How to Use ChurchReserve

Using ChurchReserve to help manage your capacity and social distancing can seem overwhelming. You have to learn another online tool and figure out how to use ChurchReserve to make your Sunday mornings go smoothly. 

That’s why we’re writing this series – How to Use ChurchReserve. It’s our goal that these articles will help you find a great way to use ChurchReserve and make your services and events as stress-free as possible!

A specific process for seating

This how-to example is a real use case of a church we’ve worked with. They wanted to seat their guests in a way that removed the need for people to walk past each other. The goal was to seat guests from the front to back, that way no person would have to break social distancing to find their seat – making their services 100% socially distant.

This was a daunting task and really hard to manage during their services. They had ushers directing people to their seats on a first-come, first-serve basis, which added more people to the mix and made staying socially distant even more difficult. They also had to make sure they could seat guests even after their capacity was full. All of this made their services very stressful.

Before the service

But with ChurchReserve, we were able to solve their problems pretty easily! First, they set a capacity limit of 50% on their services. This removed the need to have overflow seating since they didn’t have to worry about too many guests showing up. 

Second, we created their online services with the “Admin Only Seating” reservation type. This reservation type allows guests to request a number of seats in the service, but not specific seats. Once requested, the church admin can choose seats for that guest. It provides a great deal of control to the church staff on where and how to seat people. 

When a staff member has assigned seats to a guest’s reservation, the guest gets a confirmation email about their seating that includes their seating placement. An example would be “A3, A4, A5” or “G10, G11”. This makes it really easy for guests to find their seats without the help of a person guiding them. 

The morning of with Staged Seating

This church wanted to seat people in a very specific way to avoid any breach of social distancing. Our strategy to accommodate this was to seat in “stages”. If you’ve ever flown on a Southwest flight, it’s very similar! 

A service coordinator would ask for all guests in a row to come forward. An example would be, “All guests in row A”. Then, the coordinator releases the guests, by family group, into the sanctuary starting with the first seats and onwards. So the reservation with seats A1 and A2 would go in first, followed by the reservation with seats A5, A6, and A7. 

Since the church staff is able to digitally seat everyone before the service, they don’t have to worry about where people will sit. They only have to help coordinate a smooth process that helps people find their seats! The ability to seat everyone beforehand also gives the church staff the opportunity to enforce socially distant seating so that guests don’t have to. 

 Since the church was seating in stages, they didn’t need a seat number system in their sanctuary. Guests could quickly find where they were supposed to sit based on the process of seating and their confirmation email. It made seating very smooth for their guests and a much easier experience for their church staff. 

 

Getting Started with ChurchReserve

Maybe this style of seating doesn’t match how you’d like to seat your guests. That’s perfectly fine! ChurchReserve is built to be flexible enough that it can help you manage social distancing and capacity limits no matter how you’d like to seat your guests. 

If you’d like to learn more and find out how ChurchReserve can help you hold in-person services and events, contact us here! 

 At the end of the day, we’re here to help your church stay connected, impactful, and continue to serve your local community. 

Want to see ChurchReserve in action? Check out the demo here!