RX 24 - Rocks Secret Sauce: The Community - Tim Lemons

Transcribed Content

Welcome to the afternoon session of day two of Rx. I know this is the nap session, but Tim's got a lot of energy. I think he's gonna be able to keep us awake. Guys, this is Tim Lemons here from Highlands Fellowship. Alright. So you guys are here. This is Rock's secret sauce. And no surprise, secret sauce is the community. Hopefully, I don't know how many times you've been here, but, actually, raise your hand if this is your first RX. Alright. Almost everybody. Awesome. So you're getting the taste of what this community is. So first question right out the bat is what is what is the community? Well, duh, it's you, and it's me, and it's all of us. You can see there on the map. You can go to the community website, community.rockrms.com, and you can see where churches are using it and see all the churches and see what the area that you're at and get connected with a regional group if you can, if you haven't done that already. So this will be all about really two sections. First, we're gonna talk about why the community matters, and the second section is I'm just gonna give you some really practical ways of how you can get involved in the community. So about 500 churches using rock. So why does the community matter? First, we all have a shared mission. Right? We're working together to reach people for Jesus. We all have the same purpose to go and make disciples, and we're united in mission to care for his sheep through technology. So we are all trying to accomplish the same thing. And I'm also curious, how many of you are the only rock person? Alright. My heart goes out to you. That's what that that's me too. So there's a lot of us, don't worry, in the community. So you're not alone. At my church, I'm the rock guy. That's it. I don't have other staff members who are focused on rock, do a whole lot in Rock. If there's an event registration, I create it. If there's a content channel item, I create them. Like, I I do almost all of it. But I do have a team. One thing I just little side note for you maybe is take a person from adult ministry and student ministry and kids ministry and finance and just meet meet once a month is what we do. So I have a group of people on our staff, and we just get together once a month, and and I just talk with them. Hey. How's things going in student ministry? Any new processes or anything I can help you do? Same thing for adult ministry. And and then I also can throw off ideas. Like, if there's a new feature coming out or something like that, I can talk to each one of those ministries in that rock meeting and get some ideas and what what what they're interested in using, what they're not interested in using. So that's just a little side note there. So you are never alone. Everybody has faced the same challenges, again, because we're all trying to do the same thing, right, and we're using the same product. So we literally every day are trying to do the same thing. So it would be incredibly dumb to not lean into the help that we have around us, right? So lean into the community. It's all about support and collaboration, and you're never alone. I have had people share things with me that would have taken me months to do, and I did it in a couple of hours because I was able to copy and paste and change some things. And and then not only that, but it taught me how to do the things. Right? Like, I never would have known how to do those things if those people didn't share this stuff with me. So it is the go to place for help, for sharing ideas, best practices, collective knowledge for faster problem solving and innovation. This is not me. This is I asked AI to give me a to create a SQL wizard, and so this is what it gave me. I am not a SQL wizard. I have taken the SQL class that Colin teaches, and it's awesome. If you can take the SQL class, take it. And now I can write cool reports, but that's about all I can do. But the just last week or two weeks ago now, I was trying to create a report and trying to get some averages of numbers, and I don't know how to do that in SQL. And so I went to Rocket Chat. There's a SQL channel, and I said, hey. I've got this SQL, and I'm trying to create a report, and I need the averages of this. Anybody help me? And within fifteen minutes, somebody's helping me writing the SQL for me. I take it. I put it back in my rock, run it. It works great. Like, that's the community. K? It's amazing. And I can't tell you how, like, I think you've probably heard depending on what sessions you've been in. Our free community support is so much better than any paid support I've ever had in my life. I mean, like, literally, every day I can go on Rocket Chat, and people are there to help me. Another thing that a lot of people don't often think about as an encouragement and growth in your skill. Beyond just technical support, there's emotional and spiritual encouragement. There's a channel on there for prayer requests. If you don't know about that, join the prayer request channel. If you have a prayer request, share it. People in the community will pray for you. And this community helps us grow personally and professionally. Again, I feel like I'm pushing rock up a hill by myself so often. Right? And and I know I'm not alone, but this community has encouraged me. It has challenged me. It has helped me to grow. I I'm not you know, I'm the one rock person on my staff, and I'm the closest thing to a developer that we have, and I am by no means a developer. And we're about a just just for a little context, we're we're about 2,000 average attendance, four campuses, about 35 staff, and and we do everything in Rock. Like, I I love Rock, and I'm also on the communications team. So if we're gonna do anything in communications, it's gonna be through Rock because I'm on the communications team. So that makes it a little bit easier. Yeah. So you're not alone. Alright. So I wanna give you just some super easy practical ways that you can get involved. And as I was thinking about this, this this song popped in my head. So here's a quick little song. So why did I play that? Because I went to the scoreboard in Rocket Chat, and we have twenty nine thousand four hundred four hundred forty seven points. I'm not a great singer, so ignore that. But 29,447 points. I was curious. I went to our we use Rock Project Management. There's a plug in, if you don't know about, called project management. We use that for our whole church project management, and I just went and pulled up how many projects have we done in the last two years, and it was 1,200 communication requests. And just to put that I mean, again, in perspective, I feel like all we do is get communication requests. But 29,447 points. That's 29,447 times that somebody in the community has helped another person. Like, that is amazing. And so where are the points? I mean, you've heard a little bit about it, but Rocket Chat is the number one. If you don't do anything else with the community, download Rocket Chat. I'll have a QR code at the end where you can scan it. But I have Rocket Chat on my desktop. I have Rocket Chat on my mobile phone, and I have Rocket Chat open all day, every day at work. It's always open. And so just to let you know, Rocket Chat is a tool where you can talk to the whole community. There's all sorts of different channels for whatever you're dealing with. There's web. There's communications, engagement, small groups. I mean, just tons of different channels. And so just going over these bullet points, join Rocket Chat. And in case you haven't and you don't know, you already have an account, it's the same login and password that you use to log in to the community website, the same that you've used to log in to the app. So everybody in the community has a a login, but a lot of times I'll talk to people and be like, don't even know I don't know how to get in there. I have do I have to create an account? All those things. No. You've already got an account. So, again, number two, install Rocket Chat on your desktop, your mobile phone. And the third thing is some people just will not ask for help. And I don't know how people live like that because I have to ask for help all the time, not just in Rock, right, but in life. Like, we're made for community. Right? We we need each other. So don't be afraid. Don't be embarrassed. This is I've been a part of some communities where you ask a question and you get made to feel like you're an idiot. Right? That's not gonna happen in this community. Like, we we all have been there. We all have learned. So don't be afraid to ask for help. So some other tips for Rocket Chat is be intentional and and schedule time. One of the things I've done is I have I've created Tim's ideal work calendar, which I hardly ever stick to, to be honest, because it's hard. Right? But, like, I schedule a few different times during the week where I'm give me thirty minutes or an hour where I'm gonna go read Rocket Chat. That's all I'm gonna do. And I'll go read the channels that I'm in, and I'll read what I've missed, and I learn from those so much. And then a lot of times there's a question, and if I know the answer, I'll hop in and help. So be intentional with that. Like, spend time at least twice a week. Like but I would say every day, like, open it for thirty minutes and read. Read some channels. Learn something. And, again, put it on your calendar. Schedule a meeting with yourself. Right? Like, I've got a meeting. I can't do that right now. I'm sorry. Focus on a few channels at first. Like, for me, I do a lot of stuff with the website, so I try to focus on, like, the CMS channel, which is all about the website and some other channels that I that I do. And another thing is schedule time to meet with people. Last night in birds of a feather, there were people asking questions about how to do some stuff on web, and me and another guy and another guy were like, we just message me. Message me on Rocket Chat. When we get back next week, like, I will meet with you on Zoom, and I'll walk you through this. Like, there are so many people that will spend time and help you do that because that's how I learned, and I wanna pay it forward. Right? And so you guys hop on Rocket Chat when you have questions, and people will help you. And and if don't be again, don't be afraid to ask and say, hey. Like, I learned better by seeing and doing. Is there any way can we hop on Zoom and you, like, show me and walk me through that? Then somebody will most likely do it. So Rocket Chat is amazing. Another thing that's crazy to me is I posted you know, I'm a part of a few different Facebook groups, like communications Facebook group and stuff like that. And it seems like every week someone is saying, what CHMS do you recommend for your church? And anytime I see that, I'm like, Rock. Go Rock. And I post a link, and I'm like, if you have any questions, reach out to me. So last week, a guy from Australia reached out to me. I didn't realize he's from Australia. And he's like, hey, Tim. I saw you posted about rock. Can you can I pick your brain about some questions? And I was like, yeah. Sure. I was like, I'll do a Zoom meeting with you if you want. He's like, yeah. That'd be cool. But I'm in Australia, so we it was a sixteen hour difference. But, yeah, let's do that. That'd be cool. So when I get back next week, we're gonna meet, and I'm gonna talk to him about rock and hopefully answer all of his questions. Probably not all of them. Alright. So another thing that you can do is recipes. It it's it's very easy. If you can open if you can create a content channel and use the editor to, you know, write out a blog or something like that, then you can write a recipe. It's the exact same thing. And I just I went and looked. There's 325 recipes. And if you don't know about this page, that QR code will take you to that, but it's just I think it's community.rmx I mean, r better. Rockrms.com/recipes, I think, is the link. But the QR code will take you there. And the great thing about this is this is literally code line line by line and write up of a recipe on how to do something. And it's crazy the amount of recipes on there. Everything from making confetti fall on your screen when it's a staff member's birthday to, like, full fledged metric dashboards, and you just you copy and paste and adjust the metric numbers and but but they walk you through that. So if you have a problem in your church, number one, check the recipes because you there's probably already a solution out there for you that you maybe you're trying to do. But if not and you solve that problem, like, you've you've done a lot of work. Do just a little bit more effort is what John says. Take add just a little bit more effort and share it with the rest of the community. Right? You've already done all the work. Now all you have to do is just document it and share it with recipes. You've already done the hard part, and now help everybody else. Rockstar. You've heard about rockstars all week. I I sat down a few years ago next to a lady, and she was like, how can I be a rock star? And and I was like, meant I don't know. Like, I'll help you. And so she would reach out to me on Rocket Chat, and two years later, is a rock star. It it's not as hard as you think. If you care and you can learn and you wanna help people, then you can be a rock star. And it's not about, you know, achieving some type of status. It's just about giving back, I mean, and sharing and loving the community and loving what you do. So you can be a rock star. And, again, ask me or any rock star how you can become one. We'll we'll we'll mentor you. We can meet with you once a month, or we can do something. It's really all about just engaging in the community, helping out, submitting recipes, submitting ideas, which we're getting ready to get to. But you are an expert at something. Right? You're you're good at something, and we need you. So rock stars are growing, and it's a it's a cool it's also cool because you get to meet with try or with John and Emily, and we have rock star meetings once a quarter online. You get to know about some things coming up a little bit ahead of time that other people don't know about. So there's lots of perks about being a rock star too besides just being able to help people. Another way to get involved in the community is ideas. It's really cool. Like, I went back and looked. I've submitted a few ideas over the time over the past few years, and it's cool to see those ideas have been implemented. So if you have like, to me, that that blows my mind that I could just be like, hey. This is awesome, but what if it did this and this? And then you can go in and vote on that as an idea, and you will basically, when an idea has so many votes and it has a a lot of people are wanting it, basically, then they put that as a priority, and we'll work on that. So submit ideas and also go vote on ideas. Just go through there and look at all the ideas that have been submitted. And if it's something that you think would be benefit you, then vote on it. And as an organization organizational level, I think. Yeah. As an organization, you get three votes every month, I think. So you can vote on three things every single month. That way you just don't go on and vote on everything. Right? If everything's important, then nothing's important. So that QR code will take you to the ideas page. But, again, it's if you go to the community site, just go to ideas on the left. Alright. Another way to be involved in the community is through bugs. If you discover a bug, number one, go to Rocket Chat and say, hey. I'm trying to do this, and it's not working. Can anybody else is anybody else seeing that happen? And if somebody else confirms it, then you can go to that place, which is GitHub. And I I didn't know anything about GitHub before Rock, so you might be a little bit intimidated when you go there. But it's just a place where all the code is stored and you can track issues and and bug fixes and all that kind of stuff. So create a GitHub account. Go to that place. That link takes you directly to the bug issues page, and they tell you exactly what to put. So it's like, hey. Give it a good title. Have you do have you checked with somebody else and confirmed that they're having the same problem? And they give you a few little questions they want you to do, And then you could submit that bug, and now it goes to the core, and they work on it, and they fix it. And it's cool. Like, hey. I did that. Like, I I started that. I found it, and I squashed that bug. I can't fix it myself, but I can find them, and so can you. So that's another great way. When you have bugs, just help out. And if you are good at developing, you can actually say, hey. This is how I think you can fix that and put it in the issue, and they'll take it and test do it their own testing and fix it. Alright. Another way to get involved is alpha and beta testing. I'm just curious. How many of you guys have, like, a dev server? K. So in case I know there's a lot of new people. What? Sandbox. Yeah. Sandbox dev server. So in case you don't know what that means, that means Rock is running on your server. Right? You have a server somewhere that powers Rock. You can spin up another instance of your server that is not live on the Internet for everybody to access that has a copy of your data, and you can go in and do whatever you want there without any worry about breaking something. Like so it's a great way to test a big thing, something you're going to do in your server. You can do it on your dev server first and make sure it doesn't break anything. So if you have a dev server, then you can every time there's a new alpha release or a beta release, and that just means new version of the product, you can sign up to be a tester. And they will give you a link, you just install the new software. And they'll give you a checklist of things to check. You just go through, can I send an email, or can I pull up this page? Can I register for an event? It's very detailed. Just they give you a step by step what to do, and you just test and make sure it works. And and then you report to them. And a lot of times, you'll be people that find problems and issues. That way, the final product is working the way it's supposed to. And, again, that QR code will take you to where you can sign up to be a alpha beta tester. Alright. So my main call to action is this. Install Rocket Chat right now. If you don't have Rocket Chat on your mobile phone, go right now, scan that QR code. It takes you to the Rocket Chat website where you can download mobile phone. Put it on your mobile phone. When you get home, install it on your desktop. And then on the on the website, it tells you the URLs and stuff to put in there when you're signing in, but I think it's just chat.rockrms.com. Make sure you put the httpscolonbackslashbackslash. And then your username and password is the again, same thing as what you're using for the app and for the community site. I will leave that up because people are taking pictures of it, so that's awesome. So that wraps up, but I'm hoping you guys have questions. I would love