Our organization has to schedule 150 volunteers every Sunday just for our main service production team and band! Needless to say I have been scouring the planet trying to find (or invent the most efficient) bombproof way of doing this. Enter Planning Center Online!! It has radically changed our ability to schedule and communicate clearly with all of our volunteers. I continue to be impressed at how well this program has been thought through. To have a central location that all of the details of the service can be accessible for everyone that is involved with that service from staff members to volunteers is completely invaluable. Thanks for seeing a need, and meeting it with such excellence. » read more

Elliott Moon, Music Director
North Point Community Church 23,000 Attendance

Every aspect of Planning Center has been helpful to us. It has made it easier to plan services, to communicate to those involved in those services, and for them to be ready for the rehearsals and services for which they are scheduled. The mp3 player is especially useful to our musicians.

Brett Lovern, Pastor of Worship & Arts
NewSong Fellowship Church 600 Attendance

Planning Center online has revolutionized our ability to be effective in communicating with those serving in our Worship Arts ministry. Not only does it connect us with our team members, it also offers connecting points with the larger worship community online by offering song suggestions. The recent addition of the easy CCLI import made me fall even MORE deeply in love with this product - and the appearance of a media page has simplified our exchange of info from the complicated "I'll drop off the USB drive in the mailbox; download the video and then bring it back tomorrow", to a simple click/upload/DONE! process!

I am most impressed by the fact that PC Online developers don't seem to be satisfied with the status quo. The fact that they are consistently offering updates and tweaking the site in terms of ease of use and appearance is impressive.

They've got my loyal commitment to use Planning Center Online and to recommend it to anyone scheduling ministry teams. It is phenomenal, and probably the most effective technology we use in ministry at PCC. » read more

Beth Brawley, Minister of Creative Arts
Powhatan Community Church 1,000 Attendance

Planning Center Online has been a God-send to us! We had been using PCO for about a year with our one service, and when we expanded to two services on Easter, it gave us the backbone to organize and schedule without any hiccups. We couldn't imagine our ministry without PCO and know that it can be such a blessing to all who use it! Thanks PCO for this incredible resource and for always improving on an already amazing product.

Kye S. Chung, Lead Pastor
Binnerri English Ministry, 150 Weekend Attendance

We have been using Planning Center since very early on, started as a free user and only used it for scheduling Worship Teams. We are using their highest level of plans and have all of our ministry groups on it. Youth, Children's, Tech.Arts, Worship Arts, Celebrate Recovery, Special Events, and more. We have over 100 volunteers tracked in it. It has dramatically changed how we schedule and handle our services.

Wyatt Johnston, Technical Arts Director
Fellowship Bible Church 1,200 Attendance

Planning Center was such a revolutionary product when we first started using it in 2006. Without warning, I started using it to schedule our band, vocalists, and tech teams, and was met with extremely positive responses from all of them. Little by little, other ministries at our church started hearing about how much easier scheduling could be, and now over 3 years later, almost every ministry at our church is using it.
One of my favorite things is that even though it was revolutionary in 2006, it has seen continuous updates since then, and is far more expansive today than I ever dreamed it could be. The time and effort it has saved us over the last couple of years is immeasurable, which is seriously amazing for such an affordable price. » read more

Aaron Stewart, Pastor of Music
Central Christian Church 14,000 Attendance

Planning Center is one of the most powerful tools our Worship & Art Deptartment uses each week, almost daily! Our volunteers appreciate the ease of responding to scheduling and preparing for our weekend gatherings. As a staff we love having all of our information located in a centralized database that we can update and communicate changes through, very easily. As one church in multiple locations, Planning Center has greatly helped increase our effectiveness in changing lives for Christ in Central Pennsylvania.

Sean McDermott, Production Technician
LCBC Church 8,500 Weekend Attendance

When I first came to Carterville, the service orders were a mess. There was little communication between the staff as far as Sunday was concerned, and all the paper we wasted from printing copies and revising was sad. When I first heard about planning center, it made perfect sense. Almost every other profession has software to assist with their jobs. The church however has always been the last to the party. For years churches used Power Point, a business program, for worship slides. The church finally caught up and began creating presentation software specifically for ministry. Now with planning center the same shift has happened to worship planning. We now have a tool that helps us schedule, plan, manage, prepare and even execute our services.

Before planning center, I was manually calling around 20 volunteers each week, manually transposing chord charts when needed, and hand writing the service flows. It was a mess to say the least. I spent more time managing the ministry then I did doing actual ministry.
Then came planning center. We started out with the free version but soon found the benefits of paying to upgrade. The automatic chord transposition alone made signing up worth it. Soon after I moved from making 20 phone calls to sending one or two emails a week. I know this is probably not how planning center recommends, but I didn't even do any training for my volunteers... it was so easy everyone caught on without a hitch. They were able to see that I wanted them to play, confirm or deny my request and even see what songs I picked and view chord charts and MP3's I had uploaded. This had changed our entire workflow for the better. Volunteers no longer had to feel bad about telling me they needed time off... they could just block out dates they wanted off or simply decline the requests I sent without guilt. AWESOME!

Next we started using Planning Center Live. This changed my life. Before PC Live we had so many timing issues. There was little communication going on between us and the people on stage. The pastor and anyone else participating in the service had no clue how much time they had left so we would always be late. As we began to grow, this became a huge problem for our nursery workers, they never had any idea where we were in the service so they had to stall if we were running late (ever been stuck in a room full of two year olds who are hungry?). The first thing I fixed with PC live was communication. I moved two old PC's we weren't using and put them at both Nursery stations and setup PC live. The chat feature allowed them to tell us if a child needed their parents and we would put a notification on the screens in the auditorium. They also had the ability to see exactly how much we were running late and how much time was left.

Then I bought a cheap LCD screen and put it on stage. The pastor was then able to see clearly how much time was left in his sermon. Now I know some people will say "you are quenching the holy spirit by putting a timer on everything!" That is so NOT true! It actually gave us freedom. I know that sounds crazy, but when you aren't flying blind, and you actually know... hey I've got 5 minutes left, you can really utilize your time better essentially making you more effective. No one likes being dragged along because you didn't prepare well enough. Sorry for the tangent. ;-)

Anyways.... most recently we have added a computer back stage so the worship team can constantly interact with the tech crew and nursery workers via the built in chat in PC Live and we are able to know when we need to be back on stage.

I could go on, but obviously you don't have the room for me to continue to ramble.

I have moved more than a few churches to planning center online. I can't thank you enough for how you have revolutionized the way we do ministry, you have made us more effective in communicating to both our team and our congregation!

You are more than a blessing. » read more

Brad Moss, Worship Minister
Carterville Christian Church 600 Weekend Attendance

Planning Center has radically simplified my job. The team knows what we're doing, and has access to all the practice materials in advance, making our midweek rehearsal a cakewalk. It's also made scheduling and service order planning super easy and accessible. I love the Songs feature, which compiles our entire repertoire (and a bazillion other songs!) in one easy-access spot, complete with CCLI license info. Planning Center is, by far, the best organizational tool I've found in the 9 years I've been leading worship.

Tami Hoban, Worship Leader
Church in the Word 250 Attendance

We've been using Planning Center Online for about a year now and it has completely changed the way that we interact with and schedule our volunteers. For me, the two features that I love are the scheduling/emailing of our volunteers for our different services and the ability for them to see and hear the music before they get to rehearsal. The scheduling alone was the reason we signed up. I love the way that it allows us to send out requests and get answers from our team so easily.
It's great. The reminder emails have also been great in getting my team to show up when they need to be there and saves me the time of having to call and remind them a few days before. The other feature I love is the ability for me to get music and charts for our musicians before they get to rehearsal. This has been huge for us and has helped us improve because of the simple fact that my team is ready and knows what to expect before they get to rehearsal. It's great. I totally recommend Planning Center Online to anyone out there who is struggling with the agony of coordinating volunteers and musicians. It's totally revolutionized the way our whole system works and saves us from tons of heartache. I love it. » read more

Victor Estrada, Worship Pastor
Calvary Church Santa Ana 2,500 Attendance

Planning Center Online has revolutionize the way we plan our service and schedule our volunteers.

At Hudson Community Chapel, we have 4 venues at 3 campuses and without Planning Center Online we would not be able to efficiently find all the volunteers and communicate to them when they will be serving, which campus and what songs. We are really excited to see what Planning Center Online comes up with next.

Hudson Community Chapel, Director of Media
Hudson Community Chapel 3,500 Attendance