Calendar
Event & Facility Scheduling
Planning Center for Children’s Ministry
Care for families, support volunteers, and create a safe space for children
You can run check-in, plan events, follow-up with families, and schedule volunteers all without burning out.
Welcome children to a safe environment
Put safety procedures in place to keep you and parents confident.
Welcome families with a secure check-in and check-out experience
Match the code on childrens’ name labels to their parents’ security label before allowing anyone to be picked up.
Quickly find where children are and who dropped them off / picked them up
Record who checks in, who drops them off, and who picks them up so you have what you need in an emergency.
Require cleared background checks for every volunteer
Put background checks in your training workflow and renew when they’re outdated.
I’m doing this all on my own, so Planning Center has become my assistant—it takes a weight off of my shoulders of knowing how I’m going to be able to accomplish everything.
Katie Knorr
Children’s Ministry Director at Camp Hill United Methodist ChurchSimplify event planning
Coordinate your classes, groups, winter camps, and VBS in one system—no details dropped!
Book Rooms and Resources
Request everything you need to plan behind-the-scenes, and then add events to the church calendar so people know what is happening, when, and where!
A Simple Signup Process
Gather signed forms, accept payments, include custom fields for questions, and offer event add-ons, like t-shirts or books, all in the same signup!
Seamless Event Check-In
Check kids into their assigned VBS crew, camp cabin, or onto the bus—all of their information from the signup will sync automatically.
Make sure families don’t fall through the cracks
Keep families involved in the church with opportunities just for them.
Connect families to community
Welcome first-time guests and invite them to events, let absent children know you missed them, and follow up with them on their prayer requests.
Keep families in the loop
Parents can check kids in, sign up for events, and see what else is going on at church—maybe join a small group, or watch a sermon, all from your custom Church Center mobile app.
Care for people according to their needs
Track individual details and milestones about children and adults, like prayer requests, baptism, membership interest, and more.
Planning Center saves me a ton of time. Administrative work was killing me, especially volunteer scheduling, and if I’m doing extra admin work, that time comes out of my ministry time, personal growth time, and lesson-prep. The shift to Planning Center really changed everything.
Ryan Wootton
Family & Media Pastor at Glad Tidings Community ChurchSchedule volunteers quickly and easily
Scheduling can be a footnote on your to-do list, instead of a complicated spreadsheet demanding hours of your week.
Plan your schedule months in advance
Plan your schedule out as far as you want by setting class times, volunteer roles and availability in advance. Then the week-of is just final confirmations and preparation for Sunday morning and not a last-minute scramble.
Communicate easily with volunteers
Volunteers can set their own preferences in Planning Center, and you can auto-schedule right around them! Then send the schedule requests and reminders out however volunteers prefer—email, text, push notifications, or even print for your paper-only folks.
Any volunteer can come to us for training and support.
Pastors, teachers, volunteers—everybody using Planning Center on your team has access to our training materials to learn more and can contact our support team to ask questions.
Core Features
We have thousands of features across all of our products, but these are the features from the five products you can use for children’s ministry!
Protect volunteers from burnout with a balanced schedule
All-Team Scheduling
Create positions for your teams and assign them to services and events.
Blackout Dates
People can set their availability based on when they prefer to volunteer.
Communication
Send schedule requests months in advance and set auto-reminders.
Manage events from signup to check-in
Simple Signups
Create online event signups, accept payments, and organize details.
Room/Resource Booking
Track requests/approvals for who is using what, in which room, and when!
Fast Check-In
Use any internet-connected device to check people in and safely and print labels.
Protect children and volunteers with secure processes
Background Checks
Order and track background checks through Checkr, or your own system.
Security Labels
Match children and parents’ labels to verify who is authorized to pick up children.
Reports
Know who checked in, where, who dropped them off, who picked them up, and when.
Use the technology you already have
Unlimited Check-in Stations
Run check-in from as many internet-connected devices as you need.
Mobile Access
Manage your database, plan services, and run check- in from an app or browser.
Printers
Print custom labels from Citizen, Brother, Dymo, and Zebra printers.
Connect families with the community of your church
Follow-Up Workflows
Create step-by-step processes to make sure no one falls through the cracks.
Church Center App
Give people a central place to see what’s going on at the church and get involved.
Email, Text, Push Notifications
Communicate with parents about what’s going on in children’s ministry!
Start your free trial
Try all of our products for free for 30 days! All subscriptions include People for database management.
Start a trialExplore the Getting Started Journey
Moving to a brand new system is hard! We have resources to help you do it smoothly.
Learn about transitionLearn about all our product features
See all of the ways you can use Planning Center as your whole church management system.
See a full feature listLearn more about individual products
All of our products have a page where you can see their major features, plan options, and prices.