Sync Website Service Times with Rock RMS
Holiday services are some of the most meaningful moments on the church calendar. With more people to welcome, more services than usual, and extra attention on every detail, there’s also more to coordinate behind the scenes.
Somewhere in the middle of all of that, someone also has to make sure the correct service times are showing everywhere.
Christmas Eve is at 2:00, 4:00 and 6:00 this year. Except one campus has a different schedule. The normal Sunday service isn’t happening. Check-in needs to know. The website needs to know. Maybe the app does too.
Every place those times are entered separately is another place they can get out of sync.
What if changing the schedule in Rock could also change what your guests see on your website?
That’s where schedule-driven content becomes useful.
Let Rock Be the Source
A Rock-driven website doesn’t have to manage service times separately from the rest of your ministry systems.
Instead, your website can use the schedules your team is already maintaining in Rock. Whether it’s a normal Sunday, a special Christmas Eve service, or a different schedule at one campus, Rock holds the schedule and the website presents it to guests.
That means fewer duplicate updates, fewer places for information to drift out of sync, and less pressure on someone to remember every place a service time appears.
Rock v19 makes this even more useful by allowing schedules to be associated directly with campuses, giving multi-campus churches a cleaner way to organize and display service times.
You can see this kind of thinking in practice on the North Fort Worth campus page at Compass Christian Church and on the Second Presbyterian Church website.
The goal isn't simply to display a service time dynamically. It's to establish Rock as the source of truth and let the website respond to it.
How Schedule-Driven Content Works
- Maintain the actual service schedules in Rock.
- Associate those schedules with the appropriate campuses.
- Build a Persisted Dataset containing the upcoming occurrences you want the website to use.
- Design the website component around that data.
- Use Lava to retrieve the dataset and determine what should be displayed.
The result can be as simple as:
Sunday Services
9:00 AM + 10:30 AM
Or
Christmas Eve
December 24
2:00 PM, 4:00 PM + 6:00 PM
And after December 24 passes, the website can automatically return to the normal weekend schedule.
No one has to remember to change the page at midnight.
A Few Tricks We've Learned
Use Exclusions Instead of Changing Your Normal Schedule
If your normal Sunday service isn't happening on Christmas weekend, don't delete or rewrite the regular schedule. Exclude the affected date and create the special schedule separately.
Reuse Holiday Schedules
Don't create Christmas Eve 2026, Christmas Eve 2027, Christmas Eve 2028 unless there is a reason to. A reusable Christmas Eve schedule can often be updated with the appropriate occurrences each year. The same applies to Easter and other recurring events. Consistent naming and organization now will save someone from sorting through years of abandoned schedules later.
Add Schedule Attributes for Amenities
Schedules can also carry the details guests care about when choosing a service. Add schedule attributes for things like:
- Childcare available
- ASL interpretation
- Live stream available
- Communion
- Student or kids programming
- Accessibility accommodations
Then your website can display those details alongside each service time without maintaining them separately.