Worship service planning. It's not what it used to be. I can remember years ago writing a list of songs down on a piece of paper for each musician before a Sunday service. You know....3 fast, 3 slow and an 'offeratory' for your ONE Sunday morning service. Standard protocol in the late 80's early 90's. You had your 4-5 musicians that played every Sunday and you had a rehearsal, well, tried to have rehearsals if you could get the 4 guys to show up. Chord charts weren't really an issue (most of the songs were right there in the hymnal) and an mp3 might as well have been a cousin to C3PO.
Fast foward to 2009. Multiple services, multiple teams, chord charts galore, and you can't survive without a rehearsal. It can be very overwhelming coordinating all those things as a Worship Pastor. We all want every Sunday to be meaningful and want to be sure that our teams have all the resources they need. Here at PCC I found myself scrambling much more than I had planned. I wanted to make sure everyone was in the loop and had their resources (charts, words, mp3s, etc.). Great goal, but tough to achieve with 3 services and over 35 members on my team. I did alot of research on the internet about service planning options and tried many 'free trials'. Now, I'm not a salesman or representative for this program, just a Worship Pastor trying to be an intentional leader. I came across a web based program called Planning Center Online. If you are looking, or needing, some help in organizing your team and services then you may want to check them out (of course there are other ones on the web as well). I have used it for 2 months and I love it! I can plan service orders, attach chord charts, mp3s, lyric sheets, etc. All my team members get emails when I schedule them and they can either accept or decline the request (it can even send them text messages if they choose to get them). And my team LOVES it. They can see plans ahead of time and have the resources they need to prepare for rehearsals. Most of all, they feel connected! We communicate via email, I can send them updates on songs, and our rehearsals are much smoother as a result. If you're struggling with planning your services and rehearsals, be encouraged....there are solutions out there that can help. It's nice when technology can help us with the administrative parts of our ministry so we can focus more on people!
