8 reasons our church uses Planning Center Online

At the start of this year, we made a decision to use Planning Center Online (PCO) – a web-based tool that assists with service planning, rostering for our weekend services, and the development of our music teams.

At the time, we communicated via email some of the reasons for adopting this new tool. Some people have joined our church since then, and other people might remain unsure why we’re using it. To help you, we’ve provided a brief overview of some of the ways PCO seeks to help us as a church family.

Aside: the technology rationale

As a church we are continuing to grow – in both numbers of services and numbers of people. This means that the number of people serving in a formal capacity each weekend is increasing – over 100 people at our 6 services. That’s 800+ people for a 2-month rostering cycle – a challenge for anyone to coordinate! We appreciate that some people would prefer to receive a phone call each time they are rostered on to serve. Unfortunately in a church the size of ours, this simply isn’t possible.

We appreciate that the use of technology can sometimes be at the expense of face-to-face relationships (or phone calls), and are conscious of the concerns some people have. It is our desire that by using technology in some areas (e.g. for our service planning and rostering), we can free up time and resources to pursue these face-to-face relationships in other areas of church life. We are also aware that technology provides some great opportunities – e.g. to assist in the development of our musicians (read on for more details!).

Why are we using Planning Center Online?

In no particular order, here are 8 reasons why we’ve adopted this new system:

1. It makes it easier for you to know when you’re rostered on. PCO allows us to map out the services each week – detailing what happens when (e.g. welcome, three songs, prayer, Bible reading, etc). When you are rostered on to serve, you can also see when in the service you are ‘on’ – for example, when you will be praying, giving an announcement, or presenting the kid’s talk.

2. It makes it easier for you to indicate when you won’t be at church. When you log-in to PCO, you can select ‘block-out dates’ – dates you won’t be at church. This is very helpful when it comes time to prepare the rosters, as the service administrators can easily see that you won’t be available on a particular weekend. In the past, you could send an email indicating the dates you were unavailable. Come roster time however, it was a fiddly task to cross-check each service each week, against the different dates people were unavailable. Now, if the service administrator tries to roster you on when you’ve selected block-out dates, they are notified, informing them that you’re not available.

3. It helps musicians to practice and prepare. PCO is a very helpful resource for our music teams. PCO makes it possible for musicians to download the chord charts, sheet music etc., and view videos and audio files for every song we sing at church. Not only can musicians see when they are rostered on, they can see what songs we’re singing at church on these weeks, and access the resources (chord charts, sheet music, etc.) for these songs. This allows our musicians to rehearse in advance (not just in the hours before the service), and to practice new songs from home.

4. You can accept or decline within the email. When you are rostered on to serve, you will receive an email. Within the email you will be able to click on ‘accept’ (if you can serve), or ‘decline’ if you are unavailable. If you are rostered on multiple times, you will be directed to a web page where you can accept/decline all on the one page, in just a matter of a few clicks.

5. You can receive email reminders. PCO sends email reminders automatically in the days before the service each week, so you can be reminded that you’re reading the Bible this weekend (in case you’d forgotten!).

6. You can sync your serving dates to your electronic calendar. If you use an electronic calendar (e.g. Outlook or iCal), you can sync the dates you are serving to this calendar. In this way, you can automatically view the dates you are serving on your calendar.

7. Rostering can be managed by individual ministry leaders. PCO enables individual ministry leaders to manage their own rosters and be updated when people are unavailable to serve. This means that welcome team leaders, or Kid’s Church coordinators can create their own rosters, and see the availability of people on a given weekend, and how else they might be rostered on to serve. As a church, we’re still getting familiar with PCO and so haven’t set this functionality up yet, but we intend to make it available in the future.

8. It makes life easier for service administrators. As mentioned earlier, our church is growing, and the administrative needs are becoming more complex. We need a system that is more flexible than an Excel spreadsheet to manage the different needs of each of our 6 services, and to keep track of who can serve when. This system, while not perfect (is there a perfect system?!), provides some significant advantages to those who administer our services.

As you can see, not all of these reasons will be relevant to you. However, this is a case of Philippians 2:4 - we are using PCO because of the benefits for our church family as a whole – collectively, there are a number of features that make it very useful for the different groups of people who are involved in our services each weekend.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you might like to watch this 6-minute tutorial:

Volunteer Training from Planning Center on Vimeo.