Planning Center Online

Summer projects are smacking around the Church 2.0 team - for a glimpse of how Kez is occupying his summer, just look at his blog! For me, it's just family stuff and my day job. So, the outcome has been a bit of a slow down on the blog here. Also, in case you missed it, the RSS feed for the last post was a little flaky, so you'll want to make sure you check out Remember the Milk.

Getting on to the point...

Planning Center Online is this really cool tool for planning worship services. Every now and again I use a tool and find myself thinking that the person/team behind this really knows the situation for which is was built. This is one such tool.

I'm not sure how to succinctly summarize this tool's features except to say that it does everything you'd hope that it would (sequence songs, and other elements of the service) as well as store mp3's, lyrics and other relevant attachments (paid version), schedule and email personnel according to their roles, track and report song usage, import song data from CCLI, and transpose chord charts (also on the paid version) - all on an online interface you can share with everyone involved in the planning and implementation of your church's worship services.

The basic version is free and very functional (this is what I'm presently using). Paid versions add some features and the ability to expand with more personnel and multiple ministries.

The Planning Center Team has done an above-average job with tutorials and walk-throughs of the app's features. Their "11-Minute Overview" explains it all pretty well in about, well, 11 minutes.