RX 24 - Besties - Tech and Communications Teams Working in Unity

Transcribed Content

Alright. Welcome back everybody. So this should be a fun session. We've got a panel up here. This is entitled Besties tech and communications teams working in Unity. We've got Frank Grand, Matthew White, Lauren Bryant, and Kelsey Massey. Please welcome them to the stage. Well, good afternoon, everyone. We're such best friends that me and Frank, we dressed alike today, Frank. I got the memo. Yeah. I'm glad. Good job. But we're gonna take a minute to introduce who we are, and then we are just going to honestly have just a panel where I I worked with them, but then I rewrote them. Just questions of how we really have from a technology team and a communications team work together to be able to do projects that really do get the kingdom of Jesus out into the world to people in our house and even external. So here we go. You all ready? So my name is Frank Grant. My title is technology product owner at NewSpring Church. By the way, we're from NewSpring Church in South Carolina. Basically, my role on this panel is just being the eye candy, so you're welcome. But, no, I've been at NewSpring for ten years. It's my family, and I think it's goal is to be helpful to you guys. You know, lots of churches have tension with tech and comms or tech and production. And so not that we've done any of this perfectly, but we hope to that some of this will be helpful for you guys. Frank, I like how cool James is in that picture right there. Yeah. Yeah. He's got a tough job. Picture. Yeah. Lots of women. Has swag. Alright. So I'm next. I'm Matthew White and I'm also at New Spring Church and my title is digital applications director. So what that means is I lead the team that is responsible for the day to day rock execution, website, internal ROC, a mobile app possibly. Me and Frank work side by side a lot. He's kind of the future where we're going in ROC, and my team helps execute that vision. So this is me and my family. I've got my wife, Christine, and my daughter, Abby, in Austin. And, yeah, we Lauren's gonna go in this a little bit later, but me and her have been working side by side for a long time and a lot of different roles. So I think that is going to contribute to a lot of this today too. Yeah, I agree. Awesome. My name is Kelsey Massey and I'm the communications director at NewSpring Church. And this is a picture of my little girl, my husband, and then our newborn baby. He is four months old. A fun fact about me, y'all didn't do fun facts, I'm gonna I'm gonna go fun. Because comms is more fun than us. Right? Maybe. You said it. I didn't. You know what I'm saying? No. But a fun fact is I'm actually an emergency room nurse by trade, and somehow I'm now a communications director. God has a sense of humor, but he equips those who he calls. You bring that intensity with you still every day though. You are not wrong. True. I'm Lauren Bryant. I have been on staff. September will be twelve years. I am our communications operations director, And this is my family. This is my husband Corey. He serves overseas. And then this is my they said a fun fact and I thought, what am I gonna say? But we don't have human kiddos, but we have cute doodle dog kiddos. And from what I know with human kid order, I have that with dogs. So the bigger one's name is Blue Boy, and he is literally perfect. He does nothing wrong, so much so that we decided we needed another one. So we got another one, and there he is, Biggie Smalls, and he is quite the party. So if we'd had Biggie Smalls first, probably wouldn't have got Blue Boy, but this is our family. Like we said, we are learning in this. So this session, I hope that y'all did not come to and they're like, New Spring Church has figured it all out and we're going to get the playbook. We this is a everyday thing that we are working towards. Truly funny title, besties, but I genuinely love these people and genuinely love working with them. But that does not mean that it's always rainbows and butterflies. So why would we even pursue unity in the things that we do? So just asking God about that, this is the scripture he brought me to. Actually, guess you're all looking at it back here. But, may the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together. I want you all to get that together. You may with one voice glorify the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So like I said, I've put together some questions that I'm gonna ask these guys, and we're just gonna dialogue, and we hope that it is just helpful for you. And we can start with the first one, besties. Matthew, the title, why our history with each other. How are we here today? Yes. So Kelsey, you may go in this a little bit, but she's newish to the comms team in the last twelve months, I guess. I've been a part of the ROCK slash web team for about, I don't know now, seven years. So there's been a lot of tension. And I'm sure none of you understand what that's like between communications and technology. But let me back up a little bit and explain a little bit. So our communications team, correct me where I'm wrong, please, Kelsey. I know you will, is they are responsible for what we communicate out, and we are responsible for the tools and how we do that. So we have to work together. So a lot of that history prior to I'm sure this wasn't none of our fault, Frank. This was previous leaders. But those teams kinda got those lines blurred a lot. Like, Webb wanted to control what we say, and comms decided how we said it. And there's just a lot of tension there for a long time, and carried over from leader to leader too. It's like it was inherited, and it was just it's just very difficult. Like, I'm not making this up. I know I'm being a little ridiculous in some things, but I'm looking at Brian. He's on our team. We used to have an office where they share the space, and there was actually conversations to build a wall in between the two teams. That's how the tension got at one point. And it's it's been it's been difficult at times. There's been a lot of disagreements and a lot of and there's still disagreements there, but there's a there's a long standing history here that's been passed down. And I think we've finally maybe hopefully broken that generational sin. So that's where we are. One thing, made it if you were in my last session, I made this joke. I've had three, maybe four bosses in the last since 2021. And but the thing that has been consistent is Frank and Matthew. And I learned a year ago, I guess my title was digital operations director, and now it's communications operations director. And in a lot of ways, the same exact role. And the thing that I knew was true was that our vision as a church had not changed, that NewSpring exists so that everyone everywhere can be in an everyday relationship with Jesus. So I learned very quickly, like, woah. Even though my world may feel a little bit chaotic because the comm team is in a new season and establishing some new things, Matthew's job had not changed and neither had Frank's, and they had the tools that I needed to still be able to work every day. So I had to like level up honestly out of a work environment and really just get to know these two guys for who they were, and that is what we were joking about with our history. I knew, like, I can call Matthew because this website's not working or this image is broken, and I knew that he was gonna help me for what I needed even if maybe the team that I was on was a little bit chaotic. Now I have a new boss and we're getting there. But that has provided in tough history and change of leadership to help us still be able to help the church that we're called to move forward in our vision. Okay. So what do each of our teams own? So I'll let you go first, Kelsey. Oh gosh. Wow. So honestly, I inherited this team about a year ago, started as an interim with no intention of stepping into it full time, and then God was super clear that this is this is what he he had for me. And so part of that has been a journey of learning what all communications is gonna be for our church. So in all candor, we are in a season of establishing who we are, how is our organization going to use communications. And so we are fully that is still to be determined. We are in the process of doing that right now. But as of right now, we are responsible for strategy. So yes, down to what we're gonna communicate, how we're gonna communicate, why we're gonna communicate it, but down to also the strategy of of digital in some ways. And so that is why our teams do need to work so closely together. How and what are we gonna do on the web page? That's great, but that's gotta go in team with the tools in implementing that. So I'll speak to this a little bit more in a minute, but I think the first step for us is like, for me, all about perspective. So how do I see my teammates, and how do I understand that a body is made up of multiple parts? So when I look at someone, how do I honor and admire all that God has gifted my teammates with and understand that it takes every single one of us to, like, fully thrive. And so I think just stepping into a team that's been established really with with technology and then a team that's trying to find their way, I think in all things, it's just started with like, okay, it takes all of us to truly, you know, build the kingdom, and and God has uniquely made us each individually. But a little bit more, we own social media. We do all of our email, mass communication, web pages, app, these that's more content driven, obviously, in partnership. What else am I missing? I mean, that's the app. Oh, that's a lot. That's a lot. It is a lot. Do you want any more? No. Thank you. But one thing we do also own on our team is project we have a project director on our team for our church, and so we operate in campaigns. So if three or more ministries are involved in a project, it is then considered a campaign, and that is going to be driven and guided by a project director. That currently sits on the communications team because most of these campaigns are gonna be driven by a communications plan. So that's just why how able do so that. So to And also have to work together in unity to accomplish this strategy. So Frank, tell the room a little bit of like, what do you want to help our church win? Yeah. Matthew kind of alluded to this, but my role as as product owner is is trying to see down the road, you know, not not necessarily day to day, but, you know, staying in touch with what our church initiatives are, what are what are our ministry initiatives, and then trying to pair that up with our technology tools. And for for us, it's pretty simple. Rock and and our app platform. So we our web page is hosted inside of Rock. If you don't do that, you should because it makes things way easier. So, essentially, I'm trying to think down the road on, you know, keeping up with things like the keynote today. Like, what are the features coming up? How could we pair that with upcoming initiatives? And then Matthew's team is kinda kinda in charge of, like, run running with it. If you ask Matthew, he says, I've just come up with work for his team to do. It's a great job. It's a great job. You do. I'm gonna be like, we should do this, Matthew. And is that is that kinda what you're looking for? So, Matthew, you tell us. And now we've got to the point where Frank has given your team more work to do. Yeah. He does. And yeah. Because Frank will be in a meeting, and he knows the inside out there's a joke at NewSpring that Frank wrote rock. I did not. But a lot of people think that. So in meetings, joking aside, Frank will say, hey, it's very helpful. He could think where we're going. Me and him worked really well together. We worked really well together for a long time, and he can speak like, hey, this is the direction we need to go. Hand it off to me. And a lot of that groundwork's already been laid with ministry. So and yeah. And then I've I've got a team that I've got a lot of brilliant guys on my team who can execute a lot of the promises that Frank makes. Praise the Lord. I'm gonna go to tech first, but how do you think that Calm has worked with you guys to actually drive unity in our projects? I don't know specifically. I was thinking about this a second ago. I would say I trust y'all individually if I had to go that route. Like, I trust you as people. I know in meetings if you're saying something, what you're telling me is the same thing you're telling them. I think that's a big thing. I know that's the how do you do that? Just trust everybody, hug everybody. No. That that comes think you used this phrase earlier. I guess this is your heart's full voice, but I don't have soft toes, meaning you can step on them. And I think that's a big deal. And I think that we've all developed that relationship so we can step on each other's toes privately and behind closed doors and when we're in meeting, but knowing in meetings that you're when you speak for us, I know you're speaking with the voice that I would use or the same influence. I'll add too. Like, I think this is something we're still working on, but and and tech staff in the room can understand this. I think in the past when it hasn't been really unified, it felt like comms and other ministries would bring us solutions to implement. And there was a constant rub with, like, hey. I don't want you to bring me a solution. I want you to bring me a problem that we can solve together. And we don't get this perfect all the time, but I think that's been a big shift. And it took lots of conversation of, like, hey. You know, again, help us by bringing us the problem, and then we can help try to identify what what possible solutions there might be. That I think that's gone a lot longer. Think can piggyback a little bit further on that is not so much bringing the problem to us. You're you're bringing us in at the very beginning. Yeah. Right. Like, we're at these kickoff meetings. We're hearing the vision from the ministry leaders, and that's that's refreshing because that hasn't happened a lot. Kelsey, I'll let you go first, but how do you think we have fought for unity with our tech friends? Wait. How tech has fought for us or how? Wait a minute. How we have do you think we have done unity? Okay. Sorry. I'm like, did I? Okay. One, I think tech, they it's in the simple stuff. So it is a phone call to any of these guys at any point, and I our offices uniquely are, like, across the building from one another, so it is not, around the corner. And sometimes I think they may actually jog to our office. They get there so quick to, help us with the smallest thing. And Matthew, you say this a lot, like, do people wanna pick up the phone when you call? And I think you've told I don't want to put word-of-mouth, but you have said you do like to pick up the phone when we call. Well, when you call, I'm scared, so I figure I have to. What about when I call? It depends if it's a Thursday afternoon. I can't. I'm getting zodged. But another piece is y'all also have helped us because you will call us, but then you'll also put in a ticket for us too. Absolutely. Helpdesk@newspring.cc. Oh, that's amazing. I also think pursuing conversations. So I think when I first stepped in, Matthew was quick to sit down and have a conversation with me just again to be unifying off the bat, like, hey, this is how I function, you know, all of this. I think it was just a great conversation. Frank has done the same. Like, we have left a meeting where I may have may not have gone into ER mode and spouted off at the mouth. And Frank yeah. Frank said, it doesn't bother me. We just need to talk. I've never done it. Right. Right. So, but Frank is like, hey, let's talk. And they're always pursuing honestly conversations with us for us to grow, and the enemy just doesn't get a breeding ground there. We just get to continue. And again, we do disagree, like, so there are probably more conversations than not, but again we come to a solution at the end of the day. I think one of the things Frank you do this really well is you help us push to define the win in measurables and sometimes that's just frustrating if you're like in dreaming mode. So you'll see this in a little bit, but we decided to do an app through Rock Mobile for our student camp this year, and we were sitting in a meeting and Frank kept pushing. Well, what's the win? Well, what's the win? And I'm like, dag gum it. I just know what we wanna do, you know, and but it was so helpful because we were able to get it on a document, and now we can celebrate together that the very thing we wanted to win won. And so, again, we push each other, and then we get to celebrate together when it when it wins. Yeah. That's good. What do y'all think we do when we disagree? Because we don't never disagree. Right? Fight. Clip. Usually just cuss y'all behind your back. But Probably so. Your lead pastor's on the second row. You better calm down. Behave. I don't do I don't cuss, Michael. I will answer that question. I think I think you kinda answered it, Kelsey. It's like we talk about it. I mean, that sounds simple, but like that when Kelsey joined the team, she came in like a, you know A wrecking ball? Yeah. And, you know, and me and her had to talk through some things, and we just you gotta have that conversation. I think I think we've done a good job of separating the work from the person at times and just being able just to okay. This is not this is not gonna work. Or, hey. I don't care if it's not gonna work. This is what we gotta do. Right? So I think having those conversations, having those conversations, you've got to step into those conversations and you've got to be able to address it, because if not, it's just that that division, that seed of division is just gonna grow and grow and grow, and you're gonna get what we've had in previous years. I'll let too. Like, this is a personal learning. Like, have conversations sooner. Like, don't let don't let things fester because that's easy for me. It's like, man, I can't cuss behind me back. You know, and and if if you don't address that early on again, my experience is something you never intend to be personal. Like, it's a it's a work issue. It's not personal. The longer you let it fester, it can become personal. Yep. And so something I've been trying to do, and I think we we may talk about some of these examples, is, like, I'll sit on it, but like, hey, the next day, I'm gonna be like, hey, can we talk? Because otherwise, you know and and that's that's worked. Yeah. I think another thing is just having equity and even sweat equity. Our student camp in a lot of ways, and we're gonna talk about this app, is kinda a plus one to most of our jobs. And like Frank sits on my lead team for the student camp as a water boy. Water boys. For life. For life. And when you see your teammate doing things for the kingdom in a very visible way, when we disagree about strategy or he challenges me or anything like that, our team, I can remember that because we've locked arms in some equity type ways that are tough and that we had to do together, and that's true for you too, Matthew, and your team. Quick quick story. One of the greatest joys of me being I've been on staff at NewSpring in in ten years is for for our summer camp, I'm in charge of ordering all the water. So this year and last year, we we were I mean, we ordered, 35 pallets of water. And one of my greatest joys was we we've we're trying to figure out where we're get it from. Long story short, we got it from the Budweiser distributor. And one of the greatest joys was walking into finance and be like, hey, guys. I'm getting ready to submit a $14,000 invoice to Budweiser. And they were like, I'm like, no. I'm I'm serious. And so that anyway, water boys. He did not ask me if this story could be approved. So but you see, here he did. He worked it right on it. It was just water. It was just water. Okay, Kelsey. Because we don't wanna run out of time and we wanna, you know, obviously give you all an opportunity to ask us some q and a, and we have a few projects to show. Walk us quickly through the Simple Stream process. Okay. So one of our planning initiatives for this past year was we really wanted to unify teams and work processes, especially when it comes to creative, tech, and comm. We're three different teams under three different lead pastors running at a pretty fast pace. And but we knew we were moving in different processes and at different times, and so how might we pull that together and run together faster. And so we unified a lot of our work under our work management system called Wrike, but then we also implemented a project management meeting where no no project really of two or more teams involved really could get started until we're in a room together looking at each other saying, can we say yes to this? What timeline can we say yes to this before it moves forward? And then that's when our project director will take it and pull all teams together to initiate with the primary stakeholder of that project. So again, we're still working this out. There's still times where we're moving without the other person and so this is still under beta testing for sure, and we're navigating the changes. We all probably need little hands spankings for skirting the system and for getting steps, but I do believe it's allowed us all to get to the table sooner. I'm gonna add something. I was a part of that initial discussion, and I think one thing, if all the ministries aren't in agreement, we don't move forward at that pace. That's something that's very big deal because back when you're just like, oh, comms say, yeah, we're gonna do this, and it come to us by when? Thursday. Right? And those things are still gonna happen, and we're still gonna work on those things. But, like, in this meeting, all teams say, hey. Is this something we agree on in this time frame? And if we don't, we continue to have a conversation or we'll say, no. That's not the best use of our time. And that's just that's so different than the way we used to operate. Yeah. Yeah. To say no together is way more powerful than to say, like, comm has to say no. It's like no. As a team, we're saying no. And we don't like saying no, usually it's like we'll wait or maybe later. And this has just provided us I literally he's making jokes. I had to call Matthew last Thursday. I looked at his calendar. I saw he was at a lunch, and I just text him. And usually, you know, work things we chat about, we're not really texting. And I just text. I said, I really need you to call me when you get done at 01:30 with your lunch. And I think he had to help me with the email we needed to get out on behalf of one of campuses. But I was able to do that because of this process, and I knew I could, and I knew that Matthew was actually gonna help me instead of be like, Lauren, it is 02:00 on a Thursday. What are you doing? And for any comms people in the room or if you can take this back is like, if everything's an emergency, nothing's an emergency. And I think she told me, hey. This has gotta be done today. And she doesn't pull that card very much. It's like, cool. Everything else is on hold now. So just to say that again, if everything is burning down, you're not gonna know when it is, and I think we've done a good job of that too. One more part about the Symbol Stream. Sorry. That was the name of the project. But one more thing about this process is we are trying to define each project according to, like, what tier is it and then where is it on a grid of resource and impact. So if we have any projects that are high resource but lower impact, we need to reevaluate that because that that's out of line. And so we're not having to go back through every project and really identify some of these yearly projects to to see like where may we be giving too much resource aligned with its impact. Okay. Well let's talk about how we've actually done this. So And how we have it. And how we have it. So last year, I got the opportunity to go on a trip to Cabo for a conference. Wow. I know. Wow. Comms team, buddy. I'm For free, guys. But at this conference, it was with a friend who she sells insurance for 11, and if you sell so much insurance, you get a sales celebration trip, and I got invited. But on this trip, we used the app. And through this app, we're at this resort and it like literally told you where to go and where to be and where that building was. And I just like kinda put it in my back pocket of like, wow. Because thought, would we ever do anything like this? Then we had our student camp and we used a link tree with no exaggeration, a hundred links on this link tree with very important things like care forms or maps where you need to go or how to call the safety team. And I just thought, oh my gosh. So the whole time I'm thinking about this COPPO app, come to the Rock Conference and see Rock Mobile exist. None of my tech friends told me. So then I came back and just kinda like put it on the table. So here's our Gauntlet app, if this works. There we go. Our Gauntlet app. And this was really, I would tell you in a new season of communications, this is probably the first project that I I hope you all echo this, but from day one, we all got a room and we fought it out to make this happen. And I'll let Frank, since you love the numbers, share a little bit about the numbers. But we were able to create this in complete Unity that had a % download. Before you get to the numbers, Frank, I wanna add Lauren. We didn't have Unity at the beginning. That is true. You're right. There was not Unity at the Y'all pitched it to us. Frank was a little hesitant. Y'all pitched to me again to convince Frank. Y'all remember this? That is true. So And you were the challenger. So we did not have unity, but by the time we made the decision on what we were gonna do, we were unified. I think that's a big deal. That's true. I didn't prep any numbers. Well, it was a % download because I can remember that All kidding aside, you know, the platform had had less to do in my opinion with like how we went about it. This app had extreme alignment. Right? And and again, it it was it wasn't a, hey, here's the Gauntlet app we want you to build. It was, hey, I experienced this this thing at this conference in Cabo. Like, what could we do? Now I mean, y'all had some ideas in your mind, and we had to we had to work through those. But the the thing that made this win was the alignment. And I don't know about in your organizations, but a lot of times, for us, it's like different people have different goals for different things. And and so what really made this win was it we went through the project from the very start going, here are the goals. And our goal was like a % usage. Now that was kind of an easy goal to fit because like this was only place they could get the information. It's like It was smart. Yeah. Smart goal. Set achievable goals. Right? But it it was a fantastic example of working in Unity, being aligned on exactly what we wanted to do, and and it won. It won. It was awesome. Another project that we've won at has been this website that won a rock award last year. It did. Brian Coward. Brian Coward in the room. Shout out. Everybody look at him. He hates it right now. I'll I'll take this one, Lauren, if you don't mind. Is so this was a project that was birthed out of we didn't like what was delivered. Right? So a couple years ago, we every everything went through a process. And at the last minute, it was agreed upon that, hey. This isn't the best that we can do for what we wanna accomplish. So in that season, the communications teams and the technology teams, we had to under I don't know. What was it, Brian? Two weeks maybe? In two weeks, we had to redesign everything we wanted to do, but we did. And it was awesome. We were flexible with the comms team. They were flexible with us. We went back and forth. So, I mean, y'all saw the scroll there. It's pretty awesome. Brian did a great job with it. And it helped this is overflow. That kind of gives some context. This is our end of the year offering. And so that's a big deal, right? You want to inspire as best you can. And we were able to integrate it with Rock, live updates, all that kind of stuff. But it was out of, hey, the process you all did didn't work. It didn't it didn't deliver what we really wanted, so we had to flex a lot. And I think both teams did that really well. And really I would, you know, I was early on into this new role with this website, and I think this project really was a identifier of we have to do better, and from this point forward with websites we've been able to because we fought for that. So you're probably thinking this next slide is broken, and it's not. Because this is a project that Frank and I'll tackle and talk about. So one thing, this is the most beautiful thing, and I wanna honor one of our lead pastors in the room, But we do everything in team, so our leadership is team led. So for example, like our technology team has a different lead pastor than the communications team than our creative team. So our leadership team went to a I think it was a conference and heard about they talked for the company called overflow tap. And basically, my lead pastor got me running down the road with overflow tap, and Frank's lead pastor got him running down the road with overflow tap. And I just happened to pass Frank in our office one day, and he had a whole box of overflow taps. And I said, what are you doing? Where are this from? Well, Michael asked me to. I said I said none of business. That is not what you said because he knew. He knew I was like, what are you doing? So anyways, would just like started asking Frank questions, and that drove us the next day to have a meeting. And I had to look at Frank and said, Frank, I'm so frustrated right now, I'm about to cry, but I will not cry in front of you. For him to then say, I would have never done this without the communications team. And in that moment, even though we had started running down two paths, in that very moment, we were able to say, okay, we we don't have alignment on this. And in some ways, we're still working out some alignment things with this to get on the same page. I'll let you share your perspective, and then we can go to q and a. Yeah. I mean, just quickly, I mean, I know none of you have ever experienced your lead pastors or campus pastors coming back from a conference and been like, hey. We gotta do this. And again, team leadership is beautiful at our church, but but one of the things that happened was this happened. Right? And so the lead pastors activated these teams. And, yeah, I mean, I remember I had to we had a box of these tokens, and Lauren's like, what is that? I'm like, it's NFC tap tokens. Then, you know, she's like, well, I'm supposed to be running with that. Was like, I don't I don't don't know. I Michael asked me to do this. I don't know what, you know, I don't know what you're upset about. And and I think that was pretty much it. And then the next day, she's like, hey. Can we talk? And I was like, sure. But no. Like like Lauren said, I didn't realize the frustration at the time, but then you know? And I wasn't lying to her, thankfully. I don't think I would have done that without talking to you guys. But no. It was the idea of and and again, you can only do this over time. But, yeah, with her sitting down and seeing the frustration, was like, hey. Like, there was no way we were gonna roll through this whole process without, you know, talking to you guys about it. So I think that just goes back to I mean you can let assumptions or you can let these things fester, and you've got to bring them out and talk about them as quickly as you can. Mean so that was my perspective. Can I say one more last thing? I just want to say this, if you or your church are contemplating team leadership from the top, Sometimes the hardest things to fight for in life are the very best things. And so does it make at times our job a little bit more complex? For sure. Would I trade it for anything in the world? Absolutely not. So I say all that to say this is not us saying we just want to honor our leadership team and if your church is moving in that direction, it's gonna be amazing. Especially because one of our lead teams right right there. Well, know, he is over HR. Okay. Does anyone have any questions?