Which ministries have you added to MSP over time? 📈

[Krista Kutz]

Hi everyone!

Did your church start using MSP for just one ministry, like Altar Servers or Readers, before expanding to others? We'd love to hear which ministry you started with and how you added more ministries to MSP.

We’re featuring real examples from churches in a new webinar on May 7: "Smooth Sailing: How MSP Helps Churches Navigate Change" (please join us!).

If this process of introducing more ministries to MSP over time sounds like your experience, please share—you might get a shout-out in the webinar! Your example could inspire others looking to grow the number of ministries benefiting from MSP at their church.

Thanks for sharing!

Krista Kutz

Rotunda Software

[richard...@gmail.com]

Hi Krista

Good question.

Yes.  In our parish someone had subscribed our parish to MSP several years before I became involved in the Lector Ministry.  It was only used for Eucharistic Ministers and not at all to its potential.  It was also used for a small church community home bible study group.  When I discovered it I was scheduling the lectors manually.  I was encouraged by someone in the EM ministry to take a look at it.  I had my own system for the Lectors and was initially skeptical of MSP’s capabilities.  I got my own free trial version of MSP and began “playing” with it.  I kept asking questions about it – can it do this and can it do that – and by using it and reading the very good tutorial articles you have written, the answer was usually YES.  I got more and more excited about it.  I took over admin control of the parish version ( with the complete blessing of the previous admin – who is still a has admin privileges) and added the Sunday Lector ministry.  About two years later the Altar Server coordinator – also an EM,  began using it when she became responsible for Altar Servers.  I just made her a Web Admin and now she can do whatever she needs to do.  This is when we began using texting to a large degree, as these pre-teens are usually more into texting than emails and she knew it.  She also needs to add and delete altar servers every year so she needs full access.  At some point we need to add weekday lectors (who seem to not need it as there is only about 8 of them that can make their own schedules), Ushers (who don’t seem to want it because they know what Mass they are doing and there is a coordinator for each Sunday service), and Spanish Sunday Services (who again, seem to do their own thing and remain separate, unfortunately.) 

 

Made it easy, uncomplicated, intuitive, and accessible.  Good job.  I try to do the same for my volunteers.

 

-Richard Brehove

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Lomita CA.

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[Monique Akker]

I also came on as an admin after MSP was implemented. Yes, we did all masses manually before and I was in charge of one mass. When we first acquired MSP our church actually went all in with Lectors, EMs, Altar Servers and Sacristans. During Covid we added Martha Ministry (our organizing, clean up team after each mass) when we had to wipe down pews etc. It's not as big as a ministry anymore but we still have some dedicated people who help organize the pews after mass so the next mass is ready. Then we added Greeters and finally added Ushers. That one was hard as we have some diehards who didn't want it to change, but our Priest was adamant about having them trained and doing some other duties. It has been a struggle but so far I think it's going well and that ministry is growing too. We also have a Camera Crew on MSP as well. I love the ease of adding Ministries. I even use the "Experienced" and "New" feature for our Altar Servers. We recently had an influx of Altar Servers and I wanted to make sure that we had at least one Experienced AS at each mass. This has been super helpful. Hope this inspires more people to use MSP more. It's great.  

Monique

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[sophie6965]

I used to create the schedules in Excel. The pastor saw this program and offered it to me. From the start it has been for Alter Servers, Readers & Ministers.

I'm trying to get our Music Director to use it for Cantors.

Sophie

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[Charles Fulghum]

Our parish has been using MSP for a very long time.  When we first looked at it, we thought it didn’t satisfy 100% of our requirements, it was later decided these were unnecessary requirements.  As odd as it sounds today, not everyone had email and we were afraid MSP might not work for us because of this.  This ultimately turned out not to be a deal breaker.  We were right on the cusp of virtually everyone having an email address.

The ministries we’ve added over time are the usual ones, EMHC, Lector, Altar Servers, etc.  But we’ve also added some ministries that are not assigned but are maybe best described as categories.  Let me explain.  We have a few like this but let’s use our funeral ministry as an example.  With the upmost respect intended funerals tend to be ad hoc.  Each member has their own unique skill they bring to the ministry.  But we do need to know who is in the ministry and periodically send emails to the group.  By adding this ministry it allows us to categorize individuals and using the administrators function, we can allow emails to be sent.

I find this indirect feature of MSP to be very useful.  We are constantly finding additional ways of using MSP to help us organize and group.

[enwi...@gmail.com]

Prior to implementing MSP, our church had several individuals keeping lists of volunteers for our two congregations' worship services. I scheduled and managed our musicians. When we switched to MSP, I initially planned to include just the Sunday worship volunteers and musicians. However, when our Sunday School director saw my MSP demonstration, she immediately wanted to add and schedule her volunteers. When our members renew their memberships every year in the fall, members formerly received a booklet of volunteer opportunities plus affinity groups. Leadership asked, "Why not include all the affinity group opportunities?" What I thought was going to be an initial group of 20 ministries quickly grew to over 75+ in our initial 6 months. I used the Folder feature to organize ministries and affinity groupings patterned after the layout of that booklet. Having all this information in one place has worked well for us for a decade.

Emily Wixson

Madison Christian Community

Madison, WI

[M E]

We are using MSP for Readers and Eucharistic Ministry. 

Peace,

MaryEllen

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[Amy Brunson]

We are using MSP for altar servers, EMHC, lectors and greeters.  Love it!!

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 2, 2025, at 10:16 AM, M E <ministrysche...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Krista Kutz]

Loving these responses! 💚 Thank you to everyone who has shared which ministries you schedule in MSP, how you got started, and how it’s grown over time.

It’s inspiring to see the many ways churches are using MSP.  We compiled a list in a new blog post—8 Ministries You Didn’t Know You Could Schedule in MSP—highlighting some creative ideas, including a few from this wonderful group!  

If you also started with scheduling 1 or 2 ministries in MSP and have added more since, please chime in! We’d love to hear your experience.

Warmly,
Krista

[Jeff Thomas]

The usual, as already mentioned above. To those, we've added sound-board operators, training sacristans, daily-Mass altar servers (students at the K-8 school at our parish), greeters, ushers. Within most ministries we have a subdivision for our Spanish-language members. We have a Spanish-language Mass each Sunday, and often have "combined" bilingual services on Holy Days of Obligation. So we are frequently building services with roles to be filled from both the English- and Spanish-language ministries.

[Jeff Thomas]

Also, Rosary Leader (before each Mass)

On Friday, April 4, 2025 at 8:15:56 AM UTC-6 Krista Kutz wrote: