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Plan worship services on-line

by: Ken Walker

Jeff Berg and Aaron Stewart got so frustrated trying to coordinate worship and service planning at Southwest Community Church in Indian Wells, Calif., they decided to do something about it.

Last year the pair organized Ministry Centered Technologies to develop Planning Center. The on-line site started as a Windows-based computer program, but wound up as a Web-based product that doesn’t have to be downloaded.

"Everything we found wasn’t graphic enough or gave you very little file space," says Berg, director of creative technologies at Southwest and the company’s technical expert and sole employee.

"Planning Center lets you manage all aspects of a worship service in one place," says Stewart, who reviews any technical developments before they are implemented. "But we didn’t want it to just be for worship leaders. We wanted to tie in volunteers for the whole church."

Worship Planning 2.0 is aimed at worship leaders. However, it can be used by any ministry leader in a church to coordinate planning and electronically notify volunteers of assignments, practices and worship schedules.

Thanks to modern technology, volunteers can also go to the site to download sheet music, accompaniment tracks and other data the church has uploaded.

In true 21st century fashion, the two founders still work together, even though Stewart moved to Las Vegas, Nev., in November of 2005 to become music pastor at non-denominational Central Christian Church.

The venture originated with Stewart’s efforts to track worship performances on a database program to help with scheduling. He showed it to Berg, who designed a program to refine the task.

However, as they developed the Windows-based system, downloading updates proved cumbersome. When Stewart moved to Las Vegas and found his new church worked on Macs, he could no longer use the program.

That led Berg to redo it from scratch and create an on-line site that anyone could access. Launched in June of 2006 at Saddleback Church’s Purpose-Driven Worship Conference, by early January the site had more than 100 paying customers, with another 500 churches using a free module.

Monthly charges start at $30 for planning for one ministry and range up to $99 a month for use by 25 ministries.

The operation still runs on shoestrings, says Berg, although he will soon cut his hours at Southwest to part-time status.

"I don’t have any corporate sponsor or venture capital," Berg says. "The amount of advertising directly relates to the money I have in the bank. A lot of my advertising has been through blogs and referrals. It’s been growing steadily."

Half a dozen ministries at Central Christian utilize Planning Center, which Stewart likes because everyone can keep track of who’s doing what at a particular service.

For example, two of his band members volunteer in the technical center when they’re not playing. When Stewart wants to schedule someone for special music he can first check on-line to see if that person has other duties that day.

In addition, those who want to start practicing music can download it as it’s available rather than waiting until complete worship packets are assembled.

"With the site I can put it up as I plan it," Stewart says. "I know worship songs and special songs for the next three weeks. Volunteers can download songs I have ready, and sheet music."

Although it would seem most useful for megachurches like Southwest and Central Christian, Stewart says Planning Center can be used by any size congregation, whether 50 or 5,000.

"There are so many features in it, a small church can take advantage of the organizational features of a big church," he says. "We want it to be useful for anybody."