Multi-Site Worship

If you’re booking your band a week at a time, you’ve probably got a headache every Monday. This is assuming of course that you’re jumping on the phone & scheduling your band early in the week. If you’re waiting ’till Friday to book them, you might want to hand off that part of your job to a responsible person. Or, step down from the position of Worship Leader and just play in the band. I know, that’s kinda harsh right? Well, God does everything with excellence and we should too.

There are several software programs on the market right now that make this task easy for a small fee. But there’s also Google Calendar. You do not need to have a gmail account (although it makes things a little easier) and its free. I schedule our musicians by quarter. The 3rd quarter is coming up soon, so what I’ll do is call, email and text all of the musicians and ask them to send me their availablility for the next quarter. I remind them to consider plans that they might have already before sending their schedule to me. Things like birthdays, trips, graduations, weddings, holidays etc. Once you have everyone’s schedule, you plan out your band every week for the next twelve weeks and put it in your google calendar. You just click on a date and start writing, ex. (D-Cheryl, B-Houston, EG-Jeremy, AcG-Brandon, Keys-Willie, Vocals-Barb, Tashsa, Willie). Once you’re done for the quarter, email/text/call everyone in the band and have them check the schedule for any conflicts. If there are some, then make the necessary changes. Otherwise, put your stamp on it and make it official.

The instructions for making the calendar visible to the public are available online and are simple to follow. You can also post a link on your band’s webpage or blog so that they can just go there to check the schedule. Something will almost always come up and you’ll have to make adjustments, but at least you have a master plan and you’re free to use that part of your brain for something else besides scheduling. As I mentioned earlier, it is easier when you have a gmail account because you can use that as your official band email address. You can import all of the contact info of your band members and set it up to where reminders are sent to those playing that weekend. You can even link a map to your rehearsal building which is great for auditions and 1st time players. Actually, this is really beneficial in the Multi Site Music Ministry because you might audition someone in your office but have them play at another campus on any given weekend.

I hope you’ve found this information helpful. If you have your own ideas about this subject, please feel free to comment.  Google Calendar is free and has worked for me so check it out and let me know what you think.