Morgantown Community Church: Early Adopters Published May 13, 2016 You couldn't possibly be an earlier adopter than Morgantown Community Church, a church in Elverson, Pennsylvania with an average attendance of 400 people. After a Google search result pointed DJ Grick, Youth Pastor / Director of Media and Technology, to Rock RMS as a potential church management solution, he did a little digging and figured out how to download and install Rock about a week before the beta was officially released. In addition to financially contributing to the open-source community-supported Rock ecosystem and planning for growth in their own hosting needs, Morgantown Community Church was still able to cut their ChMS budget by two-thirds without sacrificing features. "In September 2014 we finished moving our records (manually) from Church Community Builder to Rock and were able to launch check-in. The timing was perfect because it was the same time as our remodeled check-in area opened for use." And one month later, they were live on Rock. Their biggest downfall during the early months was the unreliability of their ISP dropping their Internet connection during peak check-in times. DJʼs best advice in this area was hard-won. "In January, we switched providers and have had no issues since." Itʼs a good idea to know your options. A few key staff members made the data migration work possible, and a little time during every monthly staff meeting has brought the team up to speed on the features they've chosen to use. These features include: person and family management, group management, email and text communication, background checks with Protect My Ministry, and check-in. After a recent rollout of CMS / church website, prayer toolbox, and group toolbox features, they've moved their implementation focus toward building a metric dashboard and improving processes for tracking members and new families. With plenty of features to choose from, the staff still have their favorites, including check-in, Twilio, and communication history. Whatʼs next for Morgantown Community Church? They are currently building a team of programmers to help make the small changes needed for Rock to be a perfect fit for their organizationʼs culture and needs. Top Tip: Get your hosting right. "After trying out a couple different webhosts, we have been happily using 3Essentials since September of 2014. Their tech support has been phenomenal and upgrading is easy for a growing church."