How Far Ahead Are You?
Posted by Travis on March 18, 2009How far ahead do you plan for Easter & Christmas services? How far ahead do you normally plan services? If the “normal” time is different, why?
Ok, now that the questions are out there, you know why you are here, so let me set them up better.
Over the past couple of months, thanks in large to Twitter (@tpaulding), I have been in communication with a large number of media/producer/tech people as well as pastors & worship leaders. At times I have become discouraged as I hear people share, as much as two months out, that they are finalizing Easter plans. We work on being ahead at SSCC, two weeks out is the normal deadline for any media project but with some sermon series we are only a few days ahead. We try to be 4-6 weeks ahead on sermon topics and base content but it takes effort. We are working to push these things closer to 8-10 weeks ahead. This gets frustrating to me mostly because rush, short deadlines and last minute planning all very negativly effect what we have the ability to produce and even worse it negatively effects creativity. I can run sound on short notice but don’t expect solid graphics or video projects.
So, at first, I got frustrated at our being “comparatively behind.” I realize we can’t all do things the same way for a lot of reasons, but it still makes me think. I also wonder if it is “wrong” of the church to put more effort on 1-2 services a year. Some churches may have the philosophy and means to always be months ahead. Honestly, I crave that.
But I currently (but not always) am bothered by putting markedly more effort into one to two services a year and then not “trying as hard” for the other 50 or so. When I set up our planning calendar for this year I definitely noted Easter, Christmas and about 6 other “high attendance” weekends for us. I think it is super-important to be ready for what is coming and aware of reasons that might bring people to your church on any given Sunday. I really just wish the Church “put that much effort” into every week.
So again, how far ahead do you plan?
Do you plan for Easter services more in advance than others?
Do you have any planning resources you use?
Share your thoughts, tell your friends… just don’t look back to my last post unless you have a time machine.
Wow, Where Do I begin,
I have been pushing for a couple or so years for us to get out ahead in our programing process. It’s a tough and never ending push. We have made much progress and continue to refine our process.
For all video projects we require 4 weeks out minimally. Of course we always have those last minute requests and will accommodate to the best of our ability. Graphic or video support for our services tends to get finished the week of the services.
In our weekly programing meetings we review our past services, work out the details of our weekend services and then go through planning details of services that are 1,2 and 3 weeks out. As we get closer to the service dates we tend to refine and have more details worked out.
For services like Easter, we walked through the services yesterday and discussed the music, the design elements etc. I will have the stage plot and input list completed this week or early next for it. The creation of the graphics and video support content will be started right away.
All of our separate bands are scheduled at least a month out and my techs are on a 4 week rotation. As information is available for them we post the information for all involved parties view.
It’s not a perfect system but hey, neither are we. We refine our process as we learn. All in all it is working out well.
Anthony Progar
Technical Director
Oak Pointe Church
Twitter: @AnthonyProgar
We don’t put tons of planning into our services in this way. I know some churches do whole big “production” things. We have basically the same order of service 52 weeks a year. For holidays we may add something – have the choir sing, have a drama, etc… but it’s basically that group that does the planning for that element.
Our choir usually has the most “prep time” for their events. We rehearse the choir every other week, and will usually do three or four rehearsals for a specific event.
We don’t do themed message series. Our preachers rotate and rarely does the same one preach two weeks in a row. There have been occaisions where the senior pastor has asked to preach on XX for a certain month because the is led the congregation needs that. But each preacher plans his own messages. (I usually have mine done in advance – some are still working on them on Saturday. )
When we have a special “non-Sunday” service, that gets extra planning. We usually take two to three months planning the Christmas cantata service, which is separate from the Sunday morning service. It’s usually on a Saturday night. Or when we do services in the park a couple of Sundays a year, those take some planning. But I don’t think that detracts from “regular” Sunday services, if each Sunday you allow the Spirit to lead. There’s something to be said for simple and familiar.
Tbone, I guess I really don’t have too much feedback but maybe just one more question. What is holding the church back in order to achieve planned services/events 8-10 weeks out? I realize that it probably takes a team effort in order for good future planning accomplished. With that said, can you set up your department so that it requires new deadlines 6-8 weeks out?
uhoh.
Is Easter here already?
Anthony, it looks like you are about where we are trying to get. We hover around two weeks out with all media requests and then schedule them from there depending on which of the three of us has time to complete it. Out bands are rarely scheduled more than a week out because people can’t always commit earlier for whatever reason AND we like to have a better feel for the music for that service so we can have the right people in place. We are working on getting the sermon & music stuff a bit more ahead to help the rest of that.
Mike, thanks for sharing. Sounds like your planning system works for what you are trying to accomplish. We just can’t do it that way here, too many things require too much prep time.
Neil, time keeps us from getting there mostly. I don’t know if 8-10 is the overall goal or not, I should ask myself and let myself know. With sermons we fluctuate b/t 3 & 8 weeks out. To get EVERYTHING that far ahead would almost require us to do nothing for a few weeks to allow for planning. Honestly, if we could get a month out on the majority of our things, we would be in good shape. It’d be nice to have a bit more notice for motion graphics and video requests though.
Mandy, no I think you have an extra month up there.
We use planning center, and while I have input the services through June, I only have the worship pre-planned through mid-April (just past Easter). The series is planned through the end of May though.
Much like Mike, we do the same basic service each week – and just add choir or drama for the “high attendance” weekends. We only have 1 team though – it’s a small church still.
Regular services get planned at least 1 week in advance (I’m trying to get them a little further out!) and our monthly evening service gets a month-worth of attention. I start planning those about 6 weeks out… but they get tweaked up until a week prior.
I agree that we need to strive for excellence in this ministry, and I am personally trying to get our ministry closer to having each service planned at least 2-3 weeks in advance… but we are still very much working on it.
This year for our contemporary service we decided not so much to focus on big songs and lots of extra stuff in the service but to focus on welcoming people. We did choose our songs about 6 weeks out and have been introducing the new ones over the past few weeks. That way when Easter rolls around we will have some new songs but they should be familiar to our core congregation.
On a regular weekly basis we generally have sermons 6 weeks out so we schedule tentative songlists 6 weeks ahead then always stay open to changing those up till the service actually runs.
Well, I run the production team for the chapel services at Asbury Seminary. It is a little bit different of a set-up than many churches, but with 3 widely different services a week we stay busy. Most of the time, we don’t know the sermon content (besides a text and title) until day of, so we can’t plan around that. What we do to keep our services well planned is follow the church calender. This means changing our calls to worship, various elements in the service, and the benediction every few months. We have to plan between contemporary worship and traditional music so our planning also revolves around that.
With media creation, we try to stay about 2 weeks out, but things change. Our tech guys schedule sound checks as far as possible, but with a high-turn over in planning at times we end up changing things alot. What I tell my team is to get the stuff that can be put in stone taken care of as far in advance as possible, then we can concentrate on what may change (it always does).
For the most part, we have a partial skeleton of the service (with all the participants, scripture texts, readings, song suggestions and special needs) done around a month out. We spend 3 hours together just for planning every monday and about an hour three days a week taking care of any last minute issues.
We try to be six weeks out, and sometimes that happens. Other times we are one week out and everywhere in between. When we are one week out, it practically kills our tech peeps.
We definitely put more into C and E because we want those people who don’t usually attend to be more impacted and to return.
Sometimes I think it counter-productive. For example, last Christmas we hired a full orchestra for a huge traditional Christmas service. Tons of cash, tons of effort.
So if someone really liked that and came back the next week to our regular contemporay band… fail
Or if someone thought it was too traditional, they wouldn’t know what our “real” services is like..
It is interesting how most have a system that has adapted to their situation and we all want to get it better still. I can’t imagine coordinating 3 different services like Chad. I produce the 2 identical “main” services a week and help out with 1-2 others a month in other ministries in the church.
Content creation first and sermon illustrations second are the main two reasons I wish we could get more ahead. I know that when our pastor has more time to “chew” on his messages there is a difference. That isn’t a shot at him at all though, I think everyone is better when they can apply more thought. Same thing goes for videos. You give me a day in After Effects, I can produce SOMETHING worth showing, if you give me 2 weeks notice before that day, I will have really thought about it and have a better end product with maybe even less “editing time.”
Jen, I feel the same way that you do for C & E services. I get frustrated to think how many worship services around Christmas and Easter every year completely misrepresent the church they are in. The issue is not how prepared we are or how big of a production it is ON Easter, the issue is that we just try to “hook” people with a blow out service or whatever on one Sunday and then go back to “reasonable” services until Christmas. Thankfully I don’t feel like SSCC does this, there is obviously a conscience awareness of the “special” days when we plan. But we don’t really pull out anything unusual that week that we wouldn’t if it fit some other week.
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