Tom Roepke - Review of Planning Center Online

Managing multiple tasks is second nature to those that lead student ministry so when our Worship Pastor invited me to add a software package to our weekly endeavor I was pretty excited. Planning Center (www.planningcenteronline.com) has made numerous administrative duties light. Our church was already using it to manage our multi-site campuses with four weekend services

Planning Center has lived up to its own promotional material. It allows you to develop a matrix that can track all songs used, track and notify volunteers, and give you critical control of all aspects of the service.

The biggest and most useful part of PC is that all the information regarding a service is located in one centralized place. Since it is web based it allows all users and participants quick and easy access anywhere anytime.

I found it especially useful with our youth praise team since they are all currently students and regular face to face communication during the week is complicated. I can add the plan for the next several weeks, plan the flow, songs and get feedback from the students at their leisure. Probably the most powerful component is the scheduling feature. You are able to manage a list of volunteers, email any and all plans that they be assigned and most importantly quickly find and conflicts. This is especially useful as several of our students also serve on the adult worship team.

Planning Center has a very clean look and uses a “drag and drop” editing feature which makes it very flexible. It handles multiple plans, service times and even rehearsal times. And I found that the learning curve is very short.

Beyond the weekly youth service, I have used it to manage our community events i.e. fall kickoff, SuperBowl party, even overnights. Planning Center gives you the ability to walk through an event from start to finish, provides a record to review for post-event critique. For productivity it is an essential tool in student ministry.

[This is a guest post by Tom Roepke , one of the excellent hosts for the Who Are These Guys Podcasts}

April 5, 2008 | Filed Under Productivity