Rota Management
We've recently started using this fantastic rota system at church, and I wondered if others are using similar things?
---
One of the things we've realized with a growing worship team is that unless you rule the rota, the rota will rule you!
We're constantly looking for tools that are going to help us improve the way we effectively manage our worship team, and help us with things like song circulation and communication ahead of Sunday. In the past few months we've been using a system called 'Planning Centre' which has been fantastic for our team. http://www.planningcenteronline.com/
On any given Sunday we'll have four bands covering seven services on two central London sites, with eight bands rotating across the month. It's a bit of a logistical nightmare, and this has really helped! Does anyone have any experience of using a similar system?
Isaac Downing
From CrossPoint Church (East Peoria, Illinois, USA)
30 January 2009 - 2:22am
We've been using Planning Center for about a year and a half now, and it has been a huge blessing. I've tried to find another system for comparison, but haven't found much.
http://www.worshipplanning.com is another, can work out cheaper than planning centre depending on the size of your church.
We use a churchinsight based website, which has full rota management (and membership database features) integrated into it.
Is there anything out there that you wouldn't have to pay monthly and just pay a flat rate? I have a small church and would like to try something like that yet we don't really have a large worship group
Or..how about Worship Central use their region functionality to allow individual churches to have their own space on here. I'm sure with a bit of tweaking a rota system could easily be bolted onto a forum...
@Steve
We'd love to do that - we've been exploring it for a while, (along with the iPhone app!) but have not found a solution yet...
Hey Al!
sounds ace! If you want any help let me know - I did comp sci at uni...but I bet you've got a heap of techies down there as well!
Incidently, I use a dinky little excel spreadsheet I knocked together - if anyone wants a copy please message me through the site! Totally free! Yay!
Hi Al,
Whilst working at the Music Dept for Kensington Temple we came across the same challenge so after some research we decided to go with Google Docs and Google Calendar both of which are free and allow us to share our Rota (created online with Google Docs Spreadsheet) with unlimited amount of people as well as publish it online via a private link for worship team members to view.
Blessings,
Ivo R Ivanov
Hi Al. We've been using Planning Center (PC) for acouple of years now. I'm really not sure a Excel spreadsheet and my own website would do the job you cna get on PC. Sionce we started using it the site has got a lot more intuitive. Early oin i looked at a couple of otther sites (Worshipplanning.com perhaps?) but found the layout less easy to use.
We now use this for all our services aqnd the annual CCLI report was a lot easier. I did smile at your song use survey recently because PC makes this very much easier. I also find it incredibly helpful in circulating peopler with music. We have a kids band with up to 20 different instruments and about 12 different parts which I attach to each song. Being classical musicians they even print out the parts themselves. Gone are the days I drop them round houses! Fantastic!
I add parts to everything. There's some concern re copyright - see web discussion - but as the other option is copy everything and leave it in a church cupboard I don't think it is functionally different.
The cons of using it are around change and IT use; you rapidly discover who's not as IT savvy as you thought! But would completely recommend it, definitely the way forward!
Andy Langton
Bilton Evangelical Church, Rugby
For worship we are using www.worshipteam.com founded by a vineyard guy here in the states. It's about $20 a month and is a blessing for time management. I am waiting for some smart person to come up with a one time up-datable software that does things via the internet as well. It's frustrating because there are so many publishing hoops these designers have to go through to get song information on the sites legally.
mike obrien
www.vineband.wordpress.com
www.myspace.com/luckosoundstudio
New Song
Forum Latest
