Syncing Your Calendar With The World

Do people in your church know what is going on? Would they be surprised to find out that every week a group of people get together before the worship service to pray that God would move in a mighty way? Did they forget that there was a very important meeting last Monday that members of the church needed to attend?

Unfortunately, this is true for many churches. The reality is that it is very difficult to keep everyone informed about the latest events occurring in the church, not to mention when and where they are occurring.

This is where calendar sharing/syncing takes on a vital role in the church. Apple pioneered this feature and was limited to those with an Apple computer and iCal, but with the advent of Mozilla’s Sunbird and caledar features, Windows users can take advantage of calendar sharing/syncing as well.

The basic concept of calendar sharing is this. The calendar to be shared gets published, in the right format, at a specific URL (there are many different ways of going about this). Users will subscribe to this calendar by using the “Subscribe” feature and typing in the calendar URL. The calendar pulls all the data and adds it to the calendar on the user’s computer. The calendar on the user’s computer is then updated whenever the calendar on the internet is updated.

With calendar sharing everyone in the church would be able to stay up-to-date on the latest happenings. They wouldn’t have to remember to bring their bulletin home or whatever flier that was handed out. They could check their computer look at everything that is happening and plan their lives accordingly. This would also cut down on the amount of phone calls to the church with queries about when some event is going to take place.