RX 24 - Navigating the Path from Interest to Membership - Scott Ballard

Transcribed Content

Welcome, everyone. Glad to have you here. Let's give a nice community welcome to Scott. Thank you. How are we doing? We good? It's like a little bit after that lunch coma that we were all in. I even tried to sleep through this. So if you fall asleep, I won't blame you. But hey, just to be really honest with you upfront. Last night, maybe even yesterday, some of you picked this session and it said something about membership. And we're gonna still talk about this. But last night, as I said at the pre event, I just to be really honest with you, not to over spiritualize things, but I just felt that the Lord had a message of a different tone. And so I hope and pray that somebody in this room gleans from it. We're still going to talk about rock. We're still going to talk about caring for people. But just candidly, as we get in, you'll kind of hear the thread a little bit more. And we'll talk about that throughout the presentation as to why that happened. So let me get started here. So this is my amazing family. I can't talk about them enough. There's just a lot of them. And the two in the front, they really do love being a part of our family. Contrary to their faces right now. Off street is my mom, so Azra makes sense. But Aiden, I don't, he just never looks like that. So they are lovingly referred to as the Rock Twins because we actually started fostering them. I got the call at RX17 in Chicago. And they're now seven years old. So that's fun. And then what's even more fun is that I get to live in North Carolina now. I'm a Texan by blood. At least until my family completely disowns me from moving across the country. But we've been there for four and a half years. Served on staff at Summit Church as a director of digital strategy. So blah, blah, blah. All right. The weary warrior. So if you were here last night, this phrase means a little bit to you. I'm going be really transparent with you. We brought a team of five people here. Two of which have already gone home due to family emergencies. And so their names are Todd and Eric. If you think about those names, you can pray for them. But really just where I am today is I feel really vulnerable. And I just know that some of you come into this room with a lot of weight on your shoulders. And so I pray that you leave encouraged. Yes, I want you to learn about Rock. But personally, we're gonna talk about some things and a process today that Rock can certainly help with. But I think some of us will come to this conference and you do it every year. I know I do. Is I sit in these sessions and I look at really awesome things that people have done and I'm like, I'm gonna do that. And then I go home and I realize I'm not gonna do that. And so, know, last year I started my talk by going, hey, raise your hand if you're an executive team member in the room. And then I said, it's your fault. It's your fault. So I'm not gonna do that. So if you are an executive, it's a safe place. It's a safe place today. But I want you to really be honest with yourself. What we do, as John has mentioned in multiple conversations, is spiritual work. And I think it's easy to lose sight of that in all that you have going on because if you're anything like me, one hat would be like Christmas. If I only had to wear one hat and do one thing, that would be amazing. If I had to wear seven, to be really honest with you, that would also be awesome. But sometimes it's 50, sometimes it's 20, and sometimes it changes by the hour. Amen? So I know coming in here, I don't know where you are in your journey with Rock. I don't know if you've rolled it out, if you've been on it, if your staff hates you yet, but it'll come. At least that's my own personal testimony. Vulnerable Scott is up here. So just buckle up. So I kind of described my role at the Summit Church as this. I walked into what I describe as a pre built home. It was a lovely a lovely home for all that I could see. Beautiful rooms. What I didn't know is that, I use this word picture of, I say that most of our staff was sitting in a room with the lights off. And what I got to do is come in and flip the lights on. And everybody realized that they were sitting in a really god awful purple room. And all of a sudden, I'm guilty because I turned the lights on and now they can see how god awful the room is And I'd had nothing to do with it. I'm like, hey, this has been like this for years. I'm just turning the light on. I don't know how many of you tackle things that are similar in that you are the target of change. And how much you represent and how much you have to how much you care about what you do and how impactful somebody's positive comment can swing you or how impactful somebody's negative content can swing you. Anybody know who this is? If you're young, just don't even try. Anybody recognize this face? No? Alright. Let's see if you recognize this. I'll give you a hint. He's an athlete. How about that? Who? It is not. But you are about to find out who it is if I can figure out how to do technology. This is really high quality HD TV. I can figure out where to draw it yet. Sorry, guys. Alright. Let's try this. I hope there's no ads because that would be inconvenient. But here we go. Just If you're a glutton for punishment, like I am as a Dallas Cowboys fan, this ring, this affected my family for weeks when I was a kid and I'll never forget it. But if I kept this playing, what you'll see is that Leon Lett, who was a defensive lineman for the Cowboys back when they were actually good, he touches a kick after it was blocked and it becomes a live football. So what happens is here, you see this lineman from the Dolphins fall on it. And it goes out of the back of the end zone, safety. And Leon Lett, although multi Super Bowl winning Leon Lett now I'm gonna have a hard time closing this. Sorry. Oh, so good at that. Except I just closed my presentation. We're we're all friends here. Right? Let's do this. Alright. So Leon Lett was known in Cowboy Nation as one of the toughest guys you'll ever meet. What in the world is happening? Man, live video is great, y'all. Alright. Here we go. So the point of bringing Leon Lett into the equation is what Leon Lett has remembered by his career are two things. If you're a Cowboys fan or you're a Buffalo Bills fan or a Miami Dolphins fan, this probably ranged through in your heart. I don't apologize for it, but he's known for two things. Thanksgiving Day, trying to make a play, had every good intention in the world, and ended up costing the Cowboys that game. The second thing he is known for is returning a fumble in Super Bowl and fumbling on the goal line before he enters the end zone. Why do I talk about Leon Lep? Well, number one, because God loves the Cowboys and you should too. I'm starting to question that though. I'll tell you my kids ask dad, why are we Cowboys fans? And I'll say, life is full of disappointments and I want you to be used to it. Leon, and much like you and I, every day, we try to come and sit at our desk and be faithful with what God's given us the ability to do. The people that he brings into our church we care about or we wouldn't be in the seats that we're in. Right? What happens most of the days of your life, in your role, is that nobody knows your name. And nobody knows what you do and nobody cares in a non well, in a Christian y, non caring way. I'll say that. What they do care about is when you fumble. Right? Anybody amen to that? And it hurts. Right? And so I want us to think about that picture in the context of what we get to do and what we're trying to ultimately do with Rock, which is connect people into deeper relationships within our church. So, I don't know how many of you church your church members are loving, but I got this loving email on Thursday before I came. I'm gonna read it out loud. So context, we have budget voting season going on right now. It says, I sure do hope the budget we're going to approve has allocated funds to fix the website and the app. I have tried several times unsuccessfully to log in and also reset my password to log in multiple times this morning. Plus, tried to do the same thing with the same result in the June exclamation point. I would like to know what is going on with the website that this continues to be a problem. We have had this discussion both about our troubles with the website and the app in our small group. So I know I'm not the only one with this issue. Can you please fix the problem and also explain what the issue is? It's very, very frustrating to get communications about different things at the church only to not be able to review them on the website. Anybody else resonate with these types of messages? Praise God for them. Right? So as we think about this message, what has dawned on me over my time in the rock community is that it is really easy to get defensive. And to justify everything that I do and forget about the person and their life and their world on the other side of this email. Now I I did correspond. It took me a day and a half to calm down and I I gathered my thoughts and replied to him. And I will pridefully say that it was 100% his user error and a browser issue all in one. Merry Christmas to me, right? So you're probably sitting here going, okay, this is not what I signed up for. I feel super encouraged, Scott. Like, this is great. But I challenge you to think about how you just responded in these last few slides. You're a real human with real emotions. And trust me, no control to change any of it. No matter how how much you think you can change or how much you affect, life will bring you loving emails. So just like you and I, everybody who comes through the Summit doors has that type of story. Humans be humaning. I don't even know if that's English. But the reality is our people are more like us than we give them credit to be. And oftentimes in our work, in our field, we can get so wrapped up in the workflow we're building or this process that we're doing that we forget that the men and women and children coming through our doors have stories. And sometimes, I know in my own family, my wife would kill me but here it goes. We go to the late service not because God calls us to go to the late service. It's because it's the only one that my kids can make it out of the house alive and dressed to go to. So everybody comes in, right, with that burden. And what do you hear all the time about you know, what they're not communicating to you about their lack of involvement or their desire to be known, but not really be known is what if I told you that that really is more often a scream that makes no sound. And here we go. So, welcome. Welcome to our family. You hear this from any church that you go to, hopefully. Welcome to our guests. We're so glad you're here this morning. Welcome to our family. Welcome to our church, to our building. The speaker's great. But do we actually back it up with what's on the ground? I hear this a lot because I've now worked in two large churches. I hear things like, it's the mega church. That's the problem. If I only went to a smaller church, it wouldn't be this easy to disappear. I need to go to a smaller church to be known. News flash, and this is my hot sports opinion and you have to listen because you chose to be in here. It's not that. I would guarantee you that even in the smallest churches in America, if you don't want to be known, you ain't gonna be known. And I think it's so easy to place blame and not fix this not offer a solution to this issue. Instead, it's really easy to send that loving email and blame somebody else for your own problems. So what happens when we when a call to belong goes out at your church? I know at ours, we often That that usually happens what I call the holy huddle of the stage guys and gals. You know, the coveted stage announcement if you will. It goes out at your church. Where do these people go? What do they do? What are you sending them to do? Where are you capturing their information whether they know it or you're secretly doing it behind their back? That doesn't ever happen. But but the point is you may have the most secure guest services process. But what we have to do is think about the whole person. So for example, this is a fun story that I'll bring up. At my former church, I was on staff. My wife and I were attending one of the campuses at the time. We had just been placed with the twins who were premature, weighed like four four pounds and five pounds each. Life was crazy. Obviously, team who some of them are here today knew that and cared for us really well. We stopped going to small group. I know it's crazy to think about that that happens to Christians, but I stopped going to small group. And I can say that full transparency. A, because I don't work there anymore. And b, because God's forgiven me. Right? The point is, it dawned on me in that moment because I got a follow-up email from one of the group's pastor who I didn't have the pleasure of knowing. He had been on staff for about two weeks. And he addressed us in a way that made it seem like we were not being faithful to what our pastor at the time was calling us to do. So I lovingly responded to him and I said, hey man, we're on staff together. My name's Scott. And we're not just all of sudden decided we don't love Jesus. We literally are trying to keep our eyes open. These babies, please lord, let them stop screaming. Right? At the summit, we have, in my opinion, a fantastic guest services team led by what I call the Christian guest services superman, Danny Franks. If you know Danny, you If you don't know Danny, you should meet Danny. But Danny's known in kind of that world of hospitality and and helps a lot of places. But here's the deal. There's a million different ways that at the summit you can raise your hand and self identify as a newcomer. Right? Because everybody who's new wants to do that. Right? Nope. But you can flash your lights which is weird. Right? You're like coming up. And I always feel weird about it because it's always the person right behind me. I'm like, what did I do? And then I realize, oh, they're just doing what the sign tells them to do is flash their lights. We have greeters in the parking lot that welcome them. Escort them. Think about Chick fil A. Anybody love Chick fil A in here? If you don't, I worry about your salvation. But they had the mobile express app, Chick fil A. And our Chick fil A that I go to is is literally God's provision. And it has what's called a mobile line. So the drive through on the left, it's a separate line. So you don't merge at the end of it into the drive through line, which really is confusing. But oftentimes when I pull up to that mobile through, I check-in on my app. Like I order on my app, which is the whole point of what the mobile through feature is for. Right? And without a doubt, there's a lady standing there telling me to roll down my window and asking me what my name is Cause she wants to get me in faster than the mobile through which is also really fast. Right? So it's that concierge type service that a lot of our churches have. We have a first time guest tent. Right? It's that crazy tent with what my my kids call the silly man. I don't know if y'all have these but the little floppy around air thing, you know. And then you have a welcome bag. You know, we have personal tours. Like if you have kids, they'll walk you around everything, every place that you could possibly end up. But here's where I think we dropped the ball and I would challenge you to to analyze your process to see if you do too. That is kind of like what I would call the varsity level first time guest experience. Right? But what about the first time guest who's a high school student? What about the first time guest who came to camp for the first time? What about the kid who shows up at a bible study off-site and he's never been to the summit and got invited by a neighbor? What about the woman who got invited by a coworker to come to a bible study? What about the dad who joined a men's group, never been to the summit before? What about him? And I don't know how you feel about this, but I will share with you the reality at summit is this is my daughter, Azra, with her hair teased out. She uses this phrase, it doesn't even care, dad. It doesn't even care. So my question for you all is, does your weekend smile translate to your fingertips and your mouth? And this is where the rock piece starts to come in to picture. If we go back one slide, this song echoed in my head this morning and I don't like it. But how many people on your staff make contact with the same people in different context after they visit your church? If you're anything like us, it might be 17. Which is not a bad problem to have, right? Because we could argue, well hey, 17 people are reaching out to them. Do you know what makes you not feel known? Is when you've had eight other conversations with eight other staff members and it communicates to your people that that nobody talks on your staff. That you don't know that I'm the same person here that I am over here. I was in the lobby overhearing a conversation that I love that had happened. This is why I felt like I just want to include this. If this was you, I apologize ahead of time. A vendor walked up to a guy standing behind me and started this conversation. Very salesy pitch. Right? Sign up for this and it'll change your life. And they got through this whole spiel. This guy was very intentional. Praise God. He was trying to do his job. And the guy who represents church that will remain nameless goes, you do realize I'm actually already a customer of yours. This isn't a customer of a church with a hundred people in it. Thousands. 10 thousands. It's not a small account. So did it make the guy wrong who approached him to try to pitch him a sales deal? No. Because he gets paid to do that, I'm assuming. Did it make the client feel cherished and known and valued? No. How often do we do that to our people? And I don't care what system. And I know this is a rock conference and that's great. I love rock. I think rock's the greatest thing. It didn't really have a lot to come out of, to be honest with you. Back in the day, if you've been around this world a long time, you know that you had to conform very much to the system and the system never conformed to you. But the point being is I love rock and rock can help you in this. Rock cannot help you in caring for your people better. And no process, no fancy widget that you see on my screen or anybody else's screen here will matter unless you address this problem that we're talking about in this subject. So big picture. What does that mean? I think I I titled the thing take off your blinders. And what I mean by that is so often in our roles, I know mine, is I can get a task in front of me that is a process that I love to update and make processes more smooth, more efficient, and all of that. And so often, I'm guilty. I don't know if you can see that but it's a horse with blinders on. So often, I'm guilty of doing this because I want it off of my plate. I want it to serve the ministry and I wanna move on to the next 700,412 emails task that I have on my plate for the week. And what happens in that moment if we're not careful, we can do what we're good at doing. Which is getting things done. Cranking out processes. Building processes. And you start to forget about all the entry points and exit points that you are actually helping continue to occur at your church. Here's what I mean. So back to my initial thought here on the process of a visitor. Right? This is like a real project we're working on at Summit right now. We need to redo our first time guest workflow and process. We want to be able to do x y and z with their information and follow-up and we really want to care for them. Right? It dawned on me to step backwards and first list out. It's a good exercise to do. I didn't put a slide up here for it, but it's a good exercise to do is I started listing out what are all the ways possibly somebody can come to Summit for the first time, for the second time, for the third time. Where all can that happen? And it took me a little while because I nailed the first few. Because they're just the ones we always think about. Right? And then I started listing more and more and more of them. And I realized if I fix this first time guest process because I have the first time guest tint in my brain. Or I have the flashing lights and the Man, if I could just get them to to scan this QR code. Retina scan. Everything will be alright. Right? And then I realized, what about the mom who drops her kid off in the parking lot for middle school ministry and has never had a conversation with anybody on my staff? What about her? What's going on in her life? And I'm I'm I'm guilty here. I don't do this enough. And I'm trying to encourage us all to stop and really step back. Take the blinders off and think about a process holistically before you tackle it with the next greatest workflow that Rock has ever done. The reason for that is you communicate both outwardly with words or email or communication. But you also communicate relationally that we actually care about you as a person. Like a whole person. Not when you put your hat on as a middle school parent or you are a parking volunteer or you're x, y and z. We look at you as one person. Right? At the summit, we're working on a discipleship strategy rollout where we're talking about what we believe a disciple of Jesus looks like. The fruit in their life looks like. We can't do that in pockets. You can't take rock data for check-in for women's bible study and call a woman who's not, hasn't checked in in six months only to find out they don't actually use check-in. Right? So on the surface, that problem can be solved just do check-in. But if you start to approach problems with rock as the solution and you don't sit down and have an actual conversation with yourself, not in a weird way, with department heads that are very much invested in this, you're gonna continue to build really cool things that make it really easy to fall through the cracks at your church. Why am I passionate about this? I don't really know. No, I'm just kidding. I think in our world, and I again, I'm not trying to paint you a picture like you you may have the most amazing. You may be like, Scott, we've been doing this since you were a baby, which is great. We're not there. And we have to be really honest when we look in our mirror and we look at ourselves and we go, you know what? Our church is big. There's people all the time that come through the doors. And it's super easy if you work in a large church and you have busy services to go. You know what? We do everything the right way. When the reality is, you look at through the lenses of there are seven people in line and if you don't like your experience, there's six other people that'll just come and sit in your seat. And you don't stop down to think about the impact that you actually are having or lack thereof of the people that come in your front door every week that you enable to disappear. And that really should burden you and I pray that it does burden you as you think about this. So how do you how do you combat this? You may be sitting here and going, Scott, I'm not in a seat on the bus that allows me to speak into this process. This is how leadership wants it. I have $7.50 on my budget. You know, some kid who's 10 can code that I just met on the playground. And that's all I got. I'm gonna tell you right now, you have the ability. You can push the pause button and gather one, two, three people in a room and go, hey student minister. Hey, guest services guy. Hey, women's director. Let's talk about what do you want your first time guest people. And this this you can extrapolate this out into membership processes and baptism and all that and it's great. But what do you want your first time guests to do? Do you want to call them? Do you want to email them? Do you want to send them a postcard? Do you want to show up on their doorstep, which is really weird these days, but it's still effective. What do you want to do? And how often do you spend time assuming that versus listening to that? Don't be guilty of doing and not listening. Let me say that again. Don't be guilty of doing and not listening. One of the things that drives me insane is when I have rock experts pop up all over my staff. And when I say rock experts, I'm describing the person who played with the computer when they were 12 and that they've written a Google sheet. And they have all opinions in the world about how I should do my job. I have preschoolers at home. I have hot sports opinions on how to disciple and share the gospel with kids. I don't get to just show up on Sunday morning and roll out my brand new curriculum without permission. Right? If you're not careful, you will end up in a spot in your heart where it's us versus them if they only knew what I did and if they only appreciated what I did. And don't remember me as a fumbler on the goal line. They would they would care more about what I do for them. I wanna get into the heart here more than I care about process. And I pray that somebody in this room is going, man, is resonating with you. Whether you're tired of that, whether you're angry from that, whether you're in the best place possible with that, Praise the Lord. I want to be the session here at Rock that pushes the pause button and steps back and asks the question, are you caring wholly, not h o l y, But are you caring wholly for the whole person that God's bringing through your doors? And I don't care if you have 25 people coming through your doors or you have 25,000 people coming through your doors. It doesn't matter. It's not an excuse. Don't start down the path of building complex workflows, complex processes, complex whatever because you think you're gonna roll this out to the gift services director and magically everybody's gonna become connected to your church. Take a look at your processes today. Take a look at the problems that your ministry is talking through. Listen to them. Just like you wanna be listened to, listen to them. You may disagree. You may agree. They may disagree. You may agree. They may be your best friend or they may be your biggest enemy. They may hate rock or love rock. Know, my stuff feels like I'd I'd take their baby when I take Google sheets away. And I'm like, no, I just don't want people's information on your desktop. But that's neither here nor there. But what I encourage you to do as you leave this conference, so we're in the middle of day one. The rest of the time you're gonna sit in different sessions and you're gonna see tools and you're gonna see really cool things and praise the Lord that we can do the things that Rock can do. John talked about last night, if you were there. Rock has over 28,000,000 records in, person records in Rock holistically. And I thought, well 27,000,000 of them are duplicates in my system. But but the point being is you have an opportunity in the role that you're in to make a difference and an impact for the gospel. Let me just be really honest with you. Some some of you, you'll never see a piece of fruit, much more smell a piece of fruit of the things that you pour your heart, mind, soul and strength into every day. It doesn't mean they're not at work. It doesn't mean they're not of value. But let me just caution you with one word and then we'll talk a little bit if you have questions. Sorry. Vulnerable Scott here. Alright. I want you to go back to your to your offices when you get back there, and I want you to sit. And I just want you to ask the question of the Lord. What is it that you want me to put my hands toward? The hands toward the plow is a saying that my grandfather used to always use. I still am I've never seen a hand plow in my lifetime that I remember at his place. So I don't even know. He's not a farmer. I don't know why he said that. But I want you to think about the things that you've touched this year. Even within the last six months, make a list. I want you to identify, sit down and list the opportunities to connect through what you did and to be missed through what you did and be honest with yourself. And opportunities to refine that process with the help of those who carry that process out on a week weekend basis. K? I also want you to guard your heart and your mind above all else. Because here's the here's the truth. I would tell you in this year that the Lord has brought me to a place where I had been in the rock community for so long that there's a million different ways I could build process x y and z. But what the Lord showed me very clearly is that I don't listen very well anymore. I assume a lot. I jump to conclusions a lot because I've been doing this. I know more about rock than anybody on my staff, hands down. But I just encourage you to go home. Sit with a couple of people that you don't normally sit with and just listen for the ministry opportunities that the Lord might have in front of you. And just be really grateful and be aware of the things that surround you that you get to be a part of. I'll close with this because we have just a few minutes. I got a text the other day through our prayer app. A couple had, seen this prayer request. I shared it in the rock community if you happen to see it, but, it was this young lady and her husband who posted a prayer request about not being able to pay their bills, not knowing how they were gonna go to the grocery store. And a couple in our church, salt of the earth, text and goes, I wanna know more information about these two people because I wanna pay for their bills for the next eight months and I want my wife and I wanna have them over for dinner. That day I had dealt with more bugs and more issues in that application than I could even care to share with you. In that moment, the Lord goes, it ain't about you. And I just pray as you sit here today, you remember it ain't about you. It's about him, his glory, and what you get to play with. Okay? I hope that resonates with you. I'm sure some of you are like, that's not what I signed up for, Scott. If you wanna see our membership process, I'm happy to show you the slides and that's fine. I just want you to leave here encouraged. I want you to leave here knowing that the Lord sees you not just when you fumble. And you are a part of fruit that you may never taste or smell. And that's it. We can have Thank you.