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Service planning
Rostering one Sunday at a time is how gaps appear. With service planning, a coordinator prepares the next four or eight Sundays together, lets Chimes suggest who serves, and reviews the whole draft before a single invitation goes out.
Volunteers answer from the member app, say which days they cannot serve, and arrange their own cover when something comes up. On the day, everyone serving opens the same published running order, or prints it.
In short
Review before anyone is asked
Planning produces a draft. Invitations are sent only when the coordinator publishes it, and never twice.
Cover with consent
A replacement has to agree and a coordinator has to approve. Nobody is moved onto the roster without saying yes.
Times that mean something
Rehearsals and arrival times are part of the plan, checked for clashes and shown to each volunteer in the church's time zone.
Volunteer rotations for several Sundays at once
Choose a weekly service and a date range, then how people are suggested. Fair suggestions spread serving across each position's qualified team, favouring those who have served least recently. Team cycle lets groups take turns by calendar week, such as Team A then Team B.
The draft shows every date, every position and the reason each person was suggested, and any gap it could not fill. Change anyone you like, then publish: only then are the invitations sent, and publishing twice never invites anyone twice.
- check Teams are your existing groups, with dated qualifications for each position
- check Blockouts, dates away and overlapping commitments respected
- check Accepted places survive when a draft is prepared again
Worship service planning, start to finish
Each plan belongs to a service already on the church calendar, so attendance and the volunteer roster stay in the same place.
Coordinators need volunteer and worship plan permissions. Leading a group does not by itself let anyone schedule or edit a plan.
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01
Choose the services
Pick a weekly service and the Sundays to plan, four weeks or more at a time.
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02
Let Chimes suggest
Fair suggestions or a fixed team cycle, from qualified team members who are free that day.
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03
Review the draft
Change anyone, fill the gaps it reports, and check each person's reason.
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04
Publish
Invitations go to everyone in the draft, who accept or decline in the app or from their email.
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05
Serve from the running order
On the day, volunteers open or print the published order. Absences become cover requests, not phone calls.
Service plans, availability and cover for volunteers
Under Serving, each volunteer sees the services they are on, when they need to be there, rehearsal included, and the published order for that service. They accept or decline, and set recurring preferences such as no Saturdays or at most twice a month.
Ask someone to cover offers the place to a qualified replacement. The replacement agrees, a coordinator approves, and only then does the roster change. Until it does, the original volunteer stays scheduled. Two volunteers can also swap dates outright.
- check Preferences never cancel a place already accepted
- check Each affected team approves its own role in a swap
- check Notifications when a plan, a request or a roster place changes
A running order everyone reads from
The order of service is published in numbered versions. Volunteers on the roster see the published version only, with each item's start time, length and notes, and the songs, readings and private files chosen from the church's worship library.
Print running order gives a paper copy for the lectern or the sound desk. Changes stay in draft until the coordinator publishes them again, so nobody reads an order that is still being edited.
The worship team also gets a live view of the service with now, next and a countdown, the rehearsal recordings and the charts to read and mark up. See worship tools.
- check Reusable order templates for each style of service
- check A versioned worship library of songs, readings and documents
- check Orders and templates are prepared through the Chimes API; there is no browser editor for them yet
Related features
Worship tools
A live view of the service with now, next and a countdown, rehearsal recordings with section loops, and chord charts with private marks and page following.
See the feature arrow_forward
Volunteer rosters and event sign-ups
The roles each service needs, invitations answered by email or in the app, reminders, and event registration with capacity, guest limits and prices.
See the feature arrow_forward
Events and serving
Members book their household and guests for church events, paying when there is a price, and answer the roster, see their service plans and arrange cover.
See the feature arrow_forwardSee Chimes with your own congregation in mind.
Tell me how your church keeps its records today and where you would like Chimes hosted. I will come back with a deployment plan and a straight answer on what it will take.