Updates to COVID-19 Response Features Posted: 4/30/2020 An update on the four new features created to help as we prepare to return to in-person services. Read more
COVID-19 Feature Response Posted: 4/20/2020 Looking to the next phase of our response to COVID-19, we want to know which features and services will help most. Look at these proposed options and let us know what you think. Read more
The Top Four Reasons You Should Be Running Your Website on Rock Posted: 4/17/2020 During this time, a church's digital strategy has become a top priority. With this new focus, are you realizing that you need more from your external website? Here are a few reasons why utilizing Rock for your external site is so critical. Read more
Online New Believer Process Posted: 4/15/2020 Utilizing Rock’s text-to-workflow tools, the team at Emmanuel Church took their New Believer's process online. Read more
Provide New Ways To Give Posted: 4/13/2020 Many churches receive less than 50% of their giving online. With online services being the only option right now, how are you connecting with all your givers? Read more
One Click, Connected Posted: 4/8/2020 COVID-19 and social distancing have become a part of our new normal. Churches have found useful tools to maintain connection and community. But innovation doesn't stop at finding the tools. For the team at Hillside, innovation is taking the tools and simplifying their usage. Read more
Important eRA Adjustments for COVID-19 Posted: 4/6/2020 With the shift to online services, we recommend making important eRA adjustments. Read more
Handling Increased Traffic Posted: 4/4/2020 All churches are experiencing higher weekend web traffic, which means that all Rock installs are now operating under a different load. Discover what NewSpring did to ensure they were ready. Read more
Maintaining Internal Communication Posted: 4/3/2020 Working remotely is new for many churches and can make internal messaging challenging. Here are some tips from the community. Read more
It's an On-Demand World Posted: 4/2/2020 Church moved online basically overnight a few weeks ago. For some, that was business as usual but for others it was a brand new challenge. Read more
Lead Through I.T. Live Panel Posted: 4/1/2020 Churches in the Rock community have been collaborating on best practices and Rock-powered tools to lead their organizations through the changes brought on by the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. While many have similar goals, the ingenuity behind their unique solutions and they innovative ways they're extending their toolsets is inspiring. In this video, you'll find the full recording of a live panel featuring four church tech leaders and two leaders of the Spark team as we discuss the challenges, opportunities and successes each has encountered. Also included are the insightful questions of the Rock community during the live Q&A. Watch On-Demand
Communicating with Your Cash and Check Donors Posted: 3/31/2020 Giving to your church can be challenging for those in your community who traditionally donate by cash or check on campus. In most cases, they just need a friendly guide to help them make the transition to a new method of donating while churches are meeting digitally. In this guide you'll find a step-by-step recipe to communicate with your analog givers, giving them the choice of receiving a self-addressed stamped envelope or receiving a phone call from someone who can walk them through the process of setting up online giving for the first time. Download the Guide
Add Prayer Request Workflow Action Posted: 3/27/2020 This plugin gives you immediate access to an upcoming core feature that allows you to add prayer requests via a workflow action. In the upcoming days and weeks more and more people will be wanting and needing prayer. This gives you many more ways to easily get requests into your system and in front of others. Install the Prayer Request Workflow Action Plugin From the Rock Shop View Documentation
Get Running with Prayer Requests in Rock Posted: 3/27/2020 With churches shifting from in-person gatherings to online services, we’ve seen the need to be able to share prayer needs digitally. Our team has been hard at work creating a new prayer overview guide to help get your church running with Rock Prayer Requests. In the overview you’ll learn how to add the prayer request block to your site, set up your prayer team, and empower your church to pray for specific requests, all through Rock. We hope that this overview will help your organization to strengthen and expand your prayer ministry through the pandemic. Download the Guide For a deeper look at all of Rock’s Prayer Request features read the Raising Up With Prayer guide.
Connection Campaigns Posted: 3/26/2020 Spark has worked around the clock building a plugin that provides a simple way to create connection campaigns that facilitate contacting many individuals. It links several of Rock’s most-loved features together. While this is being initially deployed as a plug-in, the feature will eventually be moved into the core product. This pattern was chosen to more quickly meet the immediate needs of churches responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Connection campaigns have been designed to work as a one-time connection or as a reoccurring connection. As you read through the rest of this configuration guide, keep that in mind. Install the Connection Campaigns Plugin From the Rock Shop View Documentation
Embeddable Video Chat Posted: 3/25/2020 We heard from the Rock Community that there was a need to provide video chat capabilities for ministry groups of all sizes. We mobilized to set up a video service that you can embed right on your website using a simple Lava shortcode. Spark is providing the hosting for this service, so you only need to add the shortcode to your Rock install. In the spirit of moving quickly, we we are not worrying about recouping our costs in the first month. Once we get more data on how much server capacity we'll need, we can set up a plan to fund the costs going forward (assuming the service is still desired). We estimate the costs will be between $50-$100 per month, depending on the size of the church. This is just an estimate though. Space is limited on our inital release. Add your organization to the interest list. We'll contact you with instructions about how to proceed.
Coronavirus Tip Sheet Posted: 3/10/2020 A guide for churches on how to prepare for unexpected closure. Download the Guide