Podcast Episode 76: Episode 49: Our First Visit to Liberty University

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Our trip to Liberty University was a huge success! Get the update - and a bit of our vision for the future - in this "out of band" episode

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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 this episode of Rockcast. We are coming outside of our regularly scheduled podcast to bring you an exciting update on a topic we mentioned on our last public published podcast, which is about our trip to Liberty, to meet with the students there and to try and help infuse some new talent into the Rock Church community. So I'm Emily Forman, and I have Jon Edmiston here with me today. And we're going to tell you a little bit about our trip and about some of the other things we're planning. Yeah. So it was an exciting trip, wasn't it? It was. Yeah. It was a whirlwind actually. Right. I have to say on the travel out, the three of us were on our way out, had to get up really early on a Sunday morning. Was really in my head thinking, is this really worth it? Are we putting too much effort, too much expense into this trip? And I was kinda starting to have that little bit of dread that, , was this the right thing to do? And man, were we surprised? That dread for me is just the pre coffee 4AM on a Sunday dread. A little bit of that too, pre tea. Yeah. Yeah. But man, what a trip. It was. Blown away by so many things about that university. The campus is amazing. But more importantly, the students were amazing. It was almost I've never experienced that. The level of professionalism, they're articulate, the passion to serve the church was incredible. Right. And , what was interesting to me is you run into someone that on occasion, And you you're just impressed, and you think, that person really has learned how to conduct themselves well. They are personally invested in the right type of mission. They're just a really great person. But to see that spread across a student body, and I think it was pretty universal in the students that we ran across, it was really outstanding. Yeah. It's it's common when you talk to people and you tell them about that you work in the church that you feel you have to now sell that. Right. Or you can see it on their face. All of sudden, interest level just went from 10 to zero. And it was not that way. It's they got more excited. Really, church? I could do this at a church? And they asked some very good questions about how that works within a church. , what do you mean I can do infrastructure within a church? There's switches and , oh my Yeah. You could walk into some of these data centers and churches and you think you're in a bank. And there's really good interest on that. Yes. I felt we were almost ambassadors for the church world inside this university because the students had a lack of awareness, which wasn't their fault. They just didn't know. And we were able to really open their eyes into what was possible. And you said, when we mentioned, well, you can work with churches doing the things that you've you're skilled at and you're trained for, they got excited. And when you mentioned things nonprofit and even what it takes to sacrifice sometimes to move into a position at a church, there was additional interest, not less. And that was very encouraging and exciting. Right. And even walking the hallways around the university, we, , we spent a lot of time in the computer science area. We spent a lot of time in the the business department within the CIS program. I mean, the facilities are incredible. Mean, just the, mean, robotic projects driving up and down the hallways, just you would expect at, , some of the top engineering schools, the computers that they had available in the inside these labs. But then on the backside of the wall of every single room is a huge scripture verse. It's just I've never seen that. I've seen the engineering side. I mean, I've seen some really cool interiors of of engineering departments, never seen it mixed with the level of spiritualness that that they have, which was I mean, the the professors kept talking about that, but I guess It's really intentional. Right. You can't you don't believe it till you see it. Right. And and, , so maybe let's walk through what what we did there. , we talked at the tech club, just a student led group of technologists, whether you're computer science or or on the business school side. In talking with them, was our first dose of actually being with the students other than our capstone students. They got so comfortable. You could see the interest in their eyes when they talked about the spiritual part of the job. It almost became you're talking at a church. At first, I didn't know how much could I blend, what stuff could I say, not say. The professor, in the video calls beforehand, said, Yeah, say whatever. And you just got immediately comfortable just saying, Oh, why wouldn't you work for a church? Why wouldn't you want to change people's lives by bringing them closer to Christ? And to say that inside of a computer science class is pretty cool. And they're nodding their heads. Right. They engaged with that content. Right. I thought it was really interesting that you embedded in that one of your presentations about how back in the day, the Roman Road was the latest in technology. And they when they built these roads, they used everything they knew at the time about science and about, what they would need to do to build a really fully functional high-tech system to connect all of their empire, and how that was something that God used to really spread the gospel message. So it was man's, highest technology at the time used for God's highest purpose. And then to connect that with the availability of the Internet for spreading the gospel and helping to make that message widely available today in this day and age, I felt that was a really interesting topic and it really resonated with the students. Yeah. I mean, anything to deal with the spiritual part of it, they just seemed to it, especially if it was tied to what they do. So after the Tech Club, that was the first night. So the first night we met with the executives of the university, which was pretty good honor. I mean, it was this very small group of us. I think 14 people were in the room, including us outside of university staff and executives. Which was a great opportunity to meet with some of the senior leadership of I mean, the president of the university was there and to be able to talk about, , the needs from the secular world. It was interesting though because most of the other people, I think almost exclusively all the other people, were secular companies Mhmm. nuclear engineering companies. And And it was interesting just to see that again. , , I kinda, I say, grow up grew up in the in the in the corporate world and, man, I don't miss that. It was a renewal of that, everything that you dreaded about that. And I think what I got out of it too is , Man, these guys still have the take mentality. I'm sitting there thinking , How else can we help you? How else can we pour into these students? And by pouring into them, of course, there's give and take, but we were just more wanting to know give, give. So that was interesting. And that night, we had the tech club meeting. Mhmm. And then we also were able to get inside the actual classroom the next day, And they invited several different majors to come sit in that one classroom. So it was presentation greater than just that particular class. And there were a lot of very interested students in that room. Yeah. And that's quite an honor too that the professor would give up or a couple of professors would give up their class time. Right. They gave us ninety minutes to speak to their students, basically stepped in front of the microphone and said, Today your class is going to be led by the Rock team. Yeah. That's pretty cool. And I'd love to keep doing that. I mean, was a lot of fun and it's just fun to engage with them. I mean, they're such malleable raw material but they're high quality raw material. And well intentioned. Right. They asked some great questions after class. I know the other class was coming in and we were having a hard time disengaging to get out of the classroom on time because it was such a great interaction period. And then from there, went to a career fair where we had a booth they could come up to our table. And again, the career fair was amazing. They had so many different vendors, but the student engagement was so high. It was. And the professionalism of their dress, of their I mean, they've obviously been coached on a lot of things because they come up with questions and they all have their resume. And that's typical, everybody would have a resume, but just the articulate nature of them. I mean, was talking to the cream of the crop at most colleges. They'd pre researched our company in most cases, and it wasn't because they'd heard of us before. It was because they went to their career fair site, pulled up the list of employers, looked at who they would want to speak with, printed out a special resume for them, researched their company, and showed up at our booth with questions that, you said, were just really amazing, much deeper than I would have anticipated. Right. And I wasn't even sure what my perception was going in, but I didn't think we would leave with so many people on the interest list. And the wide nature of those people. I mean, obviously we were looking for more technologists to help us and the churches, but we were getting project managers, HRs, people wanting to go into HR, people wanting to go into accounting within. And then you tell them, Are you interested in doing that in a church? And they're , Yeah. The light would go off. They're , Yeah, that would be awesome. I would love to work one at a church. And then you talk to them , Oh yeah, I grew up in a church plant kind of family and here I am doing a business thing, but that'd be cool if I could tie that in. I'd love to do that for a high impact on the kingdom. Right. Right. And marketing, business communications, social media. A lot of social media. Right. Some of these people, you're , Man, you could be on Fox News tomorrow if you wanted to. They're that articulate. Not kidding. That's not an exaggeration. And you look at their resume and some of the experiences they've already had in terms of internships or or kind of cooperative type type things or Or remote positions they're even holding while they go through school. I mean, it's pretty incredible. I mean, I worked at the college in school, but some of their positions were , oh, that's real world type stuff. Right. It wasn't quite when I was doing distribution for the school newsletter. Right. Or helping in the IT lab. That was mine. Right. It was a little bit more impressive than that. But it was definitely I mean, whole experience was impressive. Right. And then we were able to connect with a few of the students after that career fair one on one in an interview room in the library. And I mean, just overall, we were blown away by the whole experience. Yeah, I kind of left going sometimes, Really? You want to do this? We're good enough? Because usually it's the opposite. Usually it is that, well, you have to try to sell them on why they should maybe go into the church And one thing I find that's interesting, when you interact with people who've been adults for a longer period of time, you have to really go in-depth about why the model that Rock operates under should work and why it's a good idea. But as soon as you start sharing bits and pieces of that with these students, we noticed that they fully engaged, they were excited, they loved it, and they totally understood the concept. Right. They totally understood it. In fact, at one point, I tried to explain the difference between the old model and the new model. And one of the examples you had shown, I think, years ago at the conference was Encarta versus Wikipedia. And Encarta makes no sense to them. They've never heard of it. Right. And the the concept, I mean, you just they're just looking at blank looks. And you say, no. You understand the Wikipedia model. Of course, they're , Yeah, it's just such To us, I think in our generation, it's , Yeah, we get it, but it kind of doesn't still make sense. How did that work that way? But to them, this is such a natural thing that our model, they're , oh, yeah. That's a great model. And we represent kind of the cusp of that change, I think, with what we're doing. But it's going to be normal soon. And it's going to be the way that everyone wants to operate. And I tell you what, to move from a profit centered approach with the take mentality and to try and convert that into something that will fit into the new model mode would be almost an impossible task. You'd almost have to wipe it out and start over. So the fact that we're working so hard to build and structure our model now, we're doing a lot of hard work on a really regular basis to do this because we do have to kind of fight against the norm right now. The IRS doesn't know how they wanna structure it. , the accountants don't know how they wanna structure it. The churches are struggling to understand how it's different from a vendor model. And so there's a lot of education and trial and error and creating new structural approaches that will satisfy all of the requirements that are in place federally, and then also make sense to churches and yet still stick to our core values has been a real challenge. But I'm so glad we're investing in that upfront and we're doing it in a way that scales because it's really positioning Spark and Rock to be what it needs to be ten years from now. Right. And it's cool to see some of the efficiencies in the model too. So for instance, if we do a consulting project, a, most of our consulting projects go in the core, so that's cool. But even if they don't, that profit stays within the community. , it it doesn't exit the door because the profit is not ours, it's the community's Right. Because it's part of the nonprofit. , there's no way in a nonprofit for the you can't say owners because no one owns a nonprofit. In fact, our accountant says technically kinda the government owns a nonprofit. There's no way for that to escape out. Mean, because of the laws, it has to stay in and there are certain limitations and rules put in place. If the money were to escape out, that would be a criminal offense. Right, yeah. Someone's going to jail. Right. I don't think I wanna do that. Nope, nope. We're pretty much not going to be doing that. Yeah. So this is interesting how the whole thing kind of works together. It becomes a symbionic relationship. It just flows. But And they and they get that. They do. And they get excited by that. So yeah. I after the first night I mean, the first night was a little weird because, , some of the we had, , a little snafu with some of the marketing on the campus where they didn't get communicated as well so that the crowd at the tech club wasn't as big as it possibly could. But I think that was kinda interesting too because it allowed us to pour into a few people who I think really needed it. Know, one of the The new president of the club is new to the position. A lot of people graduated out. It's kind of interesting because I actually when I was in college, I was the president of the Data Processing Management Association, which they have renamed themselves since. You had a unique title as well, kind of off the record. Yeah, I was bequeathed nicely. All my friends in the dorm called me king of the nerds in a very nice way. Of course. We're all tight friends. But when I came back, they said, I was telling them, I I'm gonna go I need to get leadership. I need I mean, I was kind of introverted and I didn't wanna do that, I'm , I gotta get this. Gotta get on my resume plus I need the skill set. I need to just make it uncomfortable. So raised my hand when I came home. They're , did you get it? I'm , yeah. They're , king of the nerds. So I bequeathed that title to her. She's now queen of the nerds. That was very generous of you. Right. Well, felt I was very generous because I gave her some fundraising ideas that had worked for me, selling floppy I didn't see her taking notes on this one. Selling floppy disks outside the lecture hall. I told her that is a moneymaker right there. So I made great amounts of money doing that because they all need a floppy disk for lab. So come on. Yeah, she nodded her head. Right, right. I think that was a placating nod. She would have to go to the antique stores to find those. Well, I think she did the ideas in terms of that antique kind of retro. Oh, right. Yes. I'm sure that's what it was. And this was what our trip was . It was a lot of fun. I won't say that we came home extremely well rested. Not at all. But we did I just felt my mind was spending the whole time. Because as we connected with these students, we could see this university is really, really engaged in helping students integrate their faith and their work and their skill set in an incredible way. And these kids are poised to come out and really, contribute to something the Rock community. They could be a huge asset. So the it just the possibilities, I guess, are really exciting and that really got our minds spinning. And that was encouraging because again, that was a huge investment of our time, of the travel costs, of the prep costs, of all the prep, the presentations we had to do and the video conferencing with the professors to make sure we got on topic and all the coordination of the booth. I mean, was a heavy amount of investment on our side. I think that's what I was a little bit worried about that day going in is , I hope we didn't overinvest in this. And I think we left thinking, okay, we're glad we made that investment. And we did really stand out from what the norm was there, I think. But you're right, to bring three people, to prepare the way we did, to coordinate with the career center over time and the professors and the presentations that you built. I mean, it was a huge investment even outside the travel costs, which are pretty extensive to get into Lynchburg, Virginia. Funny story, we did notice that the two people working the front ticket counter at the airport were also the people who, helped you board the plane and put on vests and went outside at the airport to help move bags and possibly planes. So it was a really interesting airport. Yeah. Even TSA closed down the whole place for a while. They did. And then they all come out. I think they're probably inspecting the bags and had to come out and inspect the people. Right. And so the security gates opened twenty minutes before our flight took off. That was when we could start going through security. It's really kind of a spark model. I mean It really is. One day you're running cable through the ceiling, the next you're programming, the next you're speaking. I can respect that. Yeah. So where do we go from here? What the , this this isn't a done deal. Right? No. It's not. In fact, we went with some ideas of what we wanted, but I feel we're really starting to refine those now. We did a lot of planning mid trip, we did a lot of planning on the plane on the way back, and we're getting very close to having a very nicely refined plan for how to help connect students with awesome skill sets and the organizations that need them in a way that will boost our whole Rock community. So the Rock community isn't just trading players back and forth in kind of an unhealthy way, but we're really infusing it with new life, new energy, great perspective, and really dedicated, people. So one of the things we're getting ready to do is to put a survey out to churches about what their needs are. So I'd encourage you if you're listening to this to think about what needs do I have on our staff. Look at it from your technical staff. Do we need a developer? Do we need a a web developer or designer? Do we need a a business analyst? Do we need someone in infrastructure? Do we need a project manager, technical or otherwise? And then even look beyond that a little bit because we were able to make some great connections again with people who might be interested in HR or finance, accounting, people who may be interested in social media marketing communications area. So think about what those areas might be, and we'll be putting a survey out. In fact, I think you'll be able to find it in the show notes. Mhmm. We will probably also be putting it out on social media and through email. Pull that up and share with us what your open positions and needs are, because that will help us help you. Inversely, we are going back to all of our student contacts and getting all the information about what are your skill sets? Where do you want to be located With a community as diverse and incredible as ours is, students can really kind of highlight the areas of the country where they'd to be, whether it's moving back close to family or an area that they've always known they wanted to end up. They can can put that information into which is really attractive to a student. So that's great. And then we can help make some pairings off of that. I was surprised how many of them they either would will go anywhere literally in the country or they're , Oh, I'm really interested in Washington and Oregon. And they just kind of knew where they went and it was nowhere near Virginia. Now a lot of them did want to be in the Virginia area, but I was surprised about how many were open to any new experience or on the other side of the country. Yes. And we'd to make this a sustainable program because we know as our community is growing so quickly, we need to continue bringing more and more talent in. And honestly, whole reason we got into this at all is because we kept hearing from churches, I need help finding people. Can you help me? So that's what we're doing. And that's why we've put this together. So what we're going to do is as we grow this program, there will be a fee based service to place the students in the correct positions because we have a heavy investment in the whole process and we want it to be sustainable and ongoing. So we will be having a fee associated, kind of if you're working with a headhunter, but quite a bit lower than that. Right. We're just trying to We're just cost. Exactly. Not I mean, some of those headhunters are 40%. We're nothing that. No. That's not cost. Exactly. Just everything else we do with Spark and in the Rock community, we wanna make everything as accessible as possible to the churches Mhmm. That are using it. So our goal is not to compete in any area with what vendors are doing, but really just to do to bring another service to the churches that are asking for it and to get our costs covered at the same time. So there will be more continuing information on that. But I heavily, heavily encourage you to go fill out that information and do it soon because the student's interest is peaked now. And I gotta tell you, at least for me, when I hit the semester before I graduated, I was hardcore searching for where I was going to end up. So right now we have an opportunity of a couple of months to put things together before the students go out and handle it themselves. Right. And I think some of them are are gonna have no problem finding a job. Absolutely. It's in our best interest to hit them first Right. Before they get tempted by something else. And another no, I'm glad you brought up the other job. Students are considering options. These are skilled technical students. They're considering options right now in the corporate world or the church world. They realize they may have to make a few sacrifices to work in the church world. Their hearts in many cases are really inclined in that direction. Mhmm. But we definitely need churches to understand that hiring for a technically skilled position needs to be compensated in the right way. So if we're putting out, positions with a salary that's more inclined towards someone who's unskilled, that's probably not going to be something that they will be capable of taking. A small sacrifice on salary is viable, but we need to make sure that we're looking at what is market rate and how close can we get. Because otherwise, we're not going to be able to help make those connections. And honestly, the the students are worth it. And what they can bring to your organization, I think will just blow you away. We have been so impressed. Yeah, I would be thinking about a salary range more that you would give an experienced person because that's gonna meet what they would to get. But you're gonna get and grow an incredible asset to your team. A, they're gonna have some knowledge and experience. Their curriculum is good. It's incredible. My curriculum, when I came out of college, not so good. I'm looking at their curriculum going, this is good. And I think they're gonna have a lot of that skills and experience, but they're gonna also have capacity. Right. A huge amount of capacity that is gonna net benefit over time. And we coach the students too, , just realize you probably will need to make a small change in pay. So we're trying to coach churches that say, Hey, need to get something that's going be attractive to them. And we're trying to coach them saying, Hey, you can't compare this to , maybe a top, , tech consulting firm. Right. But be forward thinking. , don't hit midlife and say, gosh, I wish I'd been making impact all this time. Do how hard it is to make that move at that point when you have a family depending on you and a lifestyle you've gotten used to? Make that make that choice today while you can. Right. So do let us know as soon as possible what those positions are, what the needs are. , let us know if you've got a question. What do you think would be market rate at this? , we'll be seeing a lot of information. We can give some aggregated feedback on that if you need it. Mhmm. But definitely be an advocate for open positions and for these students to your leadership as you set it up and help them see the value. I think we've heard from a lot of leaders that there's an increased, value being given to people who are highly technically skilled. But obviously, as we're moving forward and more and more jobs are moving into the technical arena, the church cannot afford to be left behind. Right. And so our goal is just to really create these matches. Right. So that's what we're working heavily on and that's what we're really close to having refined. And we wanted to give you an update on right now because the timeliness is essential on that. But we also have some other concepts because one idea leads to another. That's kind of just how it works around here. And so, let's just say we had a a string of some great ideas that we're looking at concept wise, that could be an even better, fit for the community in the future and be even more help toward that same goal of really raising the level of Rock knowledge inside the Rock community. Can you tell us a little bit about that, John? Yeah. So some of these thoughts have been around for a while, but I think there's renewed clarity now as we've been with the students and seeing this through. And you said, we had plenty of time on the trip to brainstorm. So one is a training boot camp. We know we need that for our employees. We can't just hire someone in the next day. They're actually just working with a client on how to use Rock. It just doesn't work that way. It's not what's good for Not successfully. And the person who's going to lose on that is the church, the So we need an internal bootcamp. And so why not open that up a bit as we bring in these new students that if someone were to hire a student, they could optionally, if they'd to, send them through our boot camp. And so that would be a bit of tiered experience in terms of the level of depth that they would need. A developer is gonna need much deeper knowledge than, say, business analyst or a workflow or report generator. So we're working on multi week plan. And again, these are still concepts. Yes. Because we know we need to do it. We wanna do a good job with our staff. So why not share that out with other churches who are hiring or maybe have resources that they have today, but they wanna train them much deeper. Right. And the master class concept will be a part of that. It'd probably be one week of it. Right. And the number of churches that we've heard from also that have said, we want a really deep class on x subject. We have been listening. We have heard you. And we're embedding all of these concepts, requests and questions into how do we develop a curriculum that is very successful for everyone. Because as you said, why not include the community and help raise that level up to meet the requests and the demand that's out there right now. So in all of that, we're essentially building a full curriculum if we move forward with this concept, which we're looking pretty heavily at. And that would involve a series of assessments and possibly certifications, again, depending on that level of what it is you need to be able to do. So that could reach to, those already in the Rock community as a church or potentially as a partner. And there are just a lot of great opportunities there. Right. And so we're spending and have been spending quite a bit of time looking at what's out there in other areas. They're doing the same thing. So looking at Salesforce, looking at Microsoft Right. Looking at all the coding boot camps, obviously, they're starting up. Trying to get an idea, what do they cover? How do they deal with certain situations? What's the price? I mean, obviously, this is we're talking about a serious investment in resources and developing all this. Oh my goodness. Yes. I mean, if we even look at the the the one that we have done, that's that's been a great success, the master class. I mean, that that took a couple months to create all of that content. There's hundreds and hundreds of slides. And it's not about creating slides. It's walking through the conceptual process of how do you walk someone from this level of skill set to a new level of skill set and how do you explain that? Even in in lava, how do you how do you teach someone some of these concepts? You really have to get outside yourself and it takes time to kinda figure that out. And I think even in this one, when we when we go deeper in a in a topic lava, we might wanna have some tool sets that kinda help them. Right. a little workbench that they can kinda play in. Kinda the lava tester, , two point o. Right. A lava workbench or something. So the creation of the master class represents probably less than a tenth of the amount of work that's gonna have to be required to to pull off a program this. So obviously, we have to be considering things how much time do we have? What kind of resources? How do we spread that? So all of those would be the considerations in this concept that we're working on. Right. And I think yeah. Keep saying that concept work because this is a concept. I'm not sure when it would be available, but we've been talking a lot about it. Right. So a couple things help us, as a next step. I would suggest if you could please go to the show notes link here or respond to an email wherever it's easiest for you to look at the interest list for the positions that are open in your organization. Let's start there. Tell us and tell us soon if you can what your needs are. If you wait to tell us, it could be too late. Mhmm. You might have to wait a year. Right. Or half a year. It's a great opportunity. I'm telling you, you can connect with some incredible potential high potential employees here. And there's no cost just to just to get these candidates and talk to them and interview them. If you go forward and want to to hire one, then, , we're looking at maybe a a fee for that to just help pay for, again, for our cost. But there's no reason not to. Right. There's some high potential future employees here that we wanna direct the fire hose your way. Yes. And if you have an open position and you're considering any candidates today, I think it would be foolish to not consider the the students that we ran across this past weekend. Right. And and it was felt a gold mine that, , jump around, say, Eureka, but you the investment to go into that isn't it doesn't make sense for one organization to do that level. That's why I think it it makes sense to spread that across a whole community. It needs to if it's going to be successful and scalable and sustainable. How else can churches help with this? Well, I mean, I think if someone's interested in helping us fund this, the creation of this content, the creation of the assessments and the certifications, I mean, that that would be amazing. We're always looking to help have people help us fund that because it helps us bring in more resources. I think one of the constraints that we have as an organization is we don't always have a great picture of how much we can expect in the future. Mhmm. , I think, , you've done a lot of good work with the pledges, and and we're kinda looking at how we can project those commitments into the future. But a project this, it has to kind of right now, it has to wait for the scraps. Right. Because we have to do what we've committed to do that's already been funded. And so this stuff gets kind of the scraps. So if someone comes and says, well, believe in this. I wanna help fund this. Then it allows us to increase the the resources. And and you guys all know it takes a while to get a resource. It's not a matter of , okay, here's the money. , tomorrow the guy's gonna show up or the gal's gonna show up to do this. It doesn't work that way. It takes a lot of time. It does. So, , if if if anybody's interested in that, we would love to talk. Right. And I think as one of our core values is community, that something this, is an investment in the community. It's not necessarily doesn't mean we're building a particular feature or tweaking a feature inside Rock as a product or as a platform, but it is advancing the whole community and will be have huge benefit going forward. So it's a great investment. Really, this is pouring gasoline on the community. I mean, gasoline on the duck. Right. So and it's and it's not just for Spark. It's pouring gasoline on the entire community because we're we're not we're not trying to just solve our needs. We wouldn't have done any of this if it was just for us. It just doesn't make the costs and expenses don't pencil out. It wouldn't have made sense. It's only when we look at it from a community perspective that this makes any kind of sense. And if we can get this funded and it'll it'll seriously be putting gasoline on the on the community. Is the whole lake on fire at this point? Lake on fire. I that. K. Yeah. Sounds a band name. It should be. Lake on fire. See if that domain name's taken. We'll stick that in our interest list for later. But, at this point, we're really excited about what we've learned and growing the community and, would love to hear from our listeners about how you want to be a part of it, how you can help, and what your needs are. So please do share all that information with us. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to us at another podcast. We always love to share with you the ideas that we're batting around, the concepts we're working on, and the future direction of Rock. Today's show was produced by Emily Forman. Nick was our recording engineer who turned the dials and pushed the buttons. Jim Michael handled all the audio post production mixing. There are amazing show notes, which you can find at brockrms.com/connect, were transcribed and written up by Michael Garrison. Do a church that loves the idea of using Rock but hasn't taken that leap yet? 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