Adding weekday services to your MSP schedule? 📅

[Krista Kutz]

Hi MSP Community!

We've recently heard from some churches interested in adding daily Mass or weekday chapel services to MSP. This is a great option for keeping all ministry schedules in one system! 

Do you include both weekday and weekend services in your schedule? If so, we’d love to hear how it’s working for you.

Please chime in with the additional services you've incorporated beyond Sunday. Feel free to share any tips you have for including weekday volunteers in MSP. Your experiences could be really helpful to others just getting started! 💒

Blessings,
Krista

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Krista M. Kutz, MDiv
Growth & Impact Manager
Rotunda Software

[Kathi Kulesza]

We've been scheduling weekday and weekend masses in MSP for several years. I also schedule Holy Week rehearsals in MSP since our ministers are already familiar with the schedule/app. Patience is essential. Your volunteers need time to get comfortable with the app. Some volunteers may never use it, but overall, it will be a huge benefit to the ministry leaders and the volunteers who adapt. :) 

[Karen Kranz]

I use it - especially during Lent and Advent when we hold mid-week services. I set up the service time and either make it active or inactive to include it in the monthly schedule. As Kathi stated, the key is getting people to be comfortable using the app.

Blessings,

Karen Kranz

Living Springs Lutheran Church

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[richard...@gmail.com]

I use MSP for yearly non-weekend services, but I don’t use the auto-scheduler for those.  Since I don’t have anyone with the “Any special service” preference, I’ve found that I can’t schedule people on weekdays that are not expecting it.  There was lots of turnover when I did that.  My mistake.  Now I either leave them open so volunteers can self-assign on the web terminal, or my partner actually makes phone calls to see if volunteers are available for a weekday service (old school).    When you have an active ministry like we do, there are always volunteers to take open spots.  Rarely  a Lector slot goes unfilled. 

 

-Richard Brehove

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Lomita

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[Paul Bresciani]

I don't use the auto-scheduler, but do schedule ministries all week (daily Masses, school Masses, funerals and Holy Days). Funerals and Holy Days are volunteer only. Happy customer since 2010 - and I just learned something new. When removing someone from a repeating assignment in a given schedule, it does not remove them from the global Preassignments page - which is why people I removed from a 3 month schedule have been mysteriously (for me) reappearing in the next schedule. Well, now I know I need to also remove them from the Preassignments page. I wouldn’t mind the option to do this in one step when removing someone from a repeating assignment, if that were feature MSP could incorporate one day.

Thanks you MSP,

-Paul

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[Ron Cecil]

Hi everyone,

We have weekdays scheduled in MSP. I have a ministry leader for weekdays only. This has worked out well so far. 

I use MSP for training times as well. I have refresher training this Saturday for example and I let those that are coming to volunteer. This is about the 3rd or 4th year for that so everyone is used to it.

Ron Cecil

St. Mary Magdalene

Humble, TX

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[david...@gmail.com]

We have been using weekday Mass auto-scheduling for a couple of years.  We have recurring pre-assignments for sacristans and use the auto-schedule for altar servers at school Masses, plus lectors and Eucharistic ministers for all weekdays.  Volunteers list the days they will serve (or cannot serve) in their preferences.

 

My only suggested fix pertains to Service Naming Settings (see below clip).

 

A Saturday morning Mass should not be assigned the liturgical name for the Sunday it precedes. The earliest a Saturday Mass can be scheduled as a vigil for the Sunday Mass is 4 PM.   It would also be preferrable if the “Apply liturgical names to weekend … services only” (see radio button below) did not apply any name to a Saturday morning Mass, which is technically a weekday Mass. 

 

Many thanks,

David

St. Rita Parish, Sierra Madre, CA

 

 

From: using-ministry...@googlegroups.com <using-ministry...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Krista Kutz

Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2024 2:15 PM
To: Using Ministry Scheduler Pro <using-ministry...@googlegroups.com>

📅

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[Krista Kutz]

Thank you to all for your wonderful insights about weekday services!

David, that's a great question about service naming on Saturday mornings. I wanted to chime in with a tip that could address this for you and others:

There is actually a setting that controls what time MSP considers to be the "start" of the next week. MSP has an article about it here. If you adjust the "start week" option referenced in the article to be "Sat, 4:00 PM" in your database, then it will not start applying the Sunday Mass names to services until 4:00 PM on Saturday.

Hope this helps!

Best wishes for a wonderful weekend,

Krista

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Krista M. Kutz, MDiv

Growth & Impact Manager
Rotunda Software

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To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/using-ministry-scheduler-pro/001d01daf586%24f4988530%24ddc98f90%24%40gmail.com.

[enwi...@gmail.com]

Hi All,

All of the responses coming in are very interesting and informative. I find it helpful to see how others use MSP.

We use MSP to schedule weekday services during Lent and Advent seasons as well as midweek summer services. I have tried various ways over the 10 years we've been using MSP, but have now settled on identifying these midweek services as individual "Yearly" services in the Service Times function (e.g. Lent Midweek 1, Lent Midweek 2, ... Advent Midweek 1, Advent Midweek 2,....etc.). Each service has the "Remind me to change the date of this service" box checked.  These yearly services allow me to easily refer back to what we did the previous year. Our schedules typically span more that a liturgical season so I can easily include the Yearly Advent midweek services in December in a schedule that spans December and January.

Emily Wixson

Madison Christian Community

Madison, WI

[Karen Kranz]

Emily, we are on the same page! Thanks for your input.

Blessings, Karen Kranz

Living Springs Lutheran Church

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[Krista Kutz]

Hello MSP Community, and happy summer!

I'm revisiting this earlier thread about scheduling weekday services because my own church is hoping to add our Daily Mass to MSP, and I'd love to hear advice from other churches who have integrated weekdays and weekends into MSP.

Our Sacristan ministry isn't currently in MSP, but we'd like to include it. We have two small groups of volunteer Sacristans: a few who serve on weekdays and a few who serve on weekends. Our weekday Sacristans serve at Daily Mass, Monday–Friday at 6:30 a.m. Each weekday Sacristan takes one full week of the month (1st week, 2nd week, etc.) and serves at every Daily Mass for that entire week 

Adding them to MSP feels like a great move for us because many of these Sacristans also serve on Sundays in other ministries (EM, Lector, Coffee & Donuts, etc.) and already have MSP profiles. Going forward, they'll be able to see both their weekday and weekend assignments in one place, and if something comes up, they could easily request a sub for weekday services as well.

I'm seeking this group's feedback on a couple of questions.

1) Using ministry subdivisions?

Since we will be adding Sacristan as a new ministry, and some serve on weekdays while others serve on weekends, we're deciding whether to create one new ministry (Sacristan) with two subdivisions (Weekday and Weekend) or two separate ministries (Weekday Sacristan and Weekend Sacristan).

There currently isn't any overlap between the weekday and weekend volunteers. But I'm hopeful that including everyone in MSP will raise visibility and encourage more people to help with both. Have you used subdivisions for weekday vs. weekend volunteers within the same ministry? If so, how has that worked for you?

2) Enabling auto-reminders for weekdays?

Since our weekday Sacristans volunteer at every morning Mass for an entire week, we're considering whether or not to enable auto-reminders for this small group. Auto-reminders are essential and wonderful in general, but because weekday Sacristans are scheduled five days in a row, they would receive a reminder every day. I'm curious whether that has been helpful for your volunteers or whether it led to reminder fatigue. Have you disabled auto-reminders for a particular ministry or subdivision? If so, did you encounter any issues with no-shows or coverage?

Thank you as always, friends! This community is such a blessing!

Krista Kutz, MDiv

[kathlee...@gmail.com]

We have the sacristans listed as Sacristan weekend and Sacristan weekday. It is easy to mark both for those who serve both functions. The weekday sacristans serve one day at a time, but the weekend sacristans serve for a month at a time. Have a nice day, Kathleen St. Agnes Church, Scottsbluff NE

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[Chuck Tilley]

We also have sacristans and daily sacristans in MSP.  We rotate daily sacristans for our two weekday Masses.  Some prefer morning, others prefer Noon.   I'm not sure how to solve the weekly thing except perhaps just assign the sacristan spot on Mondays and they know they are on for the whole week.

Chuck Tilley

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