Church Administration 2.0

I learned something last year… it’s really easy to mis-communicate about calendar changes and updates when everyone is responsible for managing their own calendars.  In fact, I can’t even remember how many times I had to reissue printed calendars and documents to ministry leaders over the first part of 2008.

I decided that I wanted to change that over the last quarter of of 08 and the future.  Why not create one master calendar and have the other ministry leaders tap into this calendar, rather than managing their own?

No more printing, no more asking, “Do we have anything on the 30th of April?”  This idea has brough huge clarity to our administration.  Not only do the ministry leaders have an up-to-the-minute update on calendar changes, but I now have someone to serve as a second set of eyes on my calendar.  If I have something wrong, I now have a team that can communicate that to me.  It’s about teamwork.

So here’s how it works::

Apple Users:  Stop using Entourage now, use iCal.  iCal allows you to add layers to your calendars that gives you functionality to only give certain levels of ministry leaders the access to the events that pertain to their level of ministy need.  You can also set up specific calendars to share tasks between yourself an ministry leaders to reduce the, what I call, “I’ve got it, you take it” tasks.

Create your calendar and then sign up for iCal Exchange or MobileMe.  iCal Exchange is a free service that will host your calendar online.  This allows you to publish, and have your team “Subscribe” to it using iCal by entering the URL supplied by iCal Exchange.

You can then use an inexpensive software calling “Spanning Sync” to sync your iCal to Google calendar so you can effectively communicate with the less-fortunate or as I call them: PC users.

Windows Users: The best option for you is Google Calendar.  Please use an online resource if you need help with this service.

Feel free to post any questions you may have or help needed with setup.

Paper users: Can your daytimer or franklin covey do that?