Podcast Episode 11: Episode 206: v19 Updates and Shaping Ministry Culture in 2026

Description

In this episode of Rock Cast, Jon, Emily, and Nick highlight v19 updates like new Connections analytics, simplified status terms, a zero-config CAPTCHA and more. They also encourage churches to start 2026 by investing in their digital ministry culture by celebrating spiritual impact, providing ongoing training, and building healthy team habits. Tune in to learn how to lead your team and tools with purpose.

Transcribed Content

So you're ready to dive deep with Rock? Don't just be inspired by this episode of Rockcast. Get hands on. Sign up for that Rock Masterclass certification you've been considering with the training and community connections you need to increase your skill set and gain confidence that you're looking for. Sign up at rockrms.com/masterclass. Welcome to Rockcast. I'm Emily Forman, your host, here with Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo, and we're going to talk Rock in 2026. First episode recorded of the year. Very exciting. So we will run through the latest versions that we're working on and what's coming up next. We're gonna talk a little bit about just what it is we're all doing here and how exciting it is to to approach the next year of it. A v '19 update. We'll also be talking about some metrics classifications and a little insight into what is it that features do and don't fix when we're when we're looking at how we adjust the way that we're working. And then some interesting changes that are coming up that we'll give you some some background on soon and a few community announcements. So without any further ado, let's kick off 2026 with some more version update insights. Nick, it's all you. Let's talk about version 18.2. That will be going to alpha pretty soon. In fact, real soon. There are somewhere between forty five and fifty six at the moment bug fixes. Woah. It was hard for me to get the right count because we have release notes in two spots, but that's because of the amount of fixes that we've been doing in the last two weeks. So very exciting. Most of them were really small fixes, but then there's v 19 stuff, which I'm not gonna talk about, but I'm excited to hear what's coming because I've been looking at the pre alpha site and seeing some cool new things show up. Very cool. Well, that's a significant number of fixes. Tell me, did we move Santa's elves from Christmas production to Rock production on December 25? Because that's quite a quite a move. Yeah. I I was I was shocked. I mean, it looks came back firing on full cylinders. Awesome. So, yeah, just the rate of bug fixes has been almost steadily climbing. Cool way to kick off the year. All right, let's talk about V19, John. Oh, okay. V19. So V19 is something that we're currently working on. We have, we talked about in previous podcasts, we're changing our release cadence. We're trying to get two major releases per year, a spring and a fall. And we also talked how that's difficult to start a new cadence because, , you're on an old cadence, now you need to kinda switch gears. It's kinda turning the treadmill speed briskly and, , takes a minute to get your feet back under you. So but that's our goal. And I wanted to kinda just give you a, a little bit of view of what's in v 19, which we're kinda looking to get into alpha testing in late spring. But, again, give us a little bit of grace because of the cadence switch. The biggest change is going to be the biggest new feature will be in connections. So there's if you're familiar with connections, there's a few ways you can look at your connections. There's a board view and a and a grid view. We're gonna add a new view that's called the list view. And so the list view will be, we think it's gonna be the primary way that people are going to want to look at connections. And so it's kind of , think of it as several grids. So if you're looking at it from a requester perspective, each requester will have its own grid and you can do lots of crazy cool UX stuff for that. It's a lot monday.com, if you're familiar with their user experience. It's very similar to that. But a really good complete reimagining of how you interact and interface with connection requests. We really do think that the board view and grid view will probably not be well used. We will keep them. That said, this new list view will be in the new Obsidian framework, board view, and grid view will be staying in web forms in '19. And so we'll see how it goes, but we plan in version 20 changing the board view to Obsidian. But there could be some we're we're kinda having to around not doing them both at the same time. So we think it'll be okay. The other thing you you need to know is that we're getting rid of the concept of critical and idle requests. So today, if you go in there, there's some ways that you can see which requests are critical and idle. So idle means there's no activity in a certain amount of time and critical would be it's running long. We're replacing it with the concept of past due. So there'll be a due date on requests now, and there's lots of different ways you can set those due dates. So ROQ, we give you lots of different ways to do it. So very flexible in how you determine a due date. So past due will be a state and so will near due, which means it's coming close. We feel these are going to be a better replacement for critical and idle, which honestly today are not very flexible and not super helpful. So anyways, we're excited about that. In 'nineteen, we're also going to be adding some initial analytics for connections. And these analytics will focus primarily on what is the current state of the connection requests. In 'twenty, we'll probably add some additional analytics. We'll kind of be more of a historical view of the request over time. But again, we're trying to get things done. We're trying to control scope so that we can get 19 out in the time frame that we'd . So don't think analytics will be done in '19. It'll just be a nice start. But the itch we're trying to scratch is how is the team doing right now? What is the state? If you're a team lead or a leader, you can kinda know how your troops are are waging their war. So that'll be the primary features in '19. Some of the smaller features will be an unsubscribe report, and we kinda see this as a report that will help you understand what communications are triggering people to unsubscribe. And I think it's twofold. Think it's a cool use to say, tell your staff about it. Hey, we have this unsubscribe report. Be careful what you're sending. You don't want to be the person who led to a whole bunch of unsubscribes. That's right. So I think sometimes the fact that there is a little bit of a stick out there, , kind of keeps people on their toes. I don't want to be the one who But then it also gives you the report that you can go talk to. But sometimes it's thought that this report might exist is is feature enough. We're also improving the check-in manager. So the roster component of the check-in manager is being changed to Obsidian. And so it'll have real time capabilities. Fun fact on that, when you think about that roster and you think about real time, you're probably , Oh yeah, that's awesome. these new things will just show up. But just realize it's really hard because they just show up and you might be a millimeter from marking someone present and then a new one shows up. And all of a sudden you just marked the wrong person present. So there's some technical challenges to this. And we're not just oblivious to this, we're trying to prevent that. But if you could sit in the room while we try to figure out the best way to prevent that, It's way harder than it sounds. So a check-in manager will will get a roster update. Some huge performance improvements for group requirements. It's really cool what the team's been able to figure out and how to get that to be way faster. Oh, that's exciting. Yeah. So that job's always been one of those jobs that's taken a lot of time. Mhmm. And with these new changes, that should be very fast. Just a heads up that we are getting rid of the registration, the event registration entry block that's web forms. Obsidian it is. That shouldn't be a problem that there's been a lot of time. That thought's been around a lot of time. And most people are using Obsidian blocks. So this should be non impactful for people. Yeah. It was chopped. It was swapped rather in version 18 o. Mhmm. So unless you put it back on purpose. It might already be gone. It will be gone for 19. So you got And in case you did that, we will go back and swap it again. So you're not left with a broken state, but you will be left with the Obsidian block. Yeah, it'll be chopped. You will not have the old one anymore. Yeah. So that's happening. There's actually a new CAPTCHA plan in place in version 19. So if you're familiar with CAPTCHA, that's the little feature that helps prevent bots. It says , You're a human, which is always nice validation to get. The problem with the CAPTCHA, it's been working well where been. We've been adding it. I think the biggest problem is putting it in all the places. I think we've got that now. The problem has been that you had to go set it up. You had to go get a Cloudflare turnstile account. And , I think you can trust Cloudflare from a privacy perspective. You can't really trust them to be up on running all the time. But that's another problem. But what we didn't about it was there's another step for people to have to go do. And if we think about the essentials model, that's another thing. And we didn't want that. So we found a CAPTCHA library that allows it to be hosted on the Rock server. I think the benefits is zero configuration, it just works. That's amazing. Yeah. Don't gloss over that. Yeah. It as reliable as I mean, reliable as I mean, a bot fool it? Probably a little bit better, a little bit more than so than Cloudflare, but not a lot. I think it's super close. It's a proof of work. So basically, what it does is it runs a little JavaScript that has to go out and do some work. It has to find it has to hash encrypt a whole bunch of numbers until it gets one that has a certain end integer values. So it makes your computer just do some work, which the bots first of all, they don't quite most bots don't know how to do that. And those that do, now the compute for these bots is goes way up. And so the people who are behind their paying the bill for the bot is kinda , yeah, it's not worth it. So it's probably not as technically sophisticated as Turnstile, but I think the increase in privacy and certainly the increase in configuration is more than enough. And it's not bad. It's good. It's just Turnstile probably has 20 or 30 engineers on that, and this open source project has one or two. That said, CAPTCHA is not rocket science. There's also expirable short links. So short links can now be expired. When they expire, then the cleanup job will will delete them. Nice. Yeah. That's gonna be great. Yeah. A lot of you guys are using those in workflows, and you're creating Mhmm. , Tens of thousands. Quite a few. You need to keep them, but you don't need to keep them that long. So when you create a short link, can say, This is good for a year. And then the cleanup job will go. That's fantastic. Yeah. Another thing that we're doing is on the campus from long ago, campus had this property for service times and it's basically a list control, you just hit plus and you type in a little string of text and then hit plus again, type in a little string of text. And that kinda worked as a quick easy. But we recently not recently, but a year or two ago, we added something called campus schedules. This is much more sophisticated. So this actually gives you concrete structured service times and other times, it's really customizable. And so we've had these two ways of doing the same thing, and now we're deprecating service times. So we're doing is we're kinda , hey, you didn't have any, we're hiding it. If you do have them, you can still see it, but you should probably move it into the new campus schedules instead. And so we'll be removing that Mhmm. Not in '19, but probably '20 or '21. Just trying to clean it up. But the cool thing is if you didn't have any, which means if you're a new church, you didn't even know they existed because they'll be hidden now. And then dot liquid is completely gone. And many of you might be going dot what? Because it seems it was so long ago. That was a long time ago. That's just the library that we use to process lava. So those are version 19, and then a ton of micro features and a ton of bug fixes and a ton of performance improvements. That's a great mix of exciting new things and also pruning things. It's so important to keep the shape of what we're doing moving in the right direction. And that pruning is a critical part of it. Yeah, we've talked a little bit about how that project manage I'm sorry, product management is so important. And sometimes that means getting rid of stuff that's not being used. Yeah. And we're trying to do that. And we recognize that even some of these features we remove, maybe one person has a light need for it, we get it, for the good of everybody, we can't keep all this stuff around. Sometimes you need to, I'm sure you guys got a lot of Christmas presents. I'm sure, , some of you guys have taken some stuff to the donation place we have. Yep. It's when things come in, you gotta send some stuff back out. Otherwise, you start living in a hoarder's house. Yeah. So it's becoming a junk pile. Yeah. Too much goodness. Well, I jumped straight into v 19 when because I was so excited about Nick's lead in on that. But let's just take a pause for a minute and say, these tools we're putting in your hands are, it's exciting to reflect on the things that have been done with them in the past year. And just the heart behind the work that everyone in our community is applying to that. Each of you in your roles who are listening here, just be encouraged in knowing that what you're doing has a lasting impact. And I know, especially around the end of the year, as you probably prepped for Christmas and finance teams have been prepping for all of the end of the year tasks that have to be done and now the new initiatives are off and running, sometimes it's easy to get buried down in those details of, , get this next initiative done, get the user testing done, wrap up the documentation. Why is this not working? Troubleshooting, training new staff that have come in on things you feel you've said, , a 100 times. But all of this is adding up to something really, really incredible. So this beginning of the year is a great time to take a pause and say, Hey, over the last twelve months, what ways did I personally contribute to life change? How did I support the leadership initiatives of the entire direction of the ministry of my church? How have the tools that I've been building maybe connected people with other people or content that has impacted them? It's either served them at a low time. It's helped motivate or drive them forward. How have you facilitated next steps in just the way that you've kept your data integrity clean and you've helped move people through, , clear processes to get there? How have you encouraged your staff by giving them tools that do the things that they need to do instead of leaving them stuck and trying to work around things, , providing more time for them to do ministry? The hard work that you're doing every day is sometimes easy to get, , distracted about and think that it's not really making a difference. But each of those moments is really stacking up and contributing to the life change that your church is a part of. So this is a great time to refocus. You may not have your leaders knocking on your door going, hey, look, here's an impact statistic of how your job impacted all of these people. It's hard to measure. And they're probably already planning second quarter at this point. But it's important for each of us to kind of internalize. Over the Christmas season, one verse that really sticks out to me in the Bible is where Mary is saying that she stores all these things up in her heart. And that's so important for each of us as we focus on what we're doing to take those moments, look at the some of the numbers sometimes or some stories, even go ask and seek them and then store those up in your heart for the hard times that come throughout the year. And even more importantly, help encourage those on your team, your volunteers, and the ministry leaders around you, because this is what we're doing together. We get to do it together. And there's no better time to focus on that than right here at the clean start of the new year. So just a little word of encouragement to everyone. And the new tools are coming, there's gonna be lots to do, but don't forget to take a pause and remember why we're doing it. Yeah, and I think two things you can do to help with that is first create a new habit of when you drive home, spend at least a few minutes, reflecting on what you did that day and how it did have spiritual significance. It might've just been cleaning up some records, but that helps the ministry make sure those people don't fall into Christ. That's right. You have to intentionally do that, otherwise the devil will get you. So I'd say turn that into a habit. Don't have to spend your whole commute home doing that, but if you can build a practice and a habit of reflecting on that. And the second thing I would recommend is that you at least weekly encourage someone in the same way. Sometimes if you encourage somebody else in the same way, as you're giving them that encouragement, you're kind of getting it yourself too. And I think it is hard for people to see this in themselves, see the impact that they have. It's easier to sometimes see it in somebody else, you put your mind to it. But by doing that, hopefully you're getting a little bit of that back. And hopefully you're building a culture where others will give it back to you. And so we've talked about here on our team, we want people at least weekly to be reminding someone tangibly, Oh, that's really cool. Can you imagine the millions of prayer requests that are gonna be impacted by that change? That's gonna be awesome. I know it feels weird because we tend to expect that from our leaders. Mhmm. But just realize our leaders are doing a lot of other things too. And they should be doing that. I'm not saying they get a pass. But if you're expecting them to do all of it, that's an unreal expectation. For sure. They can't usually walk around and and do that for everyone that's on their staff. , everyone and every time that they feel they need it. They can fill some water in the bucket, but they can't be the chief bucket filler. We have to do that ourselves and we have to have our peers and and our captains. And perhaps they need their bucket filled sometimes as well. So, , don't be afraid to pass that along their direction. Yeah. So those are two things. On your drive home, turn that into a habit for at least a few minutes, and then also encourage others. That's great. Well, let's get back to some Rock changes, improvements, and things we can talk about on that front with metrics classifications. Yeah, so as we develop the product, I think it's easy to think that the product is what it is, but it's more of an organization organism, right? It was born and it wasn't born an adult. It was born an infant and it grows and it matures. And as it grows and matures, new features come about and those features rely on other known data that we need to know, but the structure for it wasn't there. I think metric classifications is an attempt to try to shore up some information that we need to make more better features. So for instance, it's kind of funny that in Rock, we don't really know how many people attend your church. There's metrics in there. I'm guaranteeing every instance has a metric for that. The problem is we don't know what it is or what it's measuring. And we want that data because as we look at campuses, for example, we wanna look at campus health. You can't compare two campuses without knowing their size. , this campus has , , 200 open connection requests and this one has 2,000. , who's doing better? Gosh, it depends on the size. Right? So that's one example of why we need to know some some data. And so we've created these class ifications, which is basically a way for you, we've listed several metrics that we need to know exist, and then we give you the recipe of what those metrics should be measuring, and then we just need you to flag which metric in your instance is the right one. Now we've made a best guess. there's some that we created a long time ago. We're assuming you're using it the right way. And so we flagged it, but I would just go into the metric classifications, go into your metrics. If you go and edit a metrics, you can see a classification dropdown, you can see all the ones that are there. Those are defined as a defined type, I believe. And so you can go find that defined type and it actually gives you a little bit more details. We just need to make sure that all those metric classifications are set. you have a metric that measures that and that you set it on that metric. That's gonna greatly help us in the future. And already, I think in version 18, have a use for it in the STEPS program. There's a place where we wanna compare campuses and we're using this metric. Mhmm. Attendance by campus. So ultimately, we're saying we're using it, but that means you get easier reporting, easier visualization, easier analytics. Right? This is beneficial for you. Yeah. And if you don't have it right, you're gonna get some wonky weird stuff. Results inside of that tool. Yeah. So this is your heads up. If you haven't been able to prioritize that in the crazy end of the year, this is a great time to do it. Yeah. And it's one of those things , it's easy to look at the organism right now and go , Well, you should have? This is ridiculous. How could you not know? It's , Well, yeah, but you start from infancy. It's , How did you didn't need to know trigonometry? It's , Well, you not gonna teach the infant trigonometry, come on. So we're going back and it's just a cleanup thing. Speaking of product management, a lot of times we get requests for features and the feature is a little weird. It's not simple or elegant, but the justification is it from, it's preventing a lack of training. The features being requested to fix a bad process or bad decision making or a lack of training. And we have a lot of those features been put in the Rock. And we have a feature confusion and feature overload, especially micro features, would say micro feature overload. And a lot of these features are , well, my stuff I mean, literally people would say , my stuff is too stupid to do this, right? So therefore we need a feature not to prevent it. It's , to some extent that there's a case for that. But in many cases, it's , that is that is crazy. training is something that has to be done. We're going be talking a lot about that this year. How well is your staff trained and how do you get them trained? Because it's a problem. It is. I think any organization that does not have a onboarding process that trains them in Rock. Oh boy. That's crazy. this tool is your primary tool for ministry and you're not gonna train a new person? how are they gonna learn? Now you might say, well, there's a buddy system, they're gonna be shown. , that's good, keep that. But they have to have some form of training. And some of this we're trying to fix with some more offerings and training that not every staff person needs to go to a master class. I totally understand that. We need some other stuff. But when we have staff join our team, the first week is pretty much all training. And then they go through and are taught, not the master class, but a good part of it, they're taught by a team member or training that we've developed. And then there has to be ongoing training. Yes. So I just want to call the foul, we might've accepted too many of those features in the past, but we're not going to anymore. That's not to say that we don't want to have protections in place for accidental, , we get that. But literally some of the feature requests that we get are kind of crazy. And they might help one church, but they're hurting many, many, many churches. That's the problem. They can't figure it out, or that feature is actually working, not in a way that's not helpful for the other church. So just calling the foul and saying, not every feature, if it's deemed to be trying to fix a bad process or bad decisions. I mean, I've heard leadership thrown under the bus for features too. Our leaders just can't get this right. So we need a feature that does it this way, that way and another way too. Okay, well, we're not gonna try to fix irrational decision making or processes. And no good product does. That's what I was gonna say. Think about all the other products that you use in your work or daily life. That's just an unreasonable expectation. We use and love Asana. It's not the best tool. There's a lot of things we wish it did. And if we had access most people do to us, we would probably ask for a lot of features that would probably be pretty bad too. Well, we don't want someone to be able to create a new task. We want them to be able to see tasks and edit tasks, but we don't want them to add tasks to this board. Guess what? They don't have that feature. You can control security and view and edit on a board, but you can't. There's no add security, don't do that. So you tell people, this is not your board. Right. If you can edit the board, you can add to the board. Right. And I can make a justification of why that could be needed, but it's not a very good justification. So that's just something as we talk more about product management and how we mature Rock, stewarding it well. And stewarding means adding features and also removing features. Great. And it's just one part of the puzzle. Our people, our training, our processes are all critical elements on that as well. Well, lest you think we're only talking about new things coming your way, there are some new things on our plate as well that we're really excited to show you soon. Not quite yet, but we wanted to give you some heads up and insight on what might be coming. We have been working very hard kind of in conjunction with our Essentials Rock concept to take a look at our internal properties and tools and kind of say, does this even make sense? And as John mentioned, , we started with an infant product and grew. And a lot of times we'll use the analogy of the cobbler's son never has shoes, right, or shoes that fit. They're they're always a mess. And so sometimes we've neglected our own properties in favor of getting product shipped and out the door. And one of those has definitely been our main marketing Rock website. And we have looked at it for years and said, Oh, that needs some help. And we'll give it a little bit of a, , a touch up from time to time. But it really needed a good amount of love and some redoing. So we finally have been able to prioritize that and we're working hard on it, but we want to roll out a site here very soon. That is something that a church that doesn't already know Rockwell can come to it and understand what the product's about. Something that you can feel really good about sharing with another church so they can understand and can walk them through whether that church is an essential style or a trailblazer. It will make sense to everyone. Plus be polished and elegant the way that we'd to really represent the brand. So that's coming soon. There are just a few little tweaks and edits to do to a few things, and and maybe perhaps later this month, may see something on that front. Additionally, we have if you've been following us, we've had the Rockcast in place for a good number of years. And we've made a few small changes and tweaks, but nothing really major over time. Well, that's about to get some attention too. We have been working on an internal video studio to take our podcast from audio only to video. We're really excited about that. We can't just throw the switch though. There's so much work that goes into setting that up. So it is coming. It's making great progress. We're really getting there. But there's just a lot of consideration from equipment to, know, then what does the environment look that it's in? What should be consistent? What should change? How do you manage things what if we need a remote person on? What if we need additional people in different places? All of that has to be considered. And we've been doing that. So that is coming sooner than later and will be a really exciting development that we're looking forward to. Now let's talk about some community announcements. If you missed it at the end of the year, the RX twenty six conference is on the books and we are so excited. November, we are asking that you join us in Phoenix, Arizona at a great time of year. This is no July conference, and we are going to have a lot of fun, a lot of networking and connection. We are continuing to dig into how to provide the best, most relevant, highest quality content to everyone who attends and had such a great response last year from having a vision day that you could bring your leaders to for a very polished look at what Rock actually does. As a part of the conference, we're bringing it back again this year. So take a look at the Rx26 website and get your tickets booked for that soon. That really helps us plan. We are anticipating that this year is going to be another big year. And with that in mind, we do have one of our hotels up and running with a booking link. And I will tell you, you would not believe how hard it is to schedule all the things to make this conference happen. One of the challenges is to make sure we have hotel rooms at the same time that we have convention center rooms, get that all lined up. The hotel we have listed right now is the Renaissance. That will be the primary after hours hangout spot for Rx attendees. It does have limited capacity. There will be other hotel booking links that show up later as this one fills up. But between you and I and this group here, that's the hotel you want to be at. So go ahead and get that hotel room booked as soon as possible because they will not last and they will not be enough for the entire attendee group. So recommend the early bird on that. Speaking of early bird, early bird ticket pricing is in place for the conference. So this is a great time to pick up that as well. And we are in 2026. That means our classes have reset. If you are needing a master class, a lava class, or any of other classes for yourself or your staff, take a look at those schedules and just make it happen. Put it on the calendar, plan for it, and then you will see that it comes to be. And finally, you have been hearing about our donation increase for 2026, and now we're in full swing. If you haven't had a chance to update your commitment, please do so. Our new donation rate is $4.45 per average weekend attendee per year. And it is your support that helps us bring all of these things to you. We work hard to keep that as low as possible and appreciate so much the support from the community. Now, don't worry if you aren't able to start that commitment right now this month, just let us know what month this year you can start and you can fill this out on your community site. That's pretty critical information for our planning. So if we haven't heard from you yet, we will be reaching out. You can circumvent that by just filling it out yourself currently. All right, we want to share what you want to hear. So if there's something you're looking for or feedback you'd to provide for us for the Rockcast podcast, take a look at our show notes on our blog and fill out the survey there. We are happy to, , pay attention to what you're looking for, and that's what we wanna bring you. Thank you so much for tuning in. We appreciate you, love being a part of this community, and are just so grateful for what we get to do together. Be sure to subscribe everywhere you get your podcasts so we can continue to talk all year. So you're ready to dive deep with Rock? Don't just be inspired by this episode of Rockcast. Get hands on. Sign up for that Rock Masterclass certification you've been considering with the training and community connections you need to increase your skill set and gain confidence that you're looking for. Sign up at roccrms.com/masterclass.