Who helps you with scheduling at your church?

[Krista Kutz]

Hi MSP Community!

Many of us here are the primary users of MSP in our respective churches, coordinating volunteer schedules and ministries for services. I’m curious—who else helps you with scheduling in MSP? Do other volunteers or church staff members serve as “Web Admins” or “Leaders” alongside you?

At my own church, 1 staff (office manager) and 1 parishioner are the primary MSP administrators. I also serve as a Web Admin, helping out with Announcements and some ministry assignments. Have you also incorporated any Web Admins to assist you with scheduling? 

Hearing how others share the workload and get more people involved can be a great way for us to discover new ways to get the most out of MSP.

Looking forward to your insights!

Warmly,
Krista

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Krista M. Kutz, MDiv
Growth & Impact Manager

[Susan Yates]

I just finished my first year of using MSP to schedule our Lectors and Eucharistic Ministers and I am very pleased with the product and still learning its many features.  It is time for me to add a back-up.  Do you have any suggestions on the best way to introduce and include a new leader or administrator position?

Susan 

Nativity of Our Lord Parish

Monroe Township, NJ

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Susan Yates

[Krista Kutz]

Hi everyone!

Susan, congratulations on completing your first year of scheduling Lectors and EMs with MSP—that’s a wonderful milestone!  It’s great that you’re planning to bring on a back-up to share the tasks (and the joy!) of coordinating ministry schedules.

A good place to start is assigning yourself as a Web Admin, if you haven’t already. (Here’s how to set that up.) This will let you explore what the web interface looks like from their perspective, which can be really helpful when bringing someone else on board to help you as an admin.

Then, we might consider adding a Web Admin, or a Leader, for a specific ministry. For example, I recently added our “Children’s Liturgy of the Word” coordinator as a Leader. In her web view,  she can send Announcements and make scheduling updates for just her group of volunteers. Susan, since you schedule Lectors and EMs in MSP, you might consider assigning an experienced volunteer in each ministry as an additional admin to be your back-up.

It’s helpful to meet with a new Leader or Admin to go over the basics of MSP. I met my new ministry Leader for coffee one morning with our two laptops, and we watched the quick tutorial videos on Leaders and Web Admins together! 

We’d love to hear how others in this group have approached onboarding new Leaders or Web Admins. Who else have you tapped to help you out in MSP? 

Look forward to learning from your experience!
-Krista

Rotunda Software

[enwi...@gmail.com]

When we introduced MSP 10 years ago, we did so in part because of MSP's Ministry Leaders feature. Our congregations (an ecumenical partnership of two) have always been quite content to organize themselves, and the ministry leaders functionality offered a good bridge from autonomous operations to centralized scheduling. I identified specific programs and leaders for initial training, and ran workshops and provided handouts (both from MSP and customized for our installation). I recruited three individuals to be my Admin system backups, one of which is our church administrative assistant, the other two are congregants like myself. 

The adoption of MSP at our church was instant, and more and more program areas wanted to get onboard with managing their groups. I continued with the workshops, handouts, and added one-on-one training. The training always included a discussion of the range of options for these ministry leaders. To this day some only use the email function, a few use schedule editing, one has used polling. 

When the Web Admin role was introduced,  I designated our pastors, all staff, and my 3 system backups as Web Admins to give them even more autonomy and further expertise with the web terminal. I always offer one-on-one training for Web Admins, but most individuals seem content to figure it out on their own (with the help of MSP online documentation which I always reference). Our most recently trained staff member contacts me for most of her MSP needs while she focuses on her new position.

Emily Wixson

Madison Christian Community

Madison, Wisconsin

[Susan Yates]

Thank you Krista.  Your suggestions will be very helpful in introducing another to MSP.  I will let you know how it goes.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Susan Yates

Nativity of Our Lord

Monroe Twp, NJ

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/using-ministry-scheduler-pro/f1651b4b-4fbe-4013-bf78-8a84e64c7a05n%40googlegroups.com.

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Susan Yates

[Jeff Thomas]

We lean heavily into Administrators. We have about 15 of them, one for each ministry, then x2 because we have a large Spanish-speaking community that celebrates a Spanish-language Mass, so every liturgical ministry is has an English-language and a Spanish-language body of volunteers. We use subdivisions extensively.

We have 2 admins -- myself as the MSP nerd and my wife, who is the liturgical director and who knows all things. We're the only ones with the desktop MSP application. She sets up the quarterly schedule skeleton, adjusts the service configurations, and pushes the "commence scheduling" button -- always a thrill. The admins then have about a week to review the draft schedule and smooth out any lumps and fill in any gaps. When we get the signal from them that they're happy, we publish the schedule. The admins register their respective volunteers in the database, process web forms in their areas, communicate with their ministries, recruit for special services e.g. Christmas, for which we don't auto-schedule. We ask the admins to do pretty much everything related to the care and feeding of their respective volunteers except to build and populate the schedule. During the monthly liturgical meetings, there is a standing MSP item on the agenda.

[Margaret Savage-Johnson]

We are a small church with about 160 volunteers.  We have one MSP Administer or MSP Scheduler.  The office manager tried to maintain the program and scheduling but it was too much so we went back to a single volunteer.  That volunteer handles all emails, updates, new volunteer input and the monthly schedule.  The various ministries have a head or leader and they are responsible for recruitment and training.  

So far this has worked out well.  Both the past and current administrator have been a retired individual.  I don't think a full time working person would have the time for this position. 

Margaret Johnson

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Margaret

[Krista Kutz]

Hi MSP Community,

Just wanted to circle back to this thread and share a quick update from my church! I’m meeting with our Lector coordinator this week to show him around MSP. He’s not an admin, but volunteers sometimes reach out to him for last-minute coverage—and he’s open to learning how MSP can help.

I’m planning to add him as a Leader and walk him through just a couple things, like:

• How to send announcements to just the Lectors

• How to flag sub requests on behalf of volunteers who contact him directly

This way, he can support his ministry more easily without relying on reply-all emails.

I’d love to hear from you! 
Any tips for onboarding ministry heads who coordinate just one group? What’s helped them feel confident using MSP in their role?  

Thanks so much—and for those under the heat dome this week, stay cool & safe! 🙏

Peace,
Krista

[richard...@gmail.com]

Thanks Krista

I have a coordinator for the Altar Servers.  I had to make her a Web Administrator vice a Leader since she needs to continuously add and delete volunteers at least every year, probably every six months.  I found out how to have her ADD new volunteers as a leader, but I couldn't figure out how to have a Leader DELETE volunteers.  I didn’t want to be in the middle of it.  I wanted her to take care of the entire ministry.  The AS ministry needs care and feeding all the time, as these are young adults who are trying to learn responsibility.    All I do is create the skeleton schedule and run the auto scheduler for them – which she then changes about 25% of the assignments due to her special requirements. 

 

I used to coordinate lectors using Excel spreadsheets and reply-all emails.  I was skeptical of MSP at first, but when I kept asking questions about its capability, I usually did some experimentation and discovered “yes, it does that”.  I eventually went all in.  Glad I did.  The biggest issue I have is people without email access or cell phones.  Yes, they are still out there.  I print out the schedule, put in an envelope with their name on it and leave it at the office so they can come get it.  I can also print out the email I send with that new schedule by using the Announcement print function that can print only to the individuals without internet access.  After that, of course, the schedule changes dynamically as people swap or get subs.  These individuals without email access simply show up for their assignments and nothing else. 

 

Richard Brehove

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Lomita, CA

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