Office Equipment: How To Avoid Calendar Collisions

Janet arrived early at a church to attend her cousin's baby shower. She didn't see signs directing her to the shower, so she asked a man where the family was. "Follow me," the man said. The man directed Janet to the front row of the chapel where she found herself in the middle of a funeral.

At another church across town, Betty, a piano instructor, was starting her annual recital when four giggling bridesmaids burst into the room, carrying white crepe-paper bells and a ladder. As her star student played on, Betty argued with the girls about who had reserved the room first.

Start with the Basics
Scheduling activities in a church is a never-ending job. With the right tools and a few simple rules, however, your calendar keeper can keep everything under control.

Connie Mullins, office manager of the 400-member Grace Brethren Church in Waterloo, Iowa, schedules church events on a desk-type calendar (available at office-supply stores for less than $10). People call the church office to schedule activities such as meetings, programs, baby showers, and weddings. A staff member checks the calendar to see if the time and date are available, then logs in the event.

"We don't do a lot of changing; a reservation is there to stay unless the activity is canceled," Mullins says. She and other staffers use a first-come, first-serve policy to decide who gets an opening. Pastors or organization leaders are allowed to modify the calendar when necessary.

Suggestion: If your church makes a lot of changes in its schedule, consider using an erasable calendar.

Once a month, Grace Church publishes the schedule of events in the church's newsletter and on the church's Web site. Tip: If you post your calendar on a Web page, make sure the information is current. Nothing signals a dead church quicker than an outdated calendar.

Add Some Technology
A monthly calendar is great, but Larry David McCormick, pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in North Bergen, New Jersey, finds he also needs to view church activities on a weekly or daily basis. McCormick tried using personal organizers, such as a Day-Timer or Franklin Planner, but wasn't completely satisfied. "You have to adapt your life to an organizer and carry around the binder wherever you go," he says. "And if you need to change an appointment, you have to scratch out the old one and write in the new."

McCormick was happier with an electronic organizer: a Palm III from 3Com (800-881-7256), a kind of hand-held computer. Church activities are recorded on the Palm III, which McCormick carries with him. He can make changes to the organizer, then transfer those changes to his desktop computer at the end of the day without having to re-key anything.

The Palm III has a stylus that allows McCormick to enter information with a modified version of his own handwriting. It includes software that allows one-button synchronization between the Palm III and a PC. McCormick uses the Palm III to track his personal schedule as well as church events. "It helps me to respond quicker," he says. "If I am visiting a family, and the couple tells me that their daughter would like to get married on the third weekend in June, I can look up the date while I am visiting. I don't have to play phone tag to give someone a simple answer."

The Palm III is available for less than $400, McCormick says, which isn't high compared to the cost of some personal-organization systems, for which you'd spend $80 for an organizer, $60 for software, and more than $100 for filler pages for the next three years. Many types of personal digital assistants are available today. In large markets, you can even try out an electronic planner for a small rental fee prior to purchase.

Work Ahead
Keeping church events organized requires good planning. Jonathan Bosse, senior pastor of New Monmouth Baptist Church, an 800-member church in New Jersey, says his people work out a calendar of events 12 to 16 months in advance. The calendar of events is printed in the church bulletin. All scheduling information is then collected in the church office. "We put the two most recent months in the administrative assistant's office, where that becomes the final word," Bosse says. "Every thing else we do is considered a suggestion."

At this point, only one or two people have the authority to change the schedule. The staffers then use Calendar Creator software to create the next calendar for distribution in the bulletin. Calendar Creator is available from Parson's Technology (800-644-6344) for less than $40.

If people need to make changes in the upcoming schedule, they can make notations in a notebook Bosse keeps outside of the church office. The notebook includes a page for each month's activities for the rest of the year. It's a kind of self-service tool, freeing up office staffers who later collect the information and update the master calendar.

Split Up the Task
Betty Heston, network administrator of Arizona Community Church in Tempe, Arizona, says a monthly calendar is nice for an overview of activities, but it's hardly big enough to contain the day-to-day activities of a large church. "Our daily calendar alone usually takes four to five pages to print out," Heston says.

Deborah Riddle at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia, can relate to that. The church currently has 12,500 events scheduled on its calendar system, and it's Riddle's job to keep track of the details. To do that, she communicates regularly with the church staff. She has created forms to help her track specifics. And her staff meets twice a year with the ministerial staff to work out scheduling for the next 12 to 15 months as well as to coordinate big events among the different ministries.

After a planning session, each department must fill out a calendar-request form with details on each event, including times, dates, rooms needed, where tables and chairs should be placed, what type of audiovisual equipment is needed, and whether foodservice or childcare will be necessary. When Riddle receives a completed form, she circulates it among the various departments. Once approved, the event is entered in the computer, where it becomes official. To handle all this data, Riddle uses the Shelby Calendar Program ($195 from Shelby Systems: 800-877-0222).

Control the Process
Keeping a calendar under the control of a few people so that it is handled consistently is crucial, says Heston. She recommends that a neutral person record all calendar information and that all disputes be arbitrated by a pastor.

No matter how good they are, calendar procedures only work if people follow them, Heston says. She reminds her workers of the importance of entering accurate information in the calendar system as well as checking it frequently to avoid potential conflicts.

Bosse admits he doesn't always look at the church calendar before scheduling an event. That can cause double-booking problems, such as what happened in the churches cited at the beginning of this article. An alert calendar keeper can spot such potential problems and rearrange the schedule. Masterful planning can be a reality if you use the right resources and if you follow your own rules.

Jennifer Schuchmann is a management consultant from Marietta, Georgia, who formerly worked in sales and marketing for church-management software.

Special Problems of Church Planning

Unlike businesses, which schedule events, churches are more likely to schedule resources. A resource in a church could be a person (the senior pastor), a place (fellowship hall), or a thing (church van).
Betty Heston, network administrator of Arizona Community Church in Tempe, Arizona, says it takes a special program to deal with church activities. "You need to be able to schedule each room by each hour of each day," she says. In addition, some resources need to be scheduled together, such as a kitchen and a fellowship hall, or a divided classroom that doesn't have soundproof walls.
Frequently, churches need to purposefully schedule conflicts. For example, a pastor may want to open one meeting with prayer, then attend a second meeting that's running simultaneously with the first. Likewise, a church van could be committed to taking seniors to a dinner on Sunday, then drop teens off at a skating rink.
A staff person at a church needs to field inquiries with the finesse of a hotel manager. If someone calls and needs audiovisual equipment and a room for 30 people, the calendar keeper must find a room that meets those specs.
Finally, some churches do event planning. If your church has meetings that include out-of-town guests, travel arrangements, and fees, you may need special event-scheduling software, such as Event Planner Plus from Certain Software (888-237-8246), Events! from Micro Precision Software (800-688-9337), or Complete Event Manager from EKEBA International (800-847-4561).