Our Story

Who's Behind Spark?

We’re a group of thinkers, designers and coders who have a passion for bringing innovation to churches. We also believe that innovation shouldn’t be exclusively available to ministries with large budgets.


We are an official 501©3 non-profit organization that promotes collaboration, innovation and openness for church technology. We’re tired of watching churches struggle to afford the quality software they need to fulfill their vision. We’re passionate about bringing the latest technology, matched with great design, to open-source solutions for churches. While initially sponsoring a single project, Rock RMS, we at Spark hope to launch and support other projects in the future.

What Makes Spark Unique?

Accessibility

We’re committed to making technology accessible for ministries of all sizes and have modeled our organization after the early church to help provide for the needs of small ministries.

Community

We believe the community of churches we shepherd is at least as important as the products we build, and we invest accordingly.

Craftsmanship

We are dedicated to building elegant, simple solutions to the complex problems of ministry.

Innovation

We don’t sit around waiting for inspiration and we don’t seek to do what’s already been done. Our team is leading the charge in new technology and new insights specific to ministry.

Meet the Board

The Spark non-profit was started by leaders with years of experience in implementing leading-edge technology in churches across America.

Jon Edmiston

President

Jon Edmiston is a developer, lead architect and vision caster of Spark Development Network. Jon was an E-Commerce Program Manager at Honeywell International where he oversaw corporate e-commerce programs and developed enterprise standards for Internet technologies for 7 years. Jon then joined the staff of Christ’s Church of the Valley in Peoria, Arizona for 13 years where he led the Creative Technologies team and developed a leading custom church management system that was released to a third-party software company and installed at over 100 of the largest churches in the US.

Emily Forman

Vice President and Treasurer

Emily Forman is a leader in communications and business building. She worked in marketing and communications inside the commercial real estate and engineering industries for several years before entering entrepreneurship in the automobile industry, building and managing operations and growth for eight years. Before joining Spark, she worked at Christ’s Church of the Valley as the Communications Director where she developed the communications, marketing and in-house print shop strategies for four years.

Nick Airdo

Secretary

Nick Airdo is a developer and co-creator of Refresh Cache, an annual conference dedicated to developers of church management systems. He started his career at Motorola where he worked on email systems infrastructure, monitoring systems software and the IT data warehouse. After 12 years with Motorola he became a developer at Central Christian Church in Arizona, dedicating his programming skills to the church and pursuing his dream to collaborate and share software with other Christian developers.

Jeremy Hoff

Director

Jeremy served for 20 amazing years at Shepherd Church, initially as their "tech guy" and later as the Executive Director of Administration. While there, he gained extensive experience organizing ministry. Recently, Jeremy accepted the call to lead at Heritage Christian School, a private pre-K through 12th grade school system, as Head of School.

John Pitzaferro

Director

John Pitzaferro is Chairman and CEO of TransNational Payments, a leading privately held payments technology company and processor for merchants, financial institutions and large corporations. Passionate about community involvement and faith, John founded two other organizations, MyWell Ministries and Party with a Purpose, which have collectively saved churches and ministries over $13 million. In 2013, John co-founded Vision96, an independent consulting firm that develops customized solutions for businesses. John is also a member of the board of directors at Orphan Network and a supporter of various charities.

Bronson Witting

Director

Bronson Witting is a developer, manager, and leader with demonstrated history of working in information technology and is passionate about leveraging technology to make people’s lives better. With enthusiasm for all thing cloud, he is currently a Program Manager inside the Azure Engineering organization at Microsoft and a recipient of various Microsoft honors and awards. Before Microsoft, Bronson served as the Director of Information Technology at NewPointe Community Church in northeast Ohio, an early adopter and contributor to Rock RMS.

Justin Westrich

Director

Justin is a Global Account Manager for iT1 and a long time Spark supporter. His career background is in technology sales but his passion is in helping his community. With over 20 years experience in IT, Justin and his team enjoy their role in serving over 120 churches nationwide, to fulfill their IT needs. Justin is a devoted husband and father of two. When not working, he spends time with his family; watching his children’s soccer and football games, attending Phoenix Suns games and traveling. 

Michael Mullikin

Lead Pastor

Michael is the Lead Pastor of Operations at NewSpring Church and oversees the Technology, Construction,  Facilities & Safety, Finance, HR, and Staff Health teams.  He is passionate about using technology, innovative methods, and efficient systems to help people grow in their relationship with Jesus. Michael has been a partner in helping develop and support Rock RMS since 2012. Micheal has been married for 23 years to his wife, Lori, and they have three children. He loves spending time outdoors with his family camping and hiking.