How We Use Planning Center

We use Planning Center to: 

1. Schedule musicians and singers for Sunday. One month out the songs are chosen for each service and added within Planning Center. Then a request is sent to each volunteer, who can either confirm or deny availability for the week(s) they are needed.
2.  Schedule our production team (the people who run the computer, soundboard, lights, video cameras, etc.) Each week a request is sent to each volunteer, who can either confirm or deny availability for the upcoming Sunday. Each service is divided into the specific positions, so all the volunteers know exactly when and what they are responsible for that Sunday.
3. Create an attractive looking Order of Service for our staff, worship, and production teams so that everyone making the service happen that day can get on the same page. This document includes the worship songs, announcements, lighting cues, video clips, exact times, and any special information needed each week.

Here’s what I like about Planning Center: 

1. You can access it online or via their smartphone app.
2. It allows you to post and share music (so you don’t have to buy the latest Hillsong album for each person on your worship team – you can just post it online and the whole team can share it). Now to do that legally you need a CCLI Rehearse license which I’ll cover in a future post.
3. Planning Center offers something called “Music Stand” which allows our worship team to see the lyrics and chords to each song we sing on Sunday from their iPads and hear the metronome through their in ear monitors. It also allows direct access to the uploaded music files so the team can quickly play the originals for reference during practices.

Thanks to Jeremy Paine, our Creative Arts Pastor for helping me with this post.