I have the privilege of playing drums for the worship team at my church. Our worship Pastor, Derek has always tried to gather the information necessary for the teams (there are two) to prepare.
However, this meant downloads of charts, mp3s and links to YouTube videos to watch.
It was tedious when getting and collecting the information and the work putting it together was even more tedious.
Solution? Yes.
Enter Planning Center. In a word – awesome.
Worship leaders no longer have to send individual emails, create separate orders of service and they can easily keep track of who is going to be there and who isn’t.
The interface below contains an entire service from start to finish. Team members can listen to the songs, download the charts in PDF format and see the order of service. All without having to leave this single screen. Most churches are CCLI subscribers. Songs can be exported directly from CCLI directly into Planning Center.
I asked Derek what he thought about Planning Center since implementing it:
Planning Center is quickly becoming the industry standard for service planning among churches small to large in size.
I love the fact that our worship team can access any chart and listen to any song at anytime via the internet. I also like the fact that I can track responses of those participating in the week.
Everything else I did in the past in regards to worship planning now seems like the dark ages.
There are 4 pricing options (there is also a free plan that is minimal) with scaled options.
One feature I am intrigued with is Planning Center Live. This gives people the ability to log in with a browser or their smart phone and see where they are in the service. This is helpful for ushers or anybody else that needs to go back into the sanctuary at some point without having to open doors to check.
We also should not forget about Planning Center music stand that works with the iPad.
Other features include calendar integration (iCal, Outlook and Google), a Facebook application and the ability to use it for purposes other than services and worship. Our church is using it for scheduling nursery workers and our first impressions team (greeters, ushers).
Planning Center is an excellent resource. Highly recommended.
Justin Piercy says
Planning Center FTW. We’re multisite portable church, and not only do we use it to schedule music teams at both campuses, we also use it to schedule setup/tear down volunteers, as well as all of our production teams.
Agreed, can’t say enough about this service.
Awesome
JayCaruso says
It is great!
Adam Lehman says
We’re a relatively small church but our children’s ministry & worship team all operate via PCO. Also, the iphone app is SWEET (too bad all the tech newbs in our church don’t get the pleasure of using it).
JayCaruso says
The fact that it can be scaled is another great feature.
Trevor says
I’m very involved with the worship team at my church (www.celebration.org) as well, and PCO is the ONLY way we can do what we do. With so many campuses and bands to manage, I don’t know how a multisite, mutiservice church could get by without it!
I also blogged about how great it is recently if anyone needs more info!
http://trevolesiak.tumblr.com/post/470455656/church-and-tech-part-3