The schedule does two jobs. First, it plans which lesson comes up each week. Then, if you'd like, it also handles who teaches — rotating your teams, inviting them, collecting confirmations, finding subs, and emailing each teacher their lesson before they serve.
Planning Your Lessons
Each entry on the schedule pairs a date with a lesson from the curriculum. Go to Schedule, pick a date, choose a lesson from the dropdown, and hit Save Schedule. New dates fill in automatically at your service's regular interval, so planning a whole quarter takes seconds.
You can also leave a note on any date — handy for holidays, special services, or reminders like "bring props today." Once scheduled, upcoming lessons appear on your team's home page, in teacher emails, and in the parent portal.
Multiple Services
If your ministry runs more than one service (say, a 9am and an 11am), use the Change Service button at the top of the page to switch between them and plan each independently. You can give each service its own lessons, or have them alternate lessons — the services take turns through the curriculum (one gets lesson 1, the other lesson 2, and so on) so that across the rotation every child hears every lesson no matter which service they attend. Turn that on under Ministry Settings, and the schedule automatically skips ahead by the right number of lessons as you fill each service.
Holidays & Weeks Off
To override your regular plan for a holiday or special event, just change the lesson on that date. Leave a date's lesson blank for a week with no class, and add a note like "New Year's — no class" so everyone knows what's happening.
Scheduling Your Teachers
Beyond planning lessons, the schedule can staff them for you. You define your positions and teams once; from then on the platform rotates your teams through the calendar, invites whoever is up, tracks who's confirmed, and helps fill gaps when someone can't make it. It's a lightweight alternative to a full scheduling suite — built right into the tool your teachers already use for lessons.
The whole flow at a glance
- Set up your positions (the roles you fill each week) and teams (the people who take turns).
- Auto-fill & invite — the platform rosters every upcoming week from your rotation and emails each teacher one invitation.
- Teachers confirm, decline, or request a sub from a simple link (no login required).
- Each confirmed teacher automatically receives their lesson a few days before they serve.
Set up positions & teams
Open Scheduling Setup. Positions are the roles you fill each time you meet — e.g. one Lead Teacher and two Helpers. Teams are the groups of people who serve together and take turns. Each person is given the position they'll fill whenever their team is up, so auto-fill always puts the right people in the right roles.
Positions define the roles; teams take turns in the order listed. The Up next control sets which team serves your next scheduled date.
Set the rotation
Teams take turns in the order you list them — one team per scheduled week. Drag to reorder them, and use Up next to say who serves first; everyone else follows in sequence and the cycle repeats. Prefer to staff fifth Sundays yourself? Turn on "Skip 5th Sundays" and the rotation will leave those weeks open for you to fill by hand.
Auto-fill & invite your teachers
Back on the Schedule page, click Auto-fill & invite teachers and choose how far ahead to staff. The platform rosters every scheduled week from your rotation and sends one email per teacher covering all of their upcoming dates — not one email per week. You can also expand any single week to adjust a slot by hand before inviting.
Expand a week to see who's serving. Slots fill from the week's team; a status badge shows who's been invited and who's replied.
What your teachers see
Each teacher gets an email with a single link — no password needed. It opens their outstanding dates, where they can accept everything at once or reply to each date individually. If they can't make one, they can decline or ask the team to cover it right from the same page.
The teacher's respond page — accept all dates in one click, or handle them one at a time.
Signed-in teachers also get a My Schedule page with the same controls, their upcoming dates, and a place to add time off. When you're an admin, you'll see each week's confirmations right on the Schedule page and get a heads-up email whenever someone declines.
My Schedule shows a teacher's upcoming dates — and, at the bottom, where they mark dates they can't serve.
Subs & time off
When a teacher can't make a date, they can ask the team to cover it. The platform broadcasts the open spot to your other eligible teachers, and the first to claim it gets it — everyone else is told it's already taken. You and the original teacher are notified once it's filled.
Teachers can also add time off under "When I can't serve" on their My Schedule page. Blocked-out dates are skipped when auto-filling and left out of sub requests, so no one is scheduled when they're away.
Automatic lesson emails
This is where it all pays off. A few days before each service — on a send day you choose — every confirmed teacher automatically receives their lesson, with the parts you select (lesson prep, the lesson itself, reinforcement activities, videos). Turn it on and set your preferences in the Automatic Lesson Emails section of Ministry Settings. Nobody has to remember to send anything — teachers just get what they need, right on time.
This works whether you schedule teachers here or in Planning Center. Read the full guide to Automatic Lesson Emails
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