highlands Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. And before that, I was a system integrator. For twenty years of my life, I've been the guy in the back of the room. I've put together technical systems. I've I've run volunteer teams of AV volunteers for churches. I I've really been in the back of the room for a really long time. And the conference that I spoke at really started an arc for me of God telling me that I'm not supposed to be the guy in the back of the room for the rest of my life. So I spoke at the conference in 2017, the conference in 2018. And earlier this year, I began doing some training with some churches here locally. And I've just found that so rewarding and felt God calling me to say, hey, this is this is what the next part of your life is gonna be about is taking the knowledge that you've gained over the past decade or two with everything that I've learned, everything I know about how churches work, how, ministry happens, and then figuring out how to take, the tools that Rocks bring, the the innovation that that can be made on that platform and spread that to churches with really a goal to, grow the kingdom as much as possible with the gifts God's given me. Wow. That's really incredible. That's a that's a lot to think about. Would you have pictured yourself here a few years ago? Never ever. I I I said, for for twenty years, I thought God made me to be the guy in the back of the room wearing black. And and the ethos that that I sort of worked under for a really long time was that if anybody knows that I am working, I have done my job wrong. , as a backstage theater technician, , if somebody knows that the sound guy is there, it's because there's a feedback or the microphone didn't get turned on or the lights went out in the middle of a sermon. So that was that was just sort of in my mind all the time. And and so being in the front of the room is so antithetical to how I've behaved since I was a teenager. So this is, , really God pushing me in a really radically different direction. And I think that that is kind of the story of Rock, , at least hopefully, is this Rock is not software. It's a community. And it's about building up people who, again, maybe didn't see that course in their life and giving them a stage and a platform. And in a way, Spark, we are, again, maybe almost a back of house. , we are the stage providers and the lighting people to show and shine the light on on these Rock stars. And we talk about more about that internally than I think most people would would they be surprised? , we'd we obviously have to talk a lot about, , programming and all this other stuff, but we're always talking about how do we build the people up, how do we give them a stage, how do we empower them to go use the technology to do something. But I think we're more of a people, organization than we are a product organization. Exactly. That's one of our top four, core values is community. Mhmm. And we filter everything through that. Yeah. The ability to to raise people to be just Rock stars within their church is so great. I've just in some of the the coaching that I've been doing with with local churches here, it's been really, really rewarding to see people who are look they're moving in really positive lateral directions within their own churches, thinking that this is the job that I have and seeing, hey, the the opportunities and the possibilities that are capable through Rock to minister to my church as a whole means that some of those other people that I've dealt with feel they're being pulled in different directions within their own organizations in a really rewarding way. Yep. And I'd , if you're listening to this, may have maybe use some of these examples as a way to to see yourself in a different course. And I think the two most important things to to focus on is effort. I mean, that's the biggest thing you have to have. And then you have to have courage. You have to, , be willing to step out a little bit because as, , Craig Groeschel says, , growth and comfort don't coexist. You have to get out of your comfort zone. You have to take a little bit of risk. , getting on that stage in 2017, that was a huge risk. That was a huge uncomfortable thing, I imagine. I mean, it is for me. Mhmm. So but you you basically take that step. When you told Emily you would do it, game over. You're now doing it. I I kinda call that, , a it's the splash mountain effect. Once you get in the log at Disneyland, you're going down the the slide. You don't really have a choice, because I'd never liked those rides growing up. My but now that I had kids, I had to. So I'm , oh, yeah. You get in the log, and and what we say around here is you ride the log. Okay. Once you get in the log, you don't have to you don't have to decide anymore. You're in the log. There's no getting out. And I think that's what what you did when you said, I'll I'll do it. You got yourself in the log. And then on that day, you went down the slide and you didn't have a choice. Right. And and for me, the getting in the log, metaphor is interesting because part of what's happened over the past year or so for me is that, honestly, I sort of had my own little kingdom in the tech ministry where I was in charge. I ran everything. It was making sure that that my, volunteers and my my fellow staff members were equipped for success tech from a technology perspective. But I sort of just got to own that, and it was my focus really was on me. And and I looked good. I was really confident. , there was nobody else around that could be , oh, no. You don't know what you're doing. So there was a really low risk there for me to stay. But the log that I'm getting in is that God's just been convicting me lately about , hey, this is this is about the kingdom. This is about, doing something a lot bigger than what you've been doing. And, , over the past not too long, there's been a lot of thinking about what should I do. My wife and I were talking and my wife's been really pushing me towards this stuff. None of this would have happened without her. But really it became, hey, what is the kingdom work that can be doing here? What, how do I maximize that? And so for me, when I went to my executive pastor and had a conversation with her about a month ago and said, hey, I think this thing is happening for me. I think that I'm being called to a much wider role in the kingdom than I've ever had before. And it's been in a really good time of that push at our church recently where our church has been looking a lot more outward than inward. And so it just sort of aligned with Highland's goals to let's minister to the world and not just to our own people. And so it was really encouraging that, , I had the conversation with him and he was able to say, yeah, I've I've been seeing stuff going on in your life for the past six months and and I've sort of been waiting for this conversation to happen. Wow. And so whatever that opportunity looks , , you should you should look at that with our blessing. That's pretty That's awesome. That's really forward thinking and very big church minded. I know you shared with our team at lunch the other day that you were in charge of how did you describe it at in your job? Or it plugged into the wall and it wasn't in the kitchen, it was my problem. I drew the line, I don't drink coffee, so I'm not gonna troubleshoot the coffee maker. Yes. I thought that was that was great. But for your pastor then to say, hey, we'll figure out how to deal with all the things that plug into the wall. Right. , that's a that's huge. And that's a very, selfless way of looking at growing the kingdom together. Right. And honestly, I can say from being on the inside here at Spark for a long time now that this is full of people who are are wanting to grow and are trying things they've never tried before and and pursuing a calling to something bigger. And it's pretty incredible to see that happen. I think a lot of us are the least likely candidates if you would just pick someone out of the crowd and go, hey, that person. But together, we're really working together and and forging something that's making a huge impact on eternal destiny. Right. And that's what God does. Right? He picks the least likely candidate in David or versus Goliath and makes them the hero of the story. That's right. So I thought it was interesting, Luke, that you brought up a kind of the process that you went through working toward becoming someone who was on the SPARC staff. Some of it just kind of began happening as a work inside you. Some of it then you had to be very intentional and take a brave step of courage. And, , a lot of people who are listening might be thinking, well, thought that Spark had a policy not to hire people from the community, and we do. We we want the community to grow and be strong. We encourage people to stay in their roles at their churches and do the things that they're called to do there. And we want to provide them with the technology that actually enables their ministry. And that is the goal that we have. But things kind of followed a certain path here. And I'm I'm really hoping that you can share with the the community that listens to our podcast what had to happen to make this something that was workable. Sure. And and I I really agree with that that position overall. , the tech director at the church, for a long a lot of times, we would get teenagers that wanted to join the tech team because they didn't wanna go to church. They wanted to sit in the back, and their parents would call us and be , hey. My kid's really smart. You should put them behind the soundboard. And I said, that's great. I'm gonna put them behind the soundboard in the high school room. I want that person to stay within their ministry, administer there and and just because that's how this works the best. Yeah. I was I was really aware that that spark had a policy of of not hiring people from within the from active staff hiring people who weren't active staff members at churches without a blessing from their supervisors and from the leadership. And that did , I I felt this calling, and I sat on it for, a month just doing, knowing that I was gonna have to have what to me felt a really hard conversation with the church. High risk. Right? Very high risk. And, , Highlands has been really blessed in that we've been we've been bringing people up to really take a lot of the roles that I had. And I kind of looking back, I see God's hand in that over the over years now that people have been brought on to take over some of my responsibilities already. My assistant that I had at the church, Michelle, is just fantastic at this stuff and has really grown into somebody that I could hand off to. And so my church leadership was really confident in just being able to do that. But yeah, I did have to go and ask my church for that permission before I even talked to John and Emily about a role here. So it was really God had to push me through that particular uncomfortable situation before I could come here. And then, , I feel a lot of the my part in in even being considered for this is just over several years I've been involved with Spark personally. Mhmm. The the joke that I've had recently is that I feel my love language is smoked brisket. And and actually back, a month after the Rock Conference in 2017, I ran into the team at the airport on the way back to Phoenix and said, hey, when are you guys gonna be in the office on a Friday? And they gave me a date. And I just said, okay, I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna feed you. So I I I smoked brisket and served the whole team. And that's sort of been something I've done once or twice a year since then. So I I also, to be candid, I had to bribe myself my way into working here with smoked brisket. So Food's always good. Yeah. We we have never turned that And in fact, that smoked brisket has been really incredible. And even in my family, it has a reputation now. My husband would know, once or twice a year, you said, I'd be , hey, smoked brisket, Luke Taylor's bringing that in today. And he doesn't know you, right? But you have a reputation. Oh, wow, the smoked brisket guy. Right. So Your reputation exceeds just don't have a name tag that says that at the conference. The smoke brisket guy. The smoke brisket guy. That's really something to consider. I'll just say the smoke brisket guy. Yeah. Yeah. I think that could work. There you go. So Luke, you've been a part of the community for a while now. You've had a chance to interact with a lot of people in the community, and you've had a chance to have a personal growth alongside Rock as we've grown up. You've been growing in ministry as well. , what what would you say to the community about, the best way to engage with the other members of the community? , what what you've experienced it. Mhmm. What should they be looking for? What are they missing out on if they're not doing? The first thing that I always drive anybody towards is the chat online. I just , I've I've spent a long time there chatting and and and I I I got so much help as I've been coming up. , I'm I'm the nerdy guy who reads all the manuals. So I read all the manuals, but then there was so much more that I was trying to figure out. And just incrementally, some of the real giants in the community Daniel Hazelbaker or Jim Michael were just so instrumental in telling me how to get from here to there. And so I just, , they're so great. So I spent I spent I wake up in the morning and I look at the Rock chat and see how can I help something in or how can I return that that investment that guys Jim and David have made? So that's a great opportunity. The Rock Conference is always terrific because it's it's just an ability to see, hey, what are the other churches doing with Rock? What can I take home to my church and implement? And and with the the takeaways, a lot of times, there's a full recipe ready to go. , just go home, type some stuff in, and have an awesome three year financial report that's ready to go. There's a recipe for that in the recipes section that I did implement. The recipes section is really great for the community. All of these things are really just pay attention to what everybody else is doing because it's there's a rising tide here in Rock that's gonna lift all of our ships. That's just gonna gain all of us. And I know sometimes people who are new to the community pop into chat and think, oh, wow. This this current here is above my head and it's going really fast and it can be a little overwhelming. But it sounds to me I hear you saying, you jumped in, you read the manuals, and then you started figuring it out. Right. So that's possible. Yeah. I mean, with with anything that's really, really powerful, there's gonna be some effort that's required to get from zero to to something that's workable. And and the if you just download Rock and install it on something, there's a lot that you can play with. If you hop in the sandbox, the demo environment. You can you can kick the tires a lot. But, , putting the effort in to read the manuals to figure out, hey. This is what this is going on. This is how these things are connected is is really the way to get the right vocabulary to understand what's going on when people are talking in the chat. And I think, again, if you look at the guys and gals at the top of that leaderboard on that chat thing, which is only one way to get involved, but For sure. It is one way. The only thing that differentiates them from anybody else, maybe at the bottom or not even on the scoreboard, is effort and courage. They Right. Trust me when I I miss I I think I know for as a fact when Jim posted his first help to somebody, he took a risk. , he's , I could be wrong. Right. I still would never post reply something. I I'm , I could be wrong on that, but you just have to jump in there and do it. And and it gets easier as you get more points, but it's easy easy to look at the people at the top and go, oh, well, they're just born there, and they're incredibly, , genius. , what separates us from everybody else is not not genius. We're all the pretty much the same. They just put a lot of effort in, and now it's they know it. Yeah. The the points just really reflect the amount of time that they've spent there saying things. , I I'm I'm the same way. A lot of times the answers that I give, I'll phrase them as a question. Have you tried this? Maybe it's that. , I'm I'm hedging my bet every time I give an answer to be , maybe I'm wrong about this, but maybe just this is an approach to take. Because ultimately with Rock, there are not always really clear one way to solve a problem. So there's a lot of valid approaches to anything. So it's just I'm trying to help guide people towards one approach that's worked for me. And the people in the community are well intended. I have yet to see someone called out for giving a wrong answer and berated on something. So it's not that at all. If it's a wrong answer, it's it's just a communal approach to moving into the right direction. Right. And it's pretty refreshing because, , in any community with a thousand people that are or more that are subscribed to a chat environment, almost always, you're gonna have some people that are in there just to rabble rouse and cause trouble. I've never seen that. No. So that's just a a reflection of the the community and the culture that's around Rock of just people that are helping each other in ministry and trying to build each other up. And how you mentioned that the Rock chat points are really an indication of effort and time applied in that area. Yeah. , one of the things that people don't see, but that has at least equal value, sometimes more, are things you started doing roadshows. I did. So after the conference, you started leading roadshows and that's been something that a lot of people in the community have stepped up to do, but it's another intimidating hurdle to jump over because now you're standing in front of a group of people giving a presentation you didn't create Right. About a product you don't run, and then answering their Q and A Right. Which is gonna come from, you don't really know before they show up. But at the end of the day, I I imagine that you, based on the feedback I've heard from people, are saying, well, I'm just here to kinda tell you what I know about it and what I've learned and why it's been good for me. Right. And it it's it's similar in in a lot of ways to to the Christian life. , we can't necessarily answer all the questions about how god works. Right. We can go give our testimony of how god has worked in me. Yes. So it's , I can't tell you comprehensively how Rock works. I can just tell you how it's worked for me and for my church and the churches that I've coached a little bit. The road show has been really rewarding. And it's a you're able to see stuff. , because because none of this is is a for profit company that goes and charges somebody, there's no motivation for Rock to have salespeople. So we in the community become the salespeople for Rock. That Rock roadshow is a sales meeting for Rock as much as anything. A super low pressure. I mean, there's no pressure. There's no pressure. I'm just saying, this is what Rock does. Here's how awesome it is. And people sit there in, , a meeting room at my church and think, wow, that looks a lot better than the thing I'm working on right now. I it works on my phone. Awesome. Oh, wait. I don't have to, , manually go and move up every grade of children in June and spend three days making sure that's accurate? Sold. And the thing that we've seen here in the Phoenix area since you started doing those roadshows is that there's been an increasing group of churches working together, coming together, sharing best practices. And you've been very instrumental in following up post roadshow of your own accord, not something we'd asked you to do, to work with the churches and try and help them plan what it would look to move to Rock and get connected with good resources and and things. So those are the kind of things that maybe people in the community don't see all the time. Right. But it's really essential to the function of the community. It's sort of there's a a line that's drawn a lot of times with people that build great companies where from the outside, all of a sudden, this great company just pops on the stage. And they're , hey, this is an awesome thing, and you don't ever notice the effort that's underneath of the years and years spent learning mostly the wrong ways of doing things and coming back and starting over. And so it's always sort of this vision of an overnight success when there's a lot of effort that's got into it. And that's gonna happen, I think, here in Phoenix. There's several really successful big churches that are just getting online with Rock that I think are gonna they're gonna come and they're gonna show up and they're gonna make a huge impact in the Rock community and in the kingdom just by working together and and being able to share the vocabulary of Rock, being able to share the tools that we have so we can have really substantive conversations about how do we do ministry better? How do we measure things in ways that we can all agree on are the same number? That sounds a an analogy to the duck being on fire there a little bit. But we'll we'll leave that right there. So you mentioned that your wife has been instrumental in helping you as you walk through kind of the journey of who you're becoming and what you're doing. Tell us a little bit about your family. Yeah. I've been married for, since 02/2007. I I got married on Valentine's Day just to, , kill two birds with one stone and not have to remember How efficient of you? Very. We've got a sixth grader and a I don't know. Sorry. It's summertime now. I've a seventh grader and a third grader. Both boys. They're both very nice kids. We hang out last night to celebrate actually being brought onto the staff here. NASA put out a really not NASA. LEGO put out a really great Apollo 11 lunar lander model that I bought and built for, , four hours with my son last night. Actually, both of them. They all helped out. That's really cool. So Yeah. There's a there's an age where they stopped doing that. So savor that. I think there's an age where it's less Legos and more very expensive things that they wanna Yeah. That's where mine are in right now. -oh. I'm still stepping on Legos and Hot Wheels, but I'm not looking forward to losing that, I guess, at some point. So Luke, you Legos. You brisket. Or at least we that you make brisket. What other kinds of things do you do in your free time? I making things. I've got a, , a wood shop, So I just build stuff. I learned Part of I love learning anything. When I got hired at Highlands, we had a guy on staff who'd been a a fabricator and an auto body guy. So he taught me how to weld, which had nothing to do with being the sound guy, but I sure do love welding. So I had I just going out in the shop and building this and that and whatever. That's cool. And playing random video games occasionally. Well, thank you very much for joining us today and for joining us for the long haul. We're very excited to have you on staff. Great. Thank you. 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