Podcast Episode 19: Episode 199: Countdown to Rock's Biggest Event of 2025

Description

In this episode, we dive into the latest updates with the release of Version 17.5 Alpha as well as a view on extensibility. With RX25 just two weeks away, we cover everything you need to know—including how to get the mobile app and where to follow for exclusive behind-the-scenes content. Plus, we break down the upcoming donation increase set for January 2026 and highlight what’s coming in the October Check-In and Lava classes. Don’t miss it!

Transcribed Content

Welcome to the Rockcast podcast. We are going to tell you everything about Rock today. I'm Emily Forman, and I have Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo here with me, and we are gonna cover a lot of ground. We're gonna start with our version update. There's actually quite a bit to cover there. Then we're gonna take a quick view of extensibility and talk a little bit about some settings. And we have some Rx updates for you. We are less than two weeks away, so that's coming in quickly if you're listening to this as it's released, and a couple other community announcements. So let's kick off with a look at the latest versions that have been released and some of the latest things that are coming. Nick? Yeah. So before anyone accuses me of being a liar, because I think last time I said our next release is gonna have a whole bunch of fixes. Well, it turns out we made a change because there was a semi important fix that we wanted to get out right away. So what was going to be seventeen three became seventeen four. We pushed that off, and we released a very small seventeen three. So that's part of our strategy. When we have , feel there's a really important bug fix, we wanna get that out quickly, and we did that rapidly. , it went alpha. It went beta within a few days, and then it was released. So what was gonna be seventeen four? Then a similar thing happened. So we also pushed seventeen four to seventeen five. So seventeen four was also a very tiny focused release of, , one bug fix. Again, very rapid. And now, I'm happy to announce the the thing I thought was going to be released, '22, now has all many, many bug fixes in it, and that is toward the end of alpha phase. So it was pretty quiet. Well, I think we only fixed one thing in '22, so it seems very stable. And we'll be going to beta release soon. And definitely before the conference, will have '22. Okay. And no one's gonna call you a liar, Nick. But things are moving quickly. Yeah. Now as they do here. If we wanna talk real quickly about what's coming in the future, in v '18, I thought this was interesting. We've had some requests from people to add more captcha Mhmm. Into more blocks. So we we asked them, well, exactly which blocks do you want? And we I think that got turned around really quickly. I I didn't even know about it until before the show, where I was looking at some release notes. And so, yeah, CAPTCHA is being added to the group register block, the group simple register block, the prayer request entry block, the email form block, which probably not many people use or know about, and then the sign up blocks. So Interesting. I think back when CAPTCHA was first introduced, it was introduced as these are the first blocks we're going to put it in. What else do you need? So that's great to see that there's been some additional communication and pinpointed blocks that we can update as well. Great. I think people will be excited about that. I think the task said that the developer was assigned said more captcha, cowbell. Oh. Yeah. That's the exact task name. Excellent. And so if you're not up to speed on that, then you're probably not a child of the eighties, nineties. Yeah. Saturday Night Live. Yeah. Go look it up. More cowbell. There you go. Little gift to you. Alright. Let's focus back here on Rock for a few and discuss extensibility, one of Rock's main features. Yeah. Something that we've talked a lot about recently, because we've talked about how extensibility and quality and innovation and the battle that they have together. But it's a common conversation that we have in the community. As we go out and we seek guidance and input on various features, we're always asking , Hey, should Rock work more this or more that? And a common response is, Well, you should do both and have a setting. And fair, , that's how we kinda got into this place. More and more in the future, we're probably gonna push back on that. It's not to say that we won't have any feature, any settings, and that we won't and that we don't extensibility. We we do feel extensibility is a kind of a secret sauce to Rock. Mhmm. But I think it can go too far. many things, it can be taken too far. Certain healthy things can lead to very unhealthy things when you don't have a certain level of moderation. And so that's one of the things that, , I thought would be a good thing to talk about because lately there have been a few where it's just , hey, should we do rapid idea A or B? And it's , go do both. And it's , okay, how is that supposed to work? And if we could get it to work, , what's the quality assurance to that? But more and more I think about, , other impacts to that. So it's a temptation that we add these settings, and we want Rock to be able to be most things to most people, right? It can't be all things to all people, but I think if we're looking for most things for most people, that's a good point to aim to. However, sometimes our settings aren't for flexibility, they're really to work around broken processes. And I think even those who recommend the setting acknowledge that, right? , hey, I know this doesn't make a lot of sense, but , our people, that's a very common starting point to their next phrases, and the next part can take many different forms. But our people won't do that, or our people aren't I mean, honestly, I've heard people say are not smart enough to do that. Ouch. Yeah. And we're gonna talk a little bit more about that. But what are the costs of these settings? Because all settings have cost. Definitely takes longer to develop. So when we say let's put a setting in there, it's not drawing in Figma. It's Even drawing in Figma takes time because you gotta think through , is that a drop down? Is that a checkbox? And even the difference between a checkbox, I just had a conversation on GitHub about that. It seems so obvious what a boolean should be a checkbox. Well, no, booleans actually have possibly a third state, which is yes, no, or nothing. And that we're devolving into it, but I'm making the point there, it's just difficult. But more so too, we have to be thinking forward, and that the more settings we add, the more confusing it is for other churches. This is true. Especially for those in the essentials world. Now you could say, We'll just hide the settings for the essentials people. Yeah, sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn't. Sometimes you just can't do that, that's not the right answer. Sometimes the best setting is no setting. So, and this can sometimes lead to enabling poor ministry practices. just adding the setting just keeps that enablement going. That's not really a good use of our time or the community's frustration or the community's confusion to just for enablement. And so to be clear, we're not saying we're not gonna have any settings again. We value extensibility probably more than the average community member. It's just saying we can't say, let's just add a setting be our default answer. I think it becomes a crutch from finding optimal solutions. And so, , how do we fall into this pattern? Well, we've kind of described it, but I think there's really, , two facets to that. Partly, it's our our fault on the core team. Sometimes it's easier and faster just to add that setting and appease everyone than to really think through what is the right thing to do. Sometimes it's , well, maybe that isn't the right thing to do. And to try and find that best option sometimes takes more conversations, and sometimes actually it just takes more thought. , thought sounds fast and easy, but it's rarely the case, unless you're thinking about fast easy things. And also we have to go through this whole system's thinking of, , is this a false dichotomy? Should I do A or should I do B? oftentimes it's , no, no, no, it's really option C. Or sometimes it's even , why are you even doing either? , just don't do either. That's , that makes no sense. But that level of rigor and putting things through things, putting thoughts through the grinder takes time. Often too, when we create these settings, if we take the systems mindset, we also have to wrestle then, okay, what's the outcome? What's the unintended outcome of adding the setting? And again, these things take time. And sometimes as a core team person, I have a million other things. most of these settings and these ideas come up not because I'm on a journey to solve these things, it's more of a side quest. I'm in the middle of five things, and someone says, hey, this is a problem, and then I recognize, well, yeah, valid point, that's a really good problem. Now I'm on a side quest, and I have five other things I'm supposed to get back to, but we have to stop that. So that's on us. But also there's a facet that's a little bit more on the community. , sometimes we hear things because I need this because my ministry teams are too set in their ways. That should be a red flag. And that's probably sometimes that's one of the better ways of phrasing that that I've heard. Sometimes it's I'm , wow, you work with these people. It signals an opportunity for leadership Mhmm. And not for not a need for more settings. So when the answer is I need this because my ministry team is X, the first thing that should come to mind is, okay, we've just negated the fact that that probably should be a setting, and instead that's an opportunity for leadership. At least 95% of the time. Maybe 5%, maybe that setting still makes sense. But for 95% of the time, we should change our mindset to think, hey, there's an opportunity for leadership. And I think that opportunity for leadership could take four different types of leadership. The first, and probably the the most likely, is casting vision. So whenever we say, I need this because my ministry acts, we probably haven't taken the time to cast vision for why this is what it is. Helping people see the bigger picture of what could be instead of the way it's always been done. Most people don't resist change because they're irrational, I don't find that. Most people are fairly rational, they resist because they haven't been shown a better path. And it hasn't been communicated to them. And so sometimes we just need to take a pause and say, hey, this is not a lack of this isn't on them, it's on me. I have not cast Division. As the Rock administrator or as the digital director, I haven't taken the time, I just expect them to just do it my way, or I'm gonna have to bend everything to do it a way that doesn't really make sense because they haven't really thought through it. So how do we get around that? Well, first it's painting a picture of how the streamlined process or maybe the better process can save time and reduce frustration. So cast vision, what's in it for them? Share real stories from other churches. There's so many great stories within our community. And I think when we can tell stories about how another church is seeing success and doing it a different way, , that can have a really strong impact. I also think this is a great opportunity, hopefully, you guys are all readers. I love the saying, not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers. And if you're not reading a diverse set of of books, you're you're missing out. There's a ton of insights that come from behavioral psychology or behavioral economics that can really show people , , yeah, sometimes things can seem irrational, but actually they're predictably irrational. There's actually a book about that, Dan Ailey's book. He has a whole set of books on behavioral economics, which are fascinating, and it's perfect for leading through this type of change. So I would say , yeah, read, read, read, figure out how you can cast vision and how sometimes irrational decision making is actually somewhat rational or if not predictable, and how you can change that. So instead of giving them a toggle, what if we just give them a glimpse of what the ministry could look when processes are aligned with the mission? So number one, cast vision. Number two, sometimes it's not they might have the vision, but they don't have the training. So we need to make sure that they're equipped with the knowledge so they feel confident and capable. Sometimes without training, what are they gonna do? They're just gonna click randomly. That's what we do, that's what I do. And so sometimes we might think, and I've actually heard it said that, yeah, they're not smart in these ways. They're not technical. , that's another way, a nicer way of maybe saying it. And it's not I think we have to recognize it's not that they're unintelligent or unwilling, they simply just don't know how to use the tools well. So a lot of times when you're saying these things, you're actually kind of outing the fact that maybe you haven't trained your staff well enough. Settings can become a crutch when the training is missing. And so in a sense, you're basically saying, Hey, I've got this really finite pool of people. So if you think about our community, , it's say 500 churches, every church has, I don't know, 20 people in them. That's a lot of people, right? Yes. How many core developers do we have? It's a very small number. So let's have them do extra work so that we don't have to have this other set. , that's not a great use of resources. So we just have to make sure that they're trained. We should make sure that there's clear onboarding materials, short videos, practical workshops. Of course, as a core team, provide a lot of the core manuals, core videos, and we have plenty of training opportunities. But you need to provide missional organizational specific training. And so, I would say, if you're probably not making videos a couple a month, , I mean, they have to be short. They don't have to be overproduced. in fact, the more authentic, the better. The more uhs and ums and oh, hold on a second, probably the more engaged thing they're going to be. But we had to normalize that continuous learning. Just as technology is changing every day, we have to be leading that, we have to be giving them that continuous learning. And we have to emphasize why processes are structured the way they are. That kind of goes back a little bit to vision, but this is probably a little bit more practical in showing them, Hey, this is the reason why we do it this way. So new setting won't solve a lack of training, but good training can often eliminate the need for lots of settings. Now some of you might be thinking, okay, well, it's not really casting vision. I mean, reflect on that, make sure that you're not moving too quickly to assume that. And maybe you're saying, look, it's not really training, it's just the way this organization is, ? It's just the leaders, they just, , they don't do this. I would say most of the time when we think that it's really not necessarily true, there is an agency that you have that you can do, you can step into that leadership without looking you are. I've yet to find a rational leader who doesn't see someone wanting to do something a little extra and work harder and not go, yeah, go ahead. Yep. And man, if that's the case, lead out, get out of there. , but I don't think, 99.9% of all leaders would not do that. I would say if you have that thought, first think, maybe I'm seeing this wrong. But maybe they don't understand. So sometimes it's influencing the leaders above you to bring them new ideas, research in better ways. And that has to be in a sense, what we call the action method. If listened to the podcast, you just don't bring them the problem, bring them a short, concise solution to a problem. Again, most leaders are going to love especially if it ties into their mission. They can't be separate to their mission, they don't have time, mental time and energy to tack on another thing. But if it supports where they're trying to go, they're gonna be all about it. As long as you're not giving them more work. Again, you should be approaching them to take work off, to make their life easier. And so sometimes by these extra pressure for settings, when it comes from leaders, they don't see the downstream consequences. This is a chance to lead up. Okay. So how do we do that? I think, , a lot of times it's , again, more reading. Right? So bring frameworks from books Reset or Upstream, books by Dan Heath, who's going to be at the conference that you're coming to. And if you're not, you're going to be registering later today. Subliminal. Yes. Which can explain how small changes, especially Upstream changes, can prevent huge Downstream issues. Also, we've been talking a lot about systems thinking. Systems thinking can really help in this area. It's about showing how a non necessity setting today leads to long term complexity, training burdens, confusing tomorrows, in a sense, it's just a crutch for getting through today. And so I think a lot of times when we're talking to leadership, we have to be identifying that. And again, I think leadership is number three, because it's least often the problem. It's the one we want to go to, because if I'm being fair to even to myself, it's easier to blame someone else than to go , what, I haven't done my training, I haven't cast my vision. I doubt a leader's going be , Hey, would you stop putting out those training videos? If they do, it's probably because they're bad. We also have to though, fourth one, and again, I don't think this is, these are in order of precedence. The fourth one, again, is one I hope we don't get to, but that's also recognizing boundaries. If you come to this point, you've given up all hope in your organization, and at this point, basically means is, don't let the sins of your organization impact the rest in the community. And again, I hope we never get to four, but if your organization is so messed up, please don't make us put settings into the product that impacts everybody else. that's just, that's not good. Accepting that not every organization will change and not every request will be honored. , hey, we're gonna start even pushing back on that and saying, hey, what? I get it, you're saying your organization is a little bit odd, but that oddity shouldn't go into the product. It shouldn't impact the performance of the product. It shouldn't impact the complexity of the product, especially for the churches who are essentials. Software should enable healthy processes, not institutionalized dysfunction. Oh, say that again. Institutionalized dysfunction. Software should enable healthy processes, not institutionalized dysfunction. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. So there's a lot of settings in Rock, honestly, that are because they're institutionalized dysfunction. Yeah, and a lot of them we can't really take out because it's one thing not to add a feature that institutionalizes dysfunction, but it's much, much harder to remove one. So we have to be very careful because we have twelve years of some settings that are institutionalized dysfunction. If our team refuses to adapt, we shouldn't bend the product to accommodate brokenness. Instead, we need to hold the line. When I say we, yeah, that's the core team, but we can't do it alone. We can't be the negative no, no, no. Other people need to chime in and say, Hey, I understand the situation you're in, but it does sound kind of organizational dysfunction, and I prefer not to have that in my Rock. Even if you can have it your way, steal another slogan here, that's what you want to look at all the time. That's the kind of quality that you want to build in. Having all these settings is gonna reduce quality. Don't pretend that it doesn't, because at the other side of this is humans. And so sometimes we have to encourage churches to deal with the root causes rather than masking them. So our job is not to hard code bad habits in the Rock, and the community should be acknowledging that in themselves and also holding others accountable. Our jobs is to build tools that serve thriving ministries, And if a church refuses to change, the answer isn't just another setting. It's probably a leadership conversation or leadership action. So please don't be afraid to ask for a setting. It's not that we're gonna dog pile on you if you do. What I would say is , don't recommend the setting unless you've kind of thought through it in this way and say, what, after thinking through all of this, I still think that this is a great setting. In my experience, there's a tendency to wanna build systems that are very rigid and enforce standards. I'm completely I've been completely guilty of this in my past. It's you dream of this perfect, , this beautiful perfect process, with all these sub processes and checkboxes. If we can only build that, then we will always get consistent results. And my experience says this, that always sounds good at the beginning and leads to a disaster. A 100% of the time. Because complexity manifests itself and magnifies itself over time. I mean, it's actually a law, a physics law, right? The law of entropy, chaos is going to come. And the more tight and hard bound those processes are, the more rigid they break, they get fragile, they collapse in on themselves. Or, and then very common, people stop using the system and go around it. Yep. Which is even worse, because now you got another whole thing, and these things turn into house of cards. So I think it's easy to portray that same thing from process into settings. If only I had enough settings to keep it so everybody can only do what they need to do, when they need to do it, how they need to do it, and all the right attributes of it, that's a house of cards, 100%. Instead, we should seek minimal standards, you still need some, minimal standards, and invest in vision casting, training, and mission alignment. I kinda liked the old way of the old Netflix model, which is , hey, we're not gonna have a lot of rules, use common sense. What is common sense? You'll know it when you see it. But I don't know common sense, then you probably won't be here long. It's it's sad, but it's true. I'd rather teach common sense every day. It's a Socratic method. So Socrates didn't tell people what to do. He just asked a ton of questions and made them realize. And by doing so, he made them smarter every day. That's difficult. Ask Socrates. It ended it to his death. He eventually got so frustrating to people that he was killed, Mhmm. And some other things. But he because he took it to to an extreme. But I would say if people are asking you questions, you might think that every question asked to you, you should ask at least one question back. Because if we can teach that, if we can cast the vision, then we don't have to have all this complexity. We've just educated them and we've created someone who just knows what the right thing to do is. Because if you do it, and let's just say you could, I a 100% disagree, but let's say you could create the perfect system. It's perfect for one day. Yes. The next day it's not perfect anymore. And you're basically just gonna be investing everything into building a machine. Mhmm. And I'd rather work with people who are just more common sense and just do the right thing. That makes a lot of sense. I think that it's rare to find a process that involves people that doesn't change. So the more you lock in a structure, the more people, you said, people are gonna go around it or you're just gonna be stuck with that house of cards. Yeah, we're dealing with two difficult things, people and technology. Because technology is changing every day. So the fact that people are difficult because they're always coming and going, they're always forgetting things vision leaks, that's, you can't cast vision once, you got to cast it a million times. So it's very difficult, but then the technology is rapidly changing. And so again, that's just one thing. And we recognize our part in that too. we've been too quick to add settings just because of it. It was easier for us, honestly, and we need to change that too. Well, that's a very interesting overall look at extensibility. One of the things that makes Rock great, but something we have to steward as much as we steward any other aspect of the platform in the community. So a really important dialogue on that today. Just encourage everyone to think about kind of where you are and what you've what your perspective is on your internal organization, your role in it, and how you're helping steward that right inside your space where you have influence. Okay. If you're listening as this is first released, that the Rock conference is literally right around the corner. It is less than two weeks away, and there is a lot of last minute activity going in to make this an incredible experience. If you've not yet registered, there is still time. In fact, we're seeing registers registrations come in every day, so don't don't delay. If you're not able to come, make sure you're following us on our social media channels, x, Facebook, Instagram. You'll be able to see some behind the scenes. You'll be able to see highlights of the event. Importantly, you'll be able to have access to our keynotes, which will be made available as soon as we can get them recorded and uploaded, and you'll have access to the content subscription. So make sure that you're locked in for that following us on social. But if you're able to be there, what we would ask you to do is go ahead and download that Rock Core app if you haven't yet, the orange one. There is a control panel that's available if you've registered for the event, and you are going to want to open that control panel and go through the onboarding process to make sure that you and your device are ready for check-in before you arrive at the convention center. So you'll want that app downloaded, updated. You wanna be logged in and have it open as you arrive at the convention center on the twenty third. That's gonna enable a really powerful check-in experience for you, and we are looking forward to seeing you there. Now whether you're coming or not coming, this content is going to be very powerful. It's a mix of vision casting, a mix of really interesting and up to date insights from others outside our community, as well as content from other churches using Rock. All of this will be available in a content subscription. So whether you're there or not, make sure you access that content subscription. There's no better way to go about your continuous learning, as you were mentioning earlier, John, then getting the right content into your brain, and that's a great way to do it. Make sure you're also sharing that with the churches around you that might be interested in Rock. Share the portions of the keynote that make sense with your leadership or with leaders of other churches. So consider ways that you can use what will be coming out about the conference to help with that continuous learning and the growth of the Rock community, which are both important. We're excited to see you there. Hope that you'll be joining us. And then a couple of other quick updates on community things. We mentioned in our last podcast, and we'll have some more direct communications coming out after the conference, but there is a donation increase in 2026 from $4.10 per average weekend attendee up to $4.45. So, absolutely, we can work with you if your budget year doesn't align. The goal is to get to that point next year, but that does start January 2026. So go ahead and reach out, if there's any conversation you need to have regarding that. Otherwise, feel free to update your commitment, on your own and, look out for any direct communications that will be coming in a month or so. Finally, we still have two classes open this year. In October, we will have the check-in and lava classes available. So far, we've had about 250 people go through Rock classes this year. If that isn't you, there is still time to join the numbers. Don't miss out. Continuous learning can be yours on this front as well. And, we typically pause classes for the holiday season. We know how busy everything is, so we will pick up the rest of our classes again starting in January. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to this Rockcast episode. We value you. We want to provide the kind of content that you're interested in. Feel free to drop us a line anytime about the podcast at info@sparkdevnetwork.org, and we'll be happy to to pay attention to your insights and interests in the podcast. Also, make sure you're following us wherever you get your podcasts so you can find the next episode, and it will be pushed directly to you. Thanks for joining us. We look forward to seeing you at Rx.