Field Guide: Churches

Between Sunday services, small groups, and everything in between, church staff wear a lot of hats — and volunteers give whatever time they can spare. Basecamp keeps everyone organized and on the same page, without adding one more thing to anyone's plate.

In this guide, we'll share an example of how a church can organize its work in Basecamp, and then take a closer look at planning a sermon series with the staff and guest speakers.

Jump to:

• Getting started with your projects
• Working with your staff and guest speakers
• Managing ministry work
• Sundays, rehearsals, and the sermon schedule
• Files and church resources
• Staying on top of everything

Getting started with your projects

Everything in Basecamp is organized into projects.

As a church, you'll likely have a few kinds of projects — one that brings the whole staff together, a few for ongoing areas of ministry, and one for each season of work that has a clear start and finish, like a sermon series.

In this example, Riverbend Community Church uses four projects:

• Church HQ for the whole staff and elder board — announcements, policies, and the staff calendar. This project is all-access, so anyone on the team can join by clicking into it.
• Facilities & Events for the building — room bookings, Sunday setup, and repair requests. This one is just for the team.
• Fall Sermon Series — Rooted for everything in this fall's six-week series. Guest speakers are added as clients.
• Guest Services & Weddings for first-time visitors, new members, weddings, and visiting speakers. The team uses it to keep track of the people the church serves, and creates separate projects to work directly with them.

Here's what Riverbend's Home screen looks like:

We'll take a closer look at the Fall Sermon Series — Rooted project, since it's where the staff and their guest speakers work side by side.

A new sermon series comes around every couple of months, and each one goes through the same steps. That makes it a great fit for a project template.

Here's the "New Sermon Series" template the church created:

The template includes to-do lists grouped by stage, a welcome post for guest speakers, a Calendar renamed "Team calendar," a second Calendar for Sundays called "Sermon calendar," a Card Table for series artwork, and two empty folders ready to fill in: Sermon manuscripts and Small group discussion guides.

When it's time to plan the next series, the team creates a new project from the template and adds the details. Here's what the new sermon project looks like:

Working with your staff and guest speakers

Once your projects are set up, you can invite your staff, volunteers, and anyone else you work with.

Before sending invitations, take a moment to think about what each person should be able to see and do. Basecamp has three user types: someone who works at your organization, an outside collaborator, and a client. You can see what each one can do here.

The Fall Sermon Series — Rooted team includes Pastor James and Pastor Greg on preaching, Teddy and Lisa on worship and media, Jay working with the youth, Min Li handling connections, Adrienne in the office, and Zoe, the church administrator, keeping everything moving.

Two guest speakers were added as clients:

• June Holiday, a missionary with Redwood Missions Alliance, preaching on October 18.
• Ivy Lang, a pastor at Grace Fellowship, preaching on October 25.

Clients have the most limited access — they'll only see the items you choose to share with them. That's just right for a guest speaker. June and Ivy need to know when to arrive and what to send, but they don't need the staff's rehearsal notes or the honorarium details.

With everyone in place, you can start sharing updates.

The Message Board is where you'll want to post announcements and anything people should be able to find again later. The Fall Sermon Series — Rooted project has two posts: a pinned "Welcome to Rooted, guest speakers!" post that's visible to clients, and a team-only kickoff post with the plan for the next six weeks.

Here's how that project's Message Board looks:

For quick, real-time conversations, use Chat. In the Fall Sermon Series — Rooted project, it's where small updates go — like "Heads up: Thursday's rehearsal starts at 6:30 this week."

You can also @mention someone to get their attention, send a private Ping, or leave a Boost to say "thank you" after a great launch Sunday. 🙏

Managing ministry work

A sermon series comes with a long list of things to do, and a few things that take more than one step. Basecamp has two tools to help — To-dos and Card Tables.

To-dos are best for tasks that are either done or not done. For bigger efforts, you can group to-dos by phase. The series plan in the Fall Sermon Series — Rooted project organizes tasks into Planning & Theme, Sermon Prep, Music & Worship, Media & Promotion, Launch Week, and Series Wrap-up. "Pick worship setlist for launch Sunday" lives under Music & Worship and gets checked off right there. The team works through each stage of the series, checking off to-dos along the way.

Here's an example of the grouped series plan:

To-dos work for your clients too. The "Guest speaker prep" list is shared with June and Ivy, with to-dos for sending a bio and headshot, sharing the sermon title and scripture, sending slides by Wednesday, and sharing travel plans.

When a single piece of work passes through several steps, use a Card Table. Each card is one piece of work, and each column is a step. The "Series artwork & media" board moves the bulletin cover, slide backgrounds, and lobby banner from Requested to In design, Review, Approved, and Published.

A project can have more than one Card Table, so a second one was added to the project called "Guest speakers." It tracks every speaker from the first invitation to the thank-you note: Reaching out → Booked → Preparing → Thanked & paid. Each card has the same checklist of steps so Min Li can see what's left for each speaker at a glance. The honorarium step is assigned to Adrienne, so it shows up in her assignments when it's time.

Here's an example of the Guest speakers Card Table:

Sundays, rehearsals, and the sermon schedule

As the weeks fill up, you'll want a clear view of what's happening and when.

The Calendar shows all your project's events, along with to-dos and cards that have due dates.

In the Fall Sermon Series — Rooted project, it's renamed "Team calendar" and holds everything that happens behind the scenes: Thursday worship rehearsals, a sermon recording day, the deadlines for guest speakers' slides, and Min Li's airport pickup for June.

Here's an example of the Team calendar:

Your congregation will likely want to know what's coming up, too. Projects can have more than one Calendar, so this one has a second Calendar just for Sundays, called "Sermon calendar."

The team can then share it with a public link in the weekly church email, so anyone can see who's preaching without a Basecamp account. When a date changes, the link shows the update.

Here's an example of the public Sermon calendar in the grid view:

And here's the same calendar in the agenda view:

Files and church resources

Keep your documents, files, and links in one place so they're easy to find when you need them.

Use Docs & Files to store the things your team comes back to again and again. In the Fall Sermon Series — Rooted project, that's the series outline, song list and chord charts, slide templates, and the Guest speaker guide. June and Ivy can see that guide too, with details about arrival times, parking, and when to send slides.

Folders keep the weekly material tidy. The Sermon manuscripts folder has one document for each week, and small group leaders have a folder of their own for discussion guides, so they don't have to dig through sermon notes.

Here's what Docs & Files looks like in the project:

If your church uses other services — like worship planning, song licensing, or online giving — you can add them as External Links. That way, your team can get to them from the project instead of digging through bookmarks.

Some of the work will still arrive by email. Turn on Email Forwards and you can forward those messages straight into the right project, where the team can discuss them.

When June emailed her flight itinerary to the church office, Adrienne forwarded it into the project. Min Li offered to pick her up from the airport, and Adrienne confirmed her hotel in the comments.

Once everything was settled, Min Li replied to June directly from Basecamp. Her reply was emailed to June, and a copy stayed in the project. Now everyone in the project can see the conversation.

Here's an example of that forwarded email and the conversation below it:

Staying on top of everything

Once everything is set up, you can keep up with what's happening without checking every project.

The My Bar at the bottom of your screen gives you quick access to your tasks, upcoming events, bookmarks, and notes. On the right, the notification sidebar shows what's new for you, along with your Pings.

You also get a daily email with the latest activity and a weekly email with your upcoming tasks. You can turn either one off at any time.

For questions you'd ask your team every week, use Automatic Check-ins. Every Monday, the project asks "What's one thing we should change before next Sunday?" Over six weeks, those answers make each Sunday a little better than the last. 😊

That's a wrap for now! We hope this guide helps your staff spend less time on logistics and more time with the people you serve. And if you need any assistance with Basecamp, you can check out our learning center, help pages, or send us a note at Support. Happy Basecamping!