Did you know we have a program that schedules the coordinated efforts of 484 volunteers at COS?

This program is called Ministry Scheduler Pro (MSP).

History: When you have a large and diverse congregation serving together, it can be overwhelming to the staff and volunteers to not have a centralized scheduling program. For example, before using MSP, the Children’s Ministry Coordinator might have asked the Minister of Worship when choir was scheduled (and other musical groups) so that a schedule could be made of Little Lambs teachers around those Sundays when the choir participants. There are other cross-ministry examples, but you can understand the frustration and extra work this caused. By using a program like MSP, the Staff can preset ministries, so volunteers aren’t double booked. In addition to double booking issues, Staff was using different sign-up ways for their ministries’ volunteers, Google Sheets, Signup Genius, handwritten on paper, long email threads, etc. This confused volunteers and again, created additional work for the Staff.

As for the MSP program itself, it works well to eliminate these issues mentioned above, as well as others, if everyone does their part.

The steps along the way:

  • Before the block-out date email is sent to volunteers, the Staff meets about two months prior to plan all the Sundays & Wednesdays through the next quarter’s schedule. So, for the schedule for October to January, the Staff planned in early August.
  • Following this meeting, the Church Administrator takes a couple of weeks to build the schedules in MSP (When do we have Prism? All-church meals? When does Sunday School meet? What Wednesdays are we having programming, etc.).
  • Simultaneously, schedules from Pastor Andrew and Pastor Len are planned out. Then, we fill in the other pulpit supply needs around their schedules.
  • Four to five weeks out from the new quarter’s schedule’s start date, an email is sent through MSP to all the volunteers to block out the dates in the next schedule for which they are not available to serve. This is an extremely important step in the process!
  • After the block-out date deadline for volunteers passes, Staff and other ministry leaders review their volunteer needs and do some manual assigning of people to specific slots.
  • Finally, after almost two months, we run the auto-scheduler. The auto-scheduler takes all the open slots that haven’t had a manual entry completed by Staff, compares it to volunteers who are available for that ministry on that date and plugs them into the slots.
  • A neat feature: It does not schedule people for less than three weeks between ministries. Staff can override this if someone is serving as both Council Communion and Liturgist on the same Sunday, for example.

Switching to the volunteer side of MSP

  • Blocking out can’t serve dates is a very important cog in the wheel! Whether it is a Sunday only or snowbird months, blocking out the dates saves time. Watch for this email annually in January, May, and September.
  • Substitute requests should be done through MSP.
    • If volunteers are scheduled to serve and something arises and they are unable, volunteers should log into MSP and send a substitution request email to everyone who serves in that ministry and hasn’t blocked out that date as unavailable.
    • Any person who receives the email can accept the substitute request through MSP. 
  • Reminder emails and texts are sent to volunteers through MSP.
  • Hospitality – Coffee and Hospitality – Nursery are two ministries every member of COS (minus for health reasons) participates in upon membership. If everyone participates, volunteers shouldn’t serve too often for it to be burdensome.

We are learning new things about MSP every time we use it. The Staff is grateful for MSP, but most grateful for the 484 volunteers who make COS’s ministries possible.