BETTER BY SUNDAY w/ PCO
DON’T MISS THE OBVIOUS | Mike Graff
If you’ve been using Planning Center for quite
ADD NOTES. LOTS AND LOTS OF NOTES.
some time, there might be features lurking right
elements, especially if you have people on the
platform who aren’t on staff (such as faith story
under your nose that would vastly improve If you have certain notes about a song (repeat your worship-organization game… but you’re chorus twice, end small and fade into next staring straight past them! song, etc), about announcements (youth group If there’s something to be said about anything in
on weds at 7pm, food drive starting next week, your worship service, say it in Notes.
volunteers, etc).
Take it from me. I ran a worship ministry for etc), or even prayer time (pray for the city, years under-utilizing PCO, and began to kick school, neighboring community, etc), you can STAGE LAYOUTS MAKE YOUR AUDIO ENGINEER’S
myself once I found some very simple solutions pre-plan all of these things in PCO Notes for LIFE HAPPY.
for issues I was facing, because they were all to see. literally right in front of me the whole time. Your sound engineer has a mighty task to
But better late than never, and our ministry’s accomplish each and every week. And if the
organization turned around in a heartbeat after
that moment.
So here are some quick-fire ideas that are
literally staring you in the face right now. If you
aren’t using these quick-tips, go and do it right
I’m a big sound engineer is a volunteer, it’s an even
believer in over- life easier is a huge win-win; it shows them you
communication. your room sounding great and have a better
bigger task! Anything you can do to make their
care, and in turn will give them more time to get
mix!
away! The more So how does one help out a sound engineer
SEND AUTOMATIC REHEARSAL REMINDERS information you make using the Stage Layout function is a huge time-
available to the uploading a photo of your worship platform),
public... the less and instrumentalists who are assigned to the
If you utilize the Service Times and Rehearsal
Times in PCO, you can let everyone know
when they need to be there. But what you
might not know is that you can set up PCO
to automatically email everyone at a time of
your choice to remind them of their upcoming
commitment. With busy schedules and lots of
distractions these days, reminders are a good
thing!
I would suggest reminding team members the
day before any rehearsal or worship service. You
with making their life easier? Well, within PCO,
saver. Using a standard square template (or by
confusion there
you can drag-and-drop all of the vocalists
service into their “spot” on the Stage Layout.
will be when it This will show the sound person where they
comes down to By having all of that waiting for the worship
the details. entire process and give you more bandwidth to
need to route mics, cables, power, and more.
team when they arrive, it will smooth out the
focus on leading worship well.
can have those emails set up independently,
and they will automatically default to those
There you have it! It’s amazing how simple
times if you ask PCO to do so.
changes can bring so much value to you and
I’m a big believer in over-communication. The your worship ministry. Take advantage of them,
This will help solve the headaches of missing more information you make available to the and go lead worship well!
team members immediately! public (i.e. your volunteers and anyone else in
PCO), the less confusion there will be when it
comes down to the details. This will go a long
way in helping smooth out transitions between
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October 2018
Mike Graff
Chief Creative of internationally-acclaimed
Coresound Pads, and worship musician/leader for
over 20 years.
CoreSoundPads.com
WorshipMusician.com