Sign-ups for churches and ministries

Churches already have a bulletin, a Facebook page, and a group text. MojoSignUp is for the part those channels do badly: assigning a finite job to a finite number of people. Ushers, nursery, greeters, meal trains, and potluck dishes are slots. A single worship-night RSVP is an instance without slots.

Make a team for the church, not for each ministry

One team named after the congregation. Invite the administrator and the two people who already run volunteer schedules. Separate sign-ups per ministry (Nursery, Hospitality, Youth) so descriptions stay honest. Do not make a new team for every committee unless those groups should never see each other’s events.

Put the public team page on the church website only if you want the wider community to see listed events. Most weekly serving roles should stay unlisted. Share the URL in the bulletin and the email list. Listing is a directory, not hospitality.

Weekly serving: recurrence plus a slot template

Nursery every Sunday is one sign-up, weekly instances, and a template of rooms and hours: Infants 9:00, Infants 10:30, Toddlers 9:00, Toddlers 10:30, each with capacity 2. Generate the term, then delete fifth Sundays if you do not staff them. People sign up per date. If your culture is “you have the first Sunday of the month,” say that in the description and still have them pick those dates on the page so the roster is not a side document.

Do not put children’s full names in slot titles. “Room A · 9:00” is enough on a page that anyone with the link can open.

Potluck and meal train

A potluck is one instance and slots named by dish or course, each with a capacity. “Mains · 8” and “Desserts · 6” beats twenty unique casserole names that nobody can scan. A meal train is better as many instances (Mon, Tue, Wed) with a small capacity, sometimes 1, so each night is a single household. That pattern is written out in the potluck worked example.

What not to put on the page

Addresses of people receiving meals, medical details, counseling notes, or anything you would not read aloud in the narthex. Collect a phone number on a custom form only if the coordinator will actually call. The public page is the flyer. The roster is the coordinator’s list.

Sunday morning

One person opens the nursery sign-up and checks who is on the 9:00 slots. No-shows get removed so the 10:30 crew is not guessing. Walk-up volunteers go into open capacity. If both infant slots are full, do not squeeze a third adult into a room that was sized for two. Change the plan, not the physics.

There is no waitlist and no automatic substitute finder. Your substitute list is still a human list. When someone unregisters Saturday night, the slot opens; text a known substitute and have them register.

A reasonable first month

Start with one ministry and four Sundays. Do not migrate every clipboard in the building. After the nursery roster is trusted, add hospitality or parking. The first-event tutorial is the same sequence with different slot names.