Ministries & Volunteers
A ministry is a job people do — greeters, sound, nursery, media. It is the third of the three things churches most often confuse, so it is worth saying plainly:
A group is people who meet. A class is something you finish. A ministry is a job you do.
Volunteering is the strongest single predictor that somebody stays at a church. Ministries turn "we need help on Sunday" into named people on named dates.
What you need
- Ministries visible in your Grow menu
- Permission to lead ministries, or admin access
- Service times set up, so there is something to schedule against
- People in your directory to volunteer
The chain
Ministries have more moving parts than groups or classes, and they only work in order. Skipping a step is the usual reason a schedule comes out empty.
- Create the ministry: open Ministries in the main navigation and click Add ministry (admins), with a name, description and leader
- People express interest from the member portal; a leader approves them
- Define positions — the actual roles you need filled ("two greeters, one sound")
- Generate a schedule against those positions
- Volunteers confirm or decline from the portal
:::warning A schedule needs positions
Generate schedule produces nothing if the ministry has no positions defined. This is the single most common thing to get stuck on — the ministry exists, people have volunteered, and the schedule comes back blank because Passport has not been told what jobs exist.
:::
Positions
A position is a named job within the ministry, with how many people it needs. Passport schedules against positions, not against the ministry as a whole, so "Sound" with two positions and "Sound" with one produce different rotas from the same volunteer list.
Define them at the bottom of the ministry's Details tab. Adding and changing positions is for admins.
Positions are also what a Sunday is staffed from: a service draws its staffing template from the positions of the ministries that serve at it. See Positions & Teams for how that connects, and Services for planning the week itself.
Availability
Volunteers set their own availability and blackout dates in the member portal. Schedule generation respects both — somebody who marked a fortnight away does not get put on the rota for it.
That means the rota is only as good as the availability people have entered, which is a good reason to point volunteers at the portal early.
Entry requirements
Two optional gates:
- Prerequisite classes — somebody must complete a named class before they can serve. Useful for children's ministry and anything safeguarding-related.
- Leadership meeting required — the ministry will not accept a volunteer until a leader has marked that the conversation happened.
Both are set on the ministry's Details tab.
Hiding a ministry
Set Hidden from portal on ministries that should not accept open volunteers — leadership teams, or anything you staff by invitation. It still works normally for the people already on it; it just stops appearing as something to sign up for.
The ministry tabs
Every group, class and ministry page has the same tabs.
| Tab | What is there |
|---|---|
| People | Leaders and the team. Approve people waiting to serve, Add person, or Remove someone |
| Schedule | The rota, and the generate button |
| Events | Events owned by this ministry |
| Care | How many care tasks are given to this team, and Open in Care to work on them |
| Details | Name, description, entry requirements, leaders and positions. Admins edit them here |
The Ministries list shows, on each row, how many people are waiting for approval and how many positions are unfilled in the next four weeks. "Unfilled" counts the positions on the service plans for those weeks that nobody has said yes to.
The order ministries appear in on the portal, and the background check policy, are under Settings → Ministries.
Common questions
Nobody is showing up as available. Check that volunteers have been approved (People tab) and that they have set availability in the portal. An approved volunteer with no availability entered is treated as unavailable.
Someone declined and nobody replaced them. Regenerate the schedule for that date, or assign manually from the Schedule tab. Passport does not silently swap people in.
Can a person be on more than one ministry? Yes, and the scheduler knows about it — it will not put the same person in two places at the same service.
Next steps
- A circle rather than a job — Groups covers ongoing fellowship.
- Roster them for Sunday — Scheduling Your Team turns an approved volunteer list into named people on named dates.
- What volunteers see — Serving assignments appear on the Serve tab of the Member Portal, and For Volunteers covers the whole account-free experience.
- Put it on the calendar — Ministry events show up in Calendar & Events.