On Easter Sunday, your church wants to reach everyone you can with the message of Christ’s sacrificial love and eternal redemption. You want that to be your worship team’s overriding focus – and having to think too much about the mechanics of your services as they take place can distract from the Easter sermon.
Is there a way to get your Easter Sunday services planned to perfection, so you can keep your focus on rejoicing in Christ’s love and truly celebrating Easter? Absolutely!
WorshipPlanning, a leading service planner included with FellowshipOne church management software, is a great example. It can help you outline and organize your Easter Sunday services ahead of time so that your church team can focus on the true meaning of Easter.
Easter is right around the corner, but there’s still time to get onboard with the best solutions. Let’s look at four strategies for putting planning software to work for your Easter services:
Empowering Your Volunteers
Churches large and small are powered by volunteers—what would we do without their gifts, their dedication, and their willingness to serve?
But even for a routine Sunday, coordinating and scheduling your volunteer team can take hours of behind-the-scenes effort, and the task is multiplied on a milestone day like Easter Sunday. Good worship planning software can cut that time down dramatically by keeping your entire team on the same page. For Easter services, the right worship planning software lets you:
- Allow volunteers to indicate their specific availability and sign up for open slots.
- Schedule volunteers for multiple Easter Sunday services simultaneously.
- Coordinate with individuals, teams, and sub-teams in your church.
- Automatically remind scheduled volunteers via email, text, and Facebook.
- Create custom roles unique to your church’s needs.
And when your Easter services are finished and it’s time to plan for your next service or another large-scale event, your worship planning software will be available to help your volunteer team get ready to serve. It’s a tool that can make your day-to-day operations better all year!
Planning Your Worship Service
Worship planning software can help you plan the elements and flow of your Easter services to eliminate distractions on the day-of and create an atmosphere dedicated to worship. This will help your services flow naturally, encourage engagement with your congregation, and help usher church members into the presence of God.
Whichever elements you are planning for your Easter services—from songs and videos to scripture, prayer, and giving— worship planning software will help you move seamlessly from one item to the next without breaking the flow of the service. There’s so much it will help you accomplish, including:
- Creating an order and flow for the service, from scratch or with a template.
- Viewing song details before adding to a flow.
- Quickly updating your worship plan with new elements or ideas.
- Providing notes for teams or individuals.
- Generating a visual presentation of the service for everyone involved.
This software will be an invaluable resource for Easter services, and it can also help you throughout the year with everything from choir practices or youth group programs to the musical portion of children’s services.
Bringing Music into Focus
Music is a cherished part of worship services, especially as Christians celebrate the miracle of Easter that has inspired so many beloved hymns. But we all know that song selection can be stress-inducing. It doesn’t have to be, though! No matter the size of your team, being organized and prepared will reduce the stress of finalizing your Easter Sunday songs.
That’s where worship planning software comes in: you can use it to plan the precise musical themes and song selections of your Easter services—songs that complement the sermon and reinforce the Easter message, and that give the service a sense of unity and purpose.
Look for worship planning software that lets you add songs as you build your flow or upload files directly from your CCLI SongSelect™ account or a CSV file. A good program will let you transpose keys for MP3 and text chord charts and annotate, rehearse, and perform music after importing your songs. You can also link to popular music services, including Spotify and YouTube, for practice sessions. You can even manage and share the key, tempo, capo, duration, lyrics, and more.
Worried about security? You don’t have to be, because with WorshipPlanning, files related to songs, services, and teams are secured and stored in a central location, and permissions can be set to allow only authorized volunteers to access files and prepare for the service.
And again, think of all the events, all year long, that require thoughtful planning about the best song selections and presentations. Your software will be there to help you every step of the way.
Achieving Success with Live Streaming
Live streaming is now an essential component of your Easter services and all your worship programs. The better you can plan your service from beginning to end, the more successful you will be at broadcasting your Easter service, and best of all the message of Easter, to all who want to join.
Let’s face it: Online worshippers are more likely to lose interest and quickly seek out another church if there’s a lull or disruption in your service. It’s the nature of the platform! But a well-planned service will keep your online audience engaged and connected, and this will help your church build stronger spiritual relationships with your congregation and with new online visitors seeking a church home. Plus, you can provide captioning to make your service more accessible, and allow unique giving opportunities for those who feel inspired to support your church on Easter Sunday. (And of course, if your AV team is powered by volunteers, your planning software will let them get organized for Easter Sunday.)
FellowshipOne partners with ChurchStreaming for the best digital broadcasting experience, and their team can help you make sure you’re ready for a successful Easter live stream and for all your future services, programs, and events. Plus, they’ve got templates and scripts to help you announce and promote your live stream to your congregation and the wider community.
Easter Sunday is a time for spiritual renewal and the glorification of God, and worship planning software lets you focus on the Easter message rather than the mechanics of running the service. It’s a resource that will serve you well throughout the year.
Ready to get started, while there’s still time before your Easter services? Get in touch with us today to learn more about FellowshipOne with WorshipPlanning and how it can work for your ministry.
