Powerful Tools for Worship Service Planning and Execution
ProPresenter and Planning Center Online are two excellent tools for worship planning, and with every update they become even more powerful. Planning Center provides a database of your songs (music charts, arrangements, tempo, and other related info). The availability of charts, lyrics, and MP3 uploads allow your team to rehearsal at home (or basically anywhere with their smartphone app).
We first started using PCO as a scheduling tool for the band, tech team, and a few others. It provides a database of all your people for effective communication. Now the band is discovering its capabilities for personal rehearsal time.
We switched from EasyWorship to ProPresenter last year. There’s been a bit of an adjustment for the team, but I love the design capabilities and flexibility of ProP. It was originally designed for the Passion Conferences, so just imagine what can do with it.
What impresses me most about both these companies is they are never sitting still. They are always working on something new and better. And the best part is they are now integrated, as in Planning Center and ProPresenter talk to each other.
Once you connect your PCO account in ProPresenter5, you can add playlists directly from Planning Center, pulling in your songs from the ProP library. Granted there were a few irritating bugs with the initial roll out of this feature, but they seem to be resolved now. Any changes in PCO roll into ProP fairly quickly so you always have the latest schedule and worship order.
Face it, life is fast and busy for most everyone. The type of technology these two programs offer will make your worship communication, planning, and execution much more effective. If you aren’t using these tools or aren’t even familiar with them, I highly encourage you to check them out. PCO has a free account you can sign up for to try it out, and ProP makes a demo version available for download. Both have lots of tutorial videos to explore as well.
from my notebook 