In a technical sense, Advent starts the Christian Year. It begins with the arrival of Christ as a Babe in a Manger. His coming was foretold by the prophet Isaiah, which gets read to remind us that we expect Him to come again. While we wait, we celebrate with special events and services. One of my favorites is Christmas Eve with Silent Night and live candles.

Advent by it’s nature upsets the regular scheduling of volunteers. There are special services which need volunteers to help. So the regular monthly schedule goes out the window during December. Maybe that’s a good thing. We sometimes get in a rut by doing the same thing over and over and over. Advent has a marvelous way of shaking things up, as we remember that Christ came to make all things new!

This season is also a great time to thank all of your volunteers in Technical Ministry. It can be simple, like sending a Christmas Card with words of appreciation for all they have done this year. Or it can be complex like hosting a dinner party for the volunteers and their families at a local restaurant. Whatever you do, be sure to express your thanks and appreciation. It will go a long way towards making up for the demanding, often hectic, schedule of special events that need to be covered.

Merry Christmas, and may the arrival of the Babe in the Manger inspire all of us to serve the Church in new ways in the new year!

Scheduling Staff is usually handled by internal calendars or event management systems (i.e. EMS).
But how do you schedule volunteers? Why not devise a calendar system on the Church web site that would let volunteers schedule themselves for various tasks. You would assign each volunteer a set of roles, e.g. sound technician. They could then look at the calendar and pick the days that they are available to run sound. The calendar system would then keep track of the fact that they had volunteered to run the sound desk on the particular date. If they needed to change, the system would allow them to drop that commitment of time and post the task back to the available tasks pool. Another volunteer trained in sound could then volunteer online to take their place. You might need a hot list of items that were coming up, so that volunteers accessing the calendar would see what was most needed. Overall, this would take care of scheduling volunteers for technical ministry tasks automatically.

Does such a system exist? Perhaps, but it would need to be flexible and role based. If you know of such a system, then please comment below so that others can discover it.