{"id":354,"date":"2009-10-13T06:00:22","date_gmt":"2009-10-13T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/?p=354"},"modified":"2009-10-12T18:50:19","modified_gmt":"2009-10-13T00:50:19","slug":"planning-center-online-is-amazing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/planning-center-online-is-amazing\/","title":{"rendered":"Planning Center Online Is Amazing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After being a skeptic for a very long time, I finally decided to give <a title=\"Planning Center Online\" href=\"http:\/\/www.planningcenteronline.com\" target=\"_blank\">Planning Center Online<\/a> a go.\u00a0 We were using 37 Signals&#8217; writeboards for service planning, which worked for a time, but the fact that we had to make a new writeboard in a new place every week and keep track of a whole bunch of links just wasn&#8217;t working for us.\u00a0 So, I looked specifically for a free online planning tool that was specifically geared to churches and worship services.<\/p>\n<p>I ended up seeing that <a title=\"Planning Center Online\" href=\"http:\/\/www.planningcenteronline.com\" target=\"_blank\">Planning Center Online<\/a> had a light, free, version.\u00a0 &#8220;Cool,&#8221; I thought.\u00a0 &#8220;Let&#8217;s check this out.&#8221;\u00a0 I was instantly hooked.\u00a0 Even with the free version there are powerful planning features available.\u00a0 After using the free version for a couple weeks, I quickly convinced my pastor that we should upgrade one level.\u00a0 Then, after using the first level for a couple weeks, he suggested that we upgrade to the next level.\u00a0 It is very much worth it.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s a quick run-down of the great features available:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All your services, people, songs, and media in one place that is central to <strong>everyone.<\/strong>\u00a0 There are a lot of planning tools that have a database of people and songs that are available on a computer at the church, but with this, everything is\u00a0available for everyone <strong>online <\/strong>which is very handy if you have multiple volunteer leaders.<\/li>\n<li>CCLI reporting.\u00a0 <a title=\"Planning Center Online\" href=\"http:\/\/www.planningcenteronline.com\" target=\"_blank\">Planning Center<\/a> is able to do your CCLI reporting for you, which is awesome.<\/li>\n<li>Confirm, decline, and blackout date scheduling.\u00a0 Everyone involved has the option to black out dates on their calendar, as well as confirm or deny positions scheduled right in their email.<\/li>\n<li>Facebook Integration.\u00a0 Planning Center just added this.\u00a0 For the post-email generation &#8211; they don&#8217;t even have to leave Facebook if they don&#8217;t want to &#8211; it integrates perfectly.<\/li>\n<li>Comments and subscribing to comments.\u00a0 It is so helpful to have a section for comments and the ability to subscribe to comments so communication is made a bit easier.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I really enjoy this tool and would highly recommend it.\u00a0 I&#8217;m so glad we decided to go for it and am looking forward to how it wil help us even more in the future.<\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 5px 5px 0;float:left;height:50px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/planning-center-online-is-amazing\/\" send=\"false\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"595\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After being a skeptic for a very long time, I finally decided to give Planning Center Online a go.\u00a0 We were using 37 Signals&#8217; writeboards for service planning, which worked for a time, but the fact that we had to make a new writeboard in a new place every week and keep track of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-worship-leaders","category-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamanoffering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}