RX 24 - Rock Community Keynote

Transcribed Content

Welcome back to day two. Now, did you guys enjoy the AI music again this morning? Yeah? Someone asked earlier, I think it was a pre day, if we were going to be putting those up anywhere, and yes, we had already thought of that. So you can go ahead and listen to this music on any of the music platforms that you prefer. I was actually surprised that it got through Apple Music. I was like, what are they thinking? So to do that, just search for the artist, Lobster Rock with Chip. Any of those down there? I think it's also on iHeartRadio, if you use that one. We're still working on the artist profile picture, so this is kind of a last minute thing we did over the last two weeks and takes a while to get it all approved. I did want to clarify though that the Notorious video is not AI. That's actually a real rapper. So let me tell you the backstory of that one. Put yourself in his shoes. You're a Christian rapper in Nigeria named Isaac, and all of a sudden, you get a request to have a rap written about a rock lobster that's related to a church management system. Can you imagine? He's like, I'm trying to be a professional rapper here. Like, I'm trying to increase my career. But for $500, sure, I'll do it. So we actually had to pay a little extra because he had to bring in a producer. I'm not sure what that means, but we paid an extra hundred bucks for a producer. But what an amazing video for such a small amount of money. Well, you guys are in for a treat. Today, we have pastor Jimmy Witcher, who's going to come and do a devotion. Pastor Jimmy is an amazing pastor, but beyond that, he's an amazing strategic leader. And I've been in several meetings with him talking about digital strategy. He's also amazing in one other way. His product knowledge of Rock is truly off the charts. We're in meetings, he knows about all the features, he knows about the best way to use them, he even knows about a lot of the micro settings on some of these features. It just blows me away. Before he comes up, I want to talk about one other thing he does that I think is really of interest to you guys. He does a daily podcast called the Biblecast. It's ten minute, usually about a ten minute podcast and he goes through the Bible verse by verse. I find it amazingly helpful in my day. I listen to it on my way to work. It's just another way to connect with God on the way to work. And it's just amazing when you have a tool like this, how God speaks through it. So many times on my way to the office, God just speaks to me in a way that I needed just for that day. And so I think, I highly recommend that you guys, use that in, some form in your spiritual walk too. Beyond that though, on the pre day, I talked about the fact that how our people are hungry for spiritual content. So much so that we can't feed an individual church can't develop enough content to feed them in all the different ways every single day, and the diversity of all the different types of content that your members and attendees desire. Pastor Jimmy is very strategic about this Biblecast. He doesn't talk about his church. He doesn't talk about events that are coming up. And he does that for a reason, so that it is more reusable. This is another opportunity when we talk about content curation and feeding that appetite that your people have. You can't satiate that appetite by yourself. This maybe is another resource that you could consider when you're looking at different ways to provide spiritual content to your people. So check it out. It's also available in all the places that podcasts are. But there's also a YouTube channel for it too. So please help me welcome pastor Jimmy to the stage. Thank you. And it is such an honor to be with you guys and get to share this morning. And and I'm just so thankful for John and the entire Rock team and putting this on for all of us. Can we just thank God for them and everything that they're doing to advance the kingdom? And certainly anything we can do, and and as Trinity our team here, the only reason I know about any of the features of Rock is because we have an amazing team and they tell me all kinds of great stuff that is going on. And I I love what God's doing. I believe we are entering into one of the greatest seasons of Christianity that has ever been in all of redemptive history. In fact, I believe we're on the edge of the greatest revival that we've ever had, and I have a session that I'll be doing here around eleven talking about digital discipleship. And I believe that what we are collectively doing is key in impacting and catching that that harvest, that incredible harvest that is about to come. But I also know that the enemy is against us. The the enemy is standing against us. He does not wanna see us accomplish everything that he has called us to do. So he's encouraging us here to engage with that. So I wanna go to Joshua chapter one, and I just wanna give us just a quick view of what Joshua was facing. So if you've got your Bibles there, you can click on over to Joshua one. After the death of Moses, the Lord's servant, the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses' assistant. He said, Moses my servant is dead. Therefore the time has come for you to lead these people, the Israelites across the Jordan River into the land I'm giving them. I promise you what I promised Moses, wherever you set your foot will you do me a favor just because we like to do fun things as pastors, will you point at your foot? Wherever you set your foot, you will be on land I have given you. From the Negev Wilderness all the way South to Lebanon Mountains to the North to the Euphrates River all the way down. No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live, for I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you. Now here is a key kingdom principle. We are called to take the land. There is a land. Your community, your church has a specific target, a land that they're called to go get. And there's an enemy that is on that land. The enemy squats. He's just a squatter. God's given us the harvest. But the enemy is there and he is standing on that land trying to intimidate us. But what is what God is telling Joshua, and you know the story, Joshua is about to cross over the Jordan River entering into the promised land. He's about to face enemies like he's never faced before, challenges like he's never faced before, but God is telling him, no look go, and everywhere you set your foot I'm gonna be with you. Now here's the amazing thing, Joshua has to put his foot on the land side by side where the enemy is. You can't stand outside and wait for the enemy to move, you have to plant your foot on that land and drive the enemy out. And this is what I believe God is calling each one of us to do as we're looking forward and facing the challenges that we have, and the opportunities that are in front of us. There is an enemy on the land, but as we step up and take our place, we drive the enemy off. And so there's something that the enemy does, and this is the next part. We're just I'm just continuing down. This is now Joshua chapter six I'm sorry, chapter one verse six rather. Knowing that Joshua's gonna have to step on the land, knowing that there's enemies where the land is, This is what God says, says it three times, be strong and courageous for you are the one who will lead these people to possess all the land I swore to their ancestors I would give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you. Do not deviate from them turning either to the right or the left, then you will be successful in everything you do. Study this book of instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so that you would be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do. This is my command, be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. He tells him three times and we can go back even to the end of Exodus rather, and Moses tells him to be strong. Everybody is telling Joshua to be strong and courageous. So much so that if if I was Joshua, I would be going, I get it God. Why do you keep telling me to be strong and courageous? Well, it's because he's gonna have to face things that are hard and difficult. You know, there is an incredible shaking that is happening in the church. The other day, we were at home and I was this has just been, I don't know, two weeks ago, maybe three at the most. And I was sitting in my chair and I was just reading some things and I was reading about just some of those the challenges that are going on in the kingdom right now with churches and leaders and whatnot. Really reading about a friend and all of a sudden my share charts shaking shaking. I actually thought Kim had come up behind me and was shaking the chair. And then she calls from the bathroom and I'm like, and so I here I didn't go and she was like, hey I was calling you I didn't go. Was like, well the chair was shaking I was freaking out about that I couldn't figure out what was happening. Well she was calling me because she's hearing the pipes bang in the wall and we were having an earthquake. And I just gotta tell you, I live in Amerenville, Texas, we don't have earthquakes. That doesn't happen to us. And so I was like, Lord what's going on? He's like, I'm bringing a shaking. There's a shaking that is happening in the world, and there's a shaking that's happening. He talks about this in Hebrews chapter 12, and what the shaking does is it sifts and sorts things out. It begins to separate, but it can cause us to be concerned, cause us to be afraid. And so I just wanna I wanna look at two things on how do we be strong and courageous. How do we do that? Because we're all facing challenges and things. To be strong actually means to become strong or powerful beyond the average or expected. And I believe that's what God wants for each one of us, to be strong beyond the average. None of us want to be average. And then courageous means to be able to face and deal with danger and fear without flinching. Now when we think about this, want us to look at verse nine for just a minute. Because look at what God says, he says, this is my command, be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged. God's command is do not be afraid or discouraged. Now I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hands, know how us pastors we like to ask you to raise your hands, but I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hands for who might be discouraged this morning. But I want us to think about this, the command is not to be afraid or discouraged. It's not a suggestion, it's not an opportunity for us to grow in something. God tells us straight up, do not be afraid and do not be discouraged. Discouragement and fear are illegal in the kingdom of God because we've got the king of kings and the lord of lords who's with us, and he promises that we're going to take the ground. Now when we think about fear, there's two different types of fear. There's a natural fear, which is normal. If you go wandering around in these hills, you're gonna find snakes and scorpions and all kinds of other things that you ought to run away from. But if it's a fear of failure, if it's a fear of man, it's a fear of not measuring up, all these other fears are things that the enemy uses to keep us off the land. Then there's also discouragement. What is discouragement? Unlike fear, discouragement is the heaviness that can come on us. It comes in many forms, it could be lack of recognition. You know, you worked so hard to get this report out and your pastor was like, thanks, why did it take so long? What took you so long? Why was it that hard? Fear of or lack of recognition. Could be lack of participation, feeling alone in the battle, we're doing it all by ourselves. It could be lack of breakthrough. We've been going and trying again and again and again and we can't get through. It could just be exhausted, being tired and failing to observe the Sabbath or doing the rest that we need. All of these things cause us to be discouraged and can cause us to step back. But God has promised us the land if we'll stand on it, and if we're strong and courageous we will overcome it. But we have to recognize the solution, and I love it as the solution is still in Joshua one nine. He says this, this is my command, be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or discouraged. Why? For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. The reality is is that when we recognize that God is with us wherever we go, we overcome our fear and we overcome our discouragement. And so I just want to take a moment here and I just want to pray. Can you can we do that? Would you just bow your heads? Father, we're just thankful for you. And this morning as we gather together and as we're getting ready for just another amazing day of the Rock Conference, and learning, and growing, and seeing how we can use our church to advance or use this technology to advance, we're also facing just personal discouragement and opportunities where we might have feared. So Holy Spirit I'm asking you to come this morning, come and minister to us. Minister to our hearts, strengthen us, encourage us. Father we just cast out all fear right now in Jesus name. For you've not given us a spirit of fear, but the Holy Spirit, which gives us power, love, and a sound mind. So we ask that you would just wash over us, empower us, and God I ask that where we have been discouraged, that we would just embrace that we're not doing this alone. But we are called of you, directed, purposed, and that you empower us, and you're with us everywhere that we go. And the enemy though he snarls, threatens, roars, when we step on the land you step with us, and we take the ground for the kingdom. And Father we're thankful for the revival that's coming, for the souls, the harvest that is coming, And we ask that you would use us to cast the net, to bring them in to your kingdom. In Jesus name we pray, amen. Amen. God bless you guys. Thank you, pastor Jimmy. God is with us. What an incredible reminder of our calling. And we're here as a community to celebrate what God is doing in our midst and through our roles and to be encouraged together. Of course, this community wouldn't exist without leadership, and I'm not talking about the kind of leaders who wear certain name tags or badges. I'm talking about those of you in the community who have stepped out in faith and have given your time and your effort and poured into this community, and it's made such a difference. Now at the ROC community keynote this morning, we have the opportunity to recognize so many of you that have been investing in strengthening and building this community. Please help me welcome Nick Erdo to the stage to join us in in congratulating the leaders that have invested in the Rock community. Thank you. As the commissioner of Rock, each year, I have the honor to introduce two very special groups of rock warriors. You may have heard us mention one of these groups yesterday. Are called rock stars. Now, this group has grown to a 63 this year, up from 117 last year. So how did these 163 rockstars get to become rockstars this year? Let me let me tell you a little bit about what they do. You all are familiar with the chat system. They are out there answering your questions. Some of them are here teaching sessions at RX, and others are holding rockstar consults tonight, in fact. You don't want to miss that opportunity. Others hold regional communities, gatherings in different states. Some of them hold what we call a rock roadshow. Now, last but not least, there is a special group to me. Those are the Alpha and Beta Testers, because they are helping all of us by testing the next versions of Rock. The bottom line is, they sacrifice their time to refresh and help all of us. We could not have done this without them. Rockstars, would you please stand so we can recognize all that you've given to our community? Alright. Connect with one of them if you want to learn a little bit more about how to become a rock star. The next group is what we call the Hall of Famers. So each year, we induct one special into the Rockstar Hall of Fame. So let's get our previous Hall of Famers out here while I talk a little bit about what it takes to become a rock star hall of famer. The Rockstar Hall of Famer is a rockstar whose contributions stand out year after year. But even then, this person rises above that. Now there's no one criteria that we could measure that makes you become the Rockstar Hall of Famer. It's really many, many contributions. Now this year's contribution was, woah, woah, woah, stop the press. We had a problem. Nick, we did have a problem this year. Every year we evaluate the rock stars in the community to look for one person who stands out head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to the effort, the assistance to the core team, the attitude, and just really driving the community forward. But this year, there wasn't anyone. There wasn't any one, there were two. And while this is a critical role and not something that we want to undervalue by randomly selecting multiple people each year, we didn't have a choice. There were two people neck and neck, and to not choose two this year would have been to take something away from the effort that they put into the rock community. So this year, we're excited to welcome two new members to the hall of fame. And they are Mike Mundy and David Axelson. Congratulations, Mike. Congratulations. Alright. Thank you all for your incredible efforts. And we have one more category to talk about. So as you know, we have the rock stars, which is an annual appointment and is based on annual work and effort and it's not an easy thing to get, but it's not incredibly challenging. On the far end of that, we have our hall of fame members. And there's one, or maybe two inducted per year, and it is a very challenging and rigorous role that's an appointment for lifetime. We came to realize we needed something that would be in between, something with a different achievement level. And that's why we're creating a new ambassador role. So we're kind of announcing that here. We will be working on who's a member of that and what that looks like throughout this year. But I can tell you that the criteria for this role is not objective. It's subjective. It's really based on a few things. It will be awarded to those who unify, build, and support the community, who are aligned with the vision for rock, and who are advocates of best practices. This program is kicking off this year, and so we wanted to let you know about it. Lots of great announcements on that front next year. Alright. We have the opportunity now to recognize the efforts of those of you in the community who are building incredible tools. And this is time for our Gold Circle Awards. What we'd first like to do is recognize the judges. These are independent judges who are members of the rock community, who take a look at all the submitted projects. These are projects that lead the lead the way in terms of rock innovation, in terms of elegant and beautiful design, combined with technology to reach new ministry goals and purposes. And these judges have given their time to evaluate those projects. Let's have a round of applause for them. As a note, in case any of their projects made it into the submission criteria, no judge, looks at their own project or provides any judgment on that. Alright. So we have several categories and we are going to present awards to those who have won them. So I will ask you if you submitted that project for your organization to please come join us on stage, receive your award, and stand in a line here so that we can have everyone on stage by the end. Alright. Should we get started? Let's do it. First category is the ministry use of Rock. So what this does is it looks at projects that are built inside the Rock database and evaluates them for the specific ministry purpose that drives ministry forward. In this year, while we typically have two awards we give out in this category, we actually had a tie. So we ended up with three. So we will start with the first one, which is Northside Christian Church for their project finder. Please do clap. We're honored to present this award for the ministry use of rock to Northside Christian Church. For this, this was developed entirely in house. This tool enhances local outreach efforts year round by simplifying how community members find and sign up for service projects. This project provides a user friendly platform for discovering and managing projects, leveraging Rock's native features including a dynamic interface, tailored communication tools for leaders, and an email subscription system. Northside Christians project finder significantly improves project coordination and engagement. Congratulations to Northside Christian Church. We're excited to present the next award for the ministry use of rock to Church of the Highlands for their outstanding small groups directory and registration tool. This was developed in collaboration with Triumph Tech, and when faced with the challenge of maintaining a customized front end experience while transitioning their small groups data to rock, Church of the Highlands created a comprehensive solution enhancing both group discovery and registration. This tool allows attendees to easily search, and connect with small groups that align with their interests, fostering stronger community connections. Please join me in congratulating Church of the Highlands. Our final award in this category goes to Christ Chapel Bible Church for their spiritual fitness rings, developed in collaboration with nine embers and extended by their own team in house. This initiative enhances their be make reach program by integrating a sophisticated habit tracker into rock. The spiritual fitness rings offer users a customizable way to set personal goals, track interactions and monitor streaks. With features like push notifications and activity journals, this tool is designed to motivate and engage users in their spiritual journey. Let's congratulate Christ Chapel Bible Church. Our next category is website design. This is for the best in design for a rock native website and we are excited to present the award to Shepherd Church for their exceptional work on the newly launched shepherdchurch.com site developed in collaboration with Triumph Tech. This site marks a major leap forward in rock integration featuring a sleek modern design that's both visually appealing and highly functional. The intuitive sidebar navigation ensures a seamless user experience, making it easier for visitors to explore and engage with the church's content. Please help me congratulate Shepherd Church. Ministry innovations involved in a Native Rock website. And we're honored to present this award to LCBC Church for their impactful project, the Advantage Resource Library, developed in collaboration with Triumph Tech. This resource library is an integral part of their ministry which partners with like minded churches across Pennsylvania. Built within their rock instance and powered by content channels, this resource library provides free access to a wealth of ministry documents, teachings, trainings, and podcasts. The library is designed to empower other churches by offering valuable resources that help solve everyday ministry challenges. Please help me congratulate LCBC. Our next category of gold circle awards is for mobile app design. These are native rock mobile apps and related to the elegance of their design. We're thrilled to present this to Trinity Fellowship Church for their outstanding Rock mobile app. This app was developed in partnership with Triumph Tech and showcases exceptional functionality and design leveraging Rock to provide a personalized and engaging experience for its users. The app features a modern intuitive interface making it easy for members to navigate and access various tools that support their spiritual growth. Congratulations to Trinity Fellowship. Now when it comes to the next category, mobile app ministry function, we again had a two way tie, so we will be welcoming two churches up to receive this award. The first winner is the Summit Church, which is being presented for their daily prayer revival feature, an innovative tool in their Summit app developed in collaboration with Triumph Tech. This feature is designed to strengthen spiritual practices by offering daily prayer prompts and bible reading plans seamlessly integrated with vital activities into the daily lives of the church community. The daily prayer revival has played a crucial role in initiatives like the twenty one days of prayer, where it's been instrumental in uniting the congregation in focused prayer. Please help me congratulate the Summit Church. And the second award in this category goes to Life Church for their Rock Connect app. This app was developed in partnership with Triumph Tech, specifically designed for Life Church's staff. It is, navigating the most popular components of rock during busy weekends and empowering staff to connect with attenders, and next steps in real time, enhancing the overall experience. Please help me congratulate Life Church. Our next category is TV app design, And we'd like to congratulate the Well Community Church receiving this award for their innovative Rock TV app developed in partnership with Triumph Tech. This TV app offers a beautifully designed and feature rich experience that transforms how church members engage Sunday services, worship and sermons. With capabilities like personalized message recommendations, categorized topics and the ability to save messages for later. We'd also like to congratulate the Well Community Church for the next category of app design, which is TV app ministry function as well. Alright. I'm going to step out of the way for any pictures or photo ops anyone wants, and once finished, we will ask everyone to exit the stage. Congratulations. I have to tell you there were an incredible number of projects that were submitted and I know those judges had a difficult a challenge in selecting the winners for each category. It is astounding and humbling to me how many of you are using Rock in such incredible and beautifully designed ways. Thank you for all your submissions. Thank you for all your work. Now it's time to talk about some metrics. Right? We always have the State of Rock at our community keynote. So this is the time where we tell you a little bit about that. Let's talk first about the conference. Our metrics here. How many people are attending? This is our highest number of attendees yet. In fact, I've seen a couple coming through since the conference started and we haven't updated our numbers. So we're somewhere close to 700 people, and we're so excited that each of you made the effort to be here. This is representing a 78 organizations, and we know that many of your organizations actually sent more people to the conference this year. So we're very encouraged about what that means in terms of the value that's being added to your staff and your community. We'll ask you later for your input on the event. Just know that we take that to heart and we work at adjusting our program every year to continue to add more value to you in your rock role and to your church staff who interact with rock whether they may not be database administrators or developers themselves. Let's talk about speaking sessions. We've had over a hundred plus speaking sessions between the pre day all the way through the end of the day today. Wow. What an investment that you have all made to help each other learn and grow here today. Thank you so much. Alright. Time for some community metrics. Just know that this year we put a renewed focus on our metrics. How do we describe the community? How do we describe its health? So what we want is well considered accurate information. And the metrics we're going to talk about today give a true picture of that, of Rock's health and status in real time based on today's reality. So as we walk through them, I'll give some explanation. First of all, Rocket Chat. Rocket Chat is where when we can't be together in person, that you're all helping each other, asking and answering questions and providing support. We have 489 active members of Rocket Chat and somewhere over 4,000 total members. So that is, you know, when I talk to to churches that are first moving to rock, which I do quite a bit, they're so shocked at the quality of support that they receive through the community on Rocket Chat. It just doesn't measure up to the paid support options they've had on other platforms, and that's because of you. Thank you. As we continue to make Rock more accessible for smaller churches that don't wanna have an in house technical team, cloud hosting SaaS model is the way to go. And we currently have 17 churches running on a rock SaaS model right now. And that's a number that's going to be only growing. Let's talk about donations. You saw the little sea shanty song that went out right there. Right? So you might want to keep me at bay. But actually I just want to tell you that of all churches currently running on rock, nearly 80% are donating to help move rock forward. That's an incredible number. Thank you so much for caring, not just what you get out of Rock, but what you can give back to help everyone else. Let's dig into the numbers just a little bit. As you know, we updated our minimum suggested donation starting at the beginning of this year to $4.10. So far, if we look at the churches that are donating, 60% are donating at this rate or above. Now we have been very graceful with what that timeline looks like, and we know churches have different budget cycles, so I think it's only fair this year if we include the previous suggested rate and the suggested rate from this year, as churches are still transitioning to the new rate. And if we look at that, then of all the churches donating, 88% are giving at one of these suggested rates. And that again just shows a tremendous dedication to supporting and moving Rock forward. Thank you. We've discussed our grant program in the past, but just for those of you who might be new, donating at our minimum suggested rate is what unlocks early access to the latest rock features, and that includes all features within the last twelve months. For those that do not donate or do not donate at that rate, they have a delay in access to features. That really helps the churches that are most engaged be able to consume and understand the features and be able to answer questions very well inside the Rocket Chat platform as well when the less engaged churches begin to have access and ask those questions. However, sometimes there are churches that simply cannot afford to donate or to donate at our suggested rate. But they're high effort churches. They may be going through something like a church plant, a church leadership transition, or something that has impacted their giving. And in the spirit of generosity, which is the heart of Spark, we want to be able to provide grants that allow those churches to have access to the features at an early access level on a grant that's a it's based as a step down. So over time, we help work them into that suggested donation rate. And in 2024, we've given grants of 91, almost $92,000. This is not money that changes hands, but this is Spark granting that much access to churches who are simply unable to donate at a given time. And we're so thankful to be able to do that. That's really the reason we have our donation based nonprofit model. Thank you for helping us support that. Now how many organizations are running on Rock? If you track from year to year, it might look like that number has gone down. But here's what we want to tell you. We're focusing solely on churches who are actually live on rock today. In the past, we've had so much movement as churches are moving to rock, and they're telling us they're moving, and our our metrics included those numbers. But it got very muddy. So we're gonna clarify that and and clear that number. 444 churches are currently actively running on rock. Now that might sound like a small number if we compare it to other platforms, but here's what we want to keep in mind. How do we measure impact? Does this is this the metric that actually correctly identifies impact? And I might say that no, it isn't. Probably the churches that are running on rock are one to 200 times larger than most of the churches running on other platforms. So that average size difference means that there's a significantly higher impact per organization. How might we visualize that? One way might be to look at the Outreach 500 largest churches list, we know that 37% of those churches are currently running on Rock and of the top five largest, 80% are. Another way might be to measure the average weekend attendance at the churches that are on Rock. And we know right now based on the numbers that you've provided to us, that that's a 1,200,000 number of weekend attendees. That's incredible. And how often does the average person come to church? The statistics vary somewhere in once a month typically is what we hear. If we're conservative and say maybe once every, three weeks, what we really have is 1% of the population of America attending one of our churches. They call it their home. That number really represents a significant potential for impact. And it also represents a humbling challenge for each of us. What are we doing to help move ministry forward in the areas that we can influence? 28,400,000 person records exist in a rock database. What if the efforts we could make with the toolset at our disposal, with the knowledge that we gained, with the connections that we build, what if we could reengage those who are not engaged? What if we could provide pathways to spiritual growth? What if we could provide the outreach tools so that these people can then engage their communities? We have so much opportunity in front of us and it is very humbling, but there's not a better group of people I'd like to do that with. Let's talk about Spark. Spark is the nonprofit that owns Rock, platform and the community, and we invest equally in both. We mentioned our focus on quality yesterday in the product keynote, if you were here with us, and the fact that we have, as of Friday, 16 open issues, issues, which is absolutely incredible for a platform as broad, as flexible, and as differently used as we have here. Now just as a note, I checked last night and Rocket Chat, the platform that does just chat, has 2,500 open issues currently. Just thought we might need a little comparison. We do have nearly 40,000 commits and that's kind of like a save if you're not used to using GitHub or what that might mean. This is a it represents a body of work that a developer has kind of saved up into the public repo of that code. So it's not that there isn't much code there. There's a significant amount of that. In fact, let's compare the lines of code in Rock to some popular other projects. Rock is nearly 3.25 times the size of the space shuttle when it comes to the lines of code. And remember, we're really just talking about the code that our developers have written. But we're standing on the shoulders of giants that have built the platforms, the packages, and all the other technical components that rock relies on. And all of this has been done with a team significantly smaller than the space shuttle team. So how does the math math? We're not taking credit. We can't take all the credit. All we can say is to God be the glory, which is why we post that at the top of every page of Rock Code. And there are shirts at the promo shop that say that. And it's incredibly important to remember with humility that the math doesn't work out. It doesn't make sense. So we're a part of something incredible. Alright. Another great measure of the impact of Spark would be the podcast. If you haven't tuned in to the Rockcast podcast, you're missing out. See the trend here? 43,000 downloads. You need to make sure to stay in the loop. So we bring you up to speed once a year here at the conference. But beyond that, you can actually hear the behind the scenes, have a little fun with our team, and learn what's going on. So you definitely want to subscribe to our in company. We're excited about be in And we're excited about the opportunity be leader in And been a big focus for our team as well. And we're excited at the traction that we're finally gaining. Our team's never been stronger or more mission aligned. We're excited about where we're headed together. Okay. Are you ready for an announcement you've been waiting for for a long time? Because I'm ready to tell you. You've been sitting on this secret for a little bit. Get ready. The lava class is here. You can sign up today or you can join the interest list and have us email the information to you later. But the first two sessions of registration are actually open in November of this year and January of next year. So we open two dates hoping that you'll be able to find one that will coordinate with your calendar if you are pursuing growth in lava. At the end of the keynote, you'll also find some signs outside directly behind us here that will have a QR code for every class. And you'll join the interest list and have the opportunity to register if you scan those inside your Rock mobile app. Alright. It's been an incredible morning so far. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share these impact statistics with you, and please help me welcome John Edmiston back to the stage to continue. Thanks, Emily. It's an amazing accomplishment of what we've been able to do over the last thirteen years together. And it's only by working together that we're gonna be able to continue in that growth. So what is our vision for growth? Well at this part of the conference, or this part of the session, some other organizations might call this our sales meeting. Because we don't have sales staff, you are our sales staff. But we prefer to think of you as evangelists. Evangelists of the power and the success that you've had within Rock. Now one of the things that we've been really busy on is working on the product. That's our first love. And when you have to build a product, have to focus on the product. One thing that we haven't done a very good job is casting vision about what is rock really? And really looking at what is the identity that we have within our space? Now if we go out to the corporate world, they would start talking about terms like branding or product categories. And so the first thing we have to understand is like what category are we called to serve in and what category are we called to lead in? And I don't think we've ever really done a very good job at that, if I'm being honest. Now you might be saying, well, is a product category? Let's just take a second and use an example and maybe have a little bit of fun. Product categories within the automotive industry are kind of pretty easy for us to understand, right? So we're going to play a little game here. I'm going to name a product category for the automotive industry. And you're going to tell me what brand do you think leads in that product category. We're going to start with the easy ones, and then they're going become a little bit more debatable. However, these are not my choices, okay? So don't shoot the messenger if you don't agree with icon that goes up here. I can send you the email address of the product category expert that I cheated off their homework on. Okay? Are you ready? I'm going to name the category. You're going to shout out the brand that you feel owns that category. SAFE. Yeah, that was pretty easy, right? Volvo. Interestingly enough, again cheating off the homework of the expert, he talked about the fact that Volvo is actually kind of moving out of that space recently. They started getting into some performance cars and some super high luxury cars. Many people think that's a mistake. You should understand your category and try to lead in that category. So I thought that was kind of interesting in doing the research on this. Let's do another one. When I say reliable, you say yeah, Toyota. Toyota for decades has owned the reliability category. I saw some metrics the other day on X that just reaffirmed how reliable their cars are. Okay. We're going to get a little bit more debatable, but again, don't shoot the messenger. If I say sport, you would say I heard a lot of ones. Now some people would be quick to say maybe like Ferrari or Lamborghini. Those are probably more in a different category of exotic. But I did hear a lot of people say Porsche. And they definitely, if you think about their product category, they really just tailor just to sports. Recently they got into SUVs. You could debate about that. But they are very performance based SUVs also. Okay. Now we're going get into a category that we might have some debates on. When we say luxury, what would you say? Yeah, a lot of different ones. His reasoning, Lexus. Now you might I heard Mercedes and I probably would have said Mercedes myself, but he actually said, that actually falls more into the prestige category. So it kind of made sense to me. Was like, okay, I get that. When you show up in a Lexus, that's a really great car. You show up in a Mercedes though, people are like, oh, that's a little bit different. Okay. Let's end with a very, very easy one. If I say EV, you would say Tesla. Right? It's hard to argue that from a sales perspective and a technology and innovation perspective, they're really leading that category. Okay. So let's now go in reverse. If we say rock, what's our product category? We haven't really think boy, I missed that. What did you say? Sport? Luxury? Yeah, no. I hope we're trying to make it sport, right? Like, look at the check-in. Yeah, we do care about performance. But we had to think about this for a bit. And this is kind of what I'm talking about. We had to find our identity within our area of expertise. And we came up with, and we really think that this is what it is, is that we're the innovation platform for churches. I think having that clarity really kind of helps us understand who we are and what product features we need, and how do we communicate to others, other churches, about our platform? So we'd say we are the innovation platform for churches. Now note what we didn't say. We didn't say anything about the size of your church because we don't think that that matters. We think that if a church wants to innovate, it doesn't matter about what size. In fact, that's one of our core values at Spark is accessibility. That's why we have the funding model that we do. Trust me, our funding model is difficult, But we feel like it's what God has called us to do, to have something that you don't have to pay to play. We hope you do. Well, Emily might come a knockin' if you don't. But we also have things like grant, so we can be generous with that. So let's look at a few ways that I think we're doing really well with what we've been doing for the last ten years. What's going well? Well I would say first off, our innovation and the expanding of rock. We're really doing a good job of that from a product perspective. Constantly, every year at the conference we hear feedback on, we can't keep up with all these features. Now just realize we're not expecting every church to maximize every single feature. Different churches are coming at us with different requests, and we're just trying to fulfill as many requests as possible. But we love the aspect of innovation, and we want to continue to do that, innovate and expand the capabilities of Rock. Another thing, looking at the metrics that Emily shared, we are reaching the largest churches. The large churches tend to find a lot of value here, but we don't want to make that limited to large churches. Now these are two areas that we're doing well in. Where can we improve? We have plenty of ways that we can improve. The first is accessibility. That is again one of our core values of Spark. We want to be accessible. I think we can check the box on our funding model, achieving aspects of accessibility. But there's other aspects of accessibility we still need to work on. One of those, and you saw it in the keynote yesterday, is we're working on product simplification. A good example of that was the label maker. By doing and simplifying the label designer, we can make it more accessible to churches who are joining into Rock. So that's one way we can simplify the product is just to make these types of tools that make those jobs easier. Another way that we're going to be adding in the next few generations of Rock is the capability of having basically two different modes of operation within Rock. We can have simple mode and we can hide a lot of the configuration. Think about setting up a new group type. Boy, there's a lot of configuration options right there. And we're adding even more in 17. But a lot of those aren't needed in most use cases. They're really edge cases. So what if we could just hide those settings? Not take them away, but just hide them. And then with one button click, you could go from simple mode to advanced mode and then we can unlock all those extra configurations. What we don't want to do is we don't want to dumb down the product. We want to simplify it, not make it There's a difference between making something simple and simplistic. We don't want simplistic. We want power. But we just need to make it simple. Simple is hard. Now product simplification is definitely one thing that we're going to be continuing to work on. It's very, very hard but it has an impact. But there's something else that we can work on that can have a great impact but it's not as hard. And so we also want to focus on that. And that is our messaging. And so we want to help you guys understand maybe some messaging points of how we can make Rock more accessible to other churches. This obviously is a lot easier because we just have to train and coach. And we'll continue working on those other product aspects as we continue with the product development. Now one of the things that we want to realize is that there's really two different tracks a church can be on as they adopt Rock. The first track is the trailblazer track. I'd say 99% of you in this room are on the trailblazer track. You see, as a product gets launched, especially like in the one point zero, two point zero days, you have to be on the Trailblazer track. If you don't expect some scraped knees and some bleeding, it's just not going to be for you. We can't do that. As we've gotten further and further along into version 17, hopefully there's less bleeding. But you still have to be very innovative and pioneering in the usage of rock. And we want to keep this track. This is a great track to be on. But sometimes this track can be kind of scary as you're out there talking with other churches. They're like, well I want to innovate, but dang, I don't have the resources you guys have. I don't have a programmer. How many times have we heard, how do you have to a programmer to work with rock? That's not true. I would say maybe to be on the trailblazer track that kind of helps. But it's not true for everybody. And so we want to introduce the concept of an essentials track. This track kind of exists today but we just tend not to talk about it. So let's give some tips and tricks on how to implement the essentials track. Again, it's always existed but we're speaking it into existence in terms of from a messaging perspective. A few tips. First, when you're talking with a church, you first want to identify which track would probably be best for them. So in your initial conversation, you want to be asking questions about what do you hope to get out of Rock? What does your team look like? Again, probably wouldn't pigeonhole a small church into saying that they're not going to be on the that they have to be an essential. Some of them are actually definitely on the trailblazer. So don't use that as the only categorization, just make that one of them. And then from there, we want a message based on that track. Now if you're like me and you're talking to a church about rock for the first time, you're probably pretty excited and you're probably going to tell them about what you're most excited about. That's usually the project that you just finished that was really, really difficult and you're really, really proud of it. Right? So you're describing to them all the custom lava you wrote all the new pages that you added with the new blocks, the new group type you had to add, the new communication templates that you made, the connection opportunities that you had to add, and the workflows to make it all work. Well, they just went cross eyed and they're like, this is amazing, but it's probably not for us. So you really want to control that temptation to talk about all the hard things that you're most proud of and make sure that you tailor the messaging to them. Here's some more messaging tips, specifically for talking to a church about the Essentials track. First, emphasize the out of the box experience. Rock is a LEGO kit, but unlike LEGO, we actually assemble it for you and it comes out of the box perfectly assembled. There's already group types for many of the things that they're going to need. The only thing that they probably need to customize just a little bit is the check-in. Everybody has different schedules and different locations and different ways they might break up those groups, that's pretty easy. And especially if you're there to give them a little bit of advice and help. But I think too often we talk about how we've taken the Legos all apart and recreated them. If we continue to focus on the out of the box experience, I think we'll have a lot more success with adoption. And again, you might start with the out of the box experience, but it doesn't mean that you have to end there. You can always get more adventurous in the future. And these tracks can be somewhat fluid. You could go from being an essentials to a trailblazer later. Tip two, different implementation patterns. I'm guessing for your churches, implementation took a while and was probably pretty expensive. You wanted to bring over a ton of data. And not only that, you wanted to bring over a ton of processes and have to create a lot of new workflows. Just realize this isn't always the case. I would first ask a church, hey, how good is your data? Most churches would probably respond, it's not very good. And I would probably follow-up and say, well, why would you want to bring that with you? There are actually some implementation patterns that are very easy to get started with. If you don't like your data, you can do things like have your people put their data in for you. Several churches have used the preregistration block that many of you guys use for getting people to come in and get ready for check-in. They've used that same preregistration block to have their people enter all their data for them as a part of their implementation. They communicate with their members and attendees and say, hey, over the next four weeks, we need you to go enter your family data into this. Then they can use the my profile block to add a ton more different attributes about those people if they desire. They launch with almost perfectly clean data, unlike the launches that probably many of you had where you had to continue for over a year to clean up that data. So you can use this as an opportunity to actually start with a very innovative and new platform, but also with clean, clean data. We also have built out some really cool and powerful CSV import tools for Rock. Many of you don't know about them because you don't need them. You've already pulled all of your data in. But if you're coming from another platform, you can bring in a lot of the data about a person and their families using these CSV imports. And it's a part of core Rock. The third tip is cloud hosting. Most of the people in the room are probably hosting Rock themselves. And that's a great option. And we're going to keep that option. We're never going to take that option away. We think that options are great for churches. But sometimes options can make things hard too. Having a cloud hosting option allows them to basically register on one day and have a fully running instance of Rock with all the services that they need, things like Mailgun, mapping API keys, all that's already configured. They're ready to go the next day. Spark has worked with partners to build these services. And Spark has provided some fairly basic requirements for cloud hosting so that we make sure that we are providing all the services that these churches would want. On top of that, cloud hosting also simplifies the donation model for Rock. So these churches only have to pay one bill every month and it takes care of not only the hosting costs, but also the donation, which makes it much easier for the church. And honestly, makes it a lot easier for Rock too. So this is another option that we can communicate. Hey, cloud hosting might be just right for you. But if you don't, you can also do it yourself. Let's look at a few case studies. Some churches have already done this essential model, and I think it's always good to learn from what others have done. The first case study is Boulder Mountain Church. They're a church here in the Phoenix Valley, they're in Mesa, Arizona. A 50 attendees. So Kyle Glenn is the adult ministry and the executive team member. He says, Data is only as good as what you do with it. It was intimidating but we decided to start fresh in Rock. We can now see if someone stops attending or engaging so we can follow-up with them. Look at that. They prioritized the power of Rock, being able to know about life change over the fear of not being able to bring in their data quickly and easily. I think that was a wise decision, especially with all the other ways that we can get that data in. Getting that quick start immediately starts the life change that Rock can bring. A larger church, Calvary Chapel in Chattanooga, has 2,200 attendees. Ryan Smith, who oversees communication finance and IT states, starting fresh with Rock gave us clean, tailored data, which saved time and money. The benefits of accurate data outweigh the concerns of leaving the old data behind. Here again, we're prioritizing having accurate clean data over the peace of mind of maybe this old legacy data and getting an immediate start to that. Both of these churches are doing cloud hosting. So again, a good testimony to that cloud hosting is an effective option for these churches. By working on this, we can continue to focus on our desired outcome, which is growth. And it's not growth for growth's sake. We're not here to try to move the needle on the numbers on those charts. I think having those metrics are important but that's not what we're really focused on. We're really focused on continued kingdom impact. And we know that churches who want to innovate can be successful on rock on all sizes. And when they do that, we're gonna make a difference in this world. And that's the that's the real goal behind all of our metrics and what we're trying to achieve. But to do that, honestly, we need to work with you guys because you guys are on the front lines. You're the ones who are working and interfacing with these churches. And we want to continue to come work hand in hand with you and work alongside you to give you the messaging and the tips to be able to do that. And we really feel like this renewed interest and renewed focus on messaging will help achieve that. If you have questions about that, let us know. We're going to be continuing over the next few months to provide different other opportunities to present this same type of messaging so you'll have more resources to work with as you work with other churches.