How to sign up and manage potlucks and meal trains

The last few months I've been making my way through the top 12 ways churches use Registrations for events, forms, and more.  If you are a part of a church, you know well the purpose of potlucks and meal trains.

Potlucks are an incredible time for people to gather and fellowship around food.  Rather than hiring a caterer, potlucks share responsibility for bringing the meal.  They are a great time to try different family favorites and just have fun!

I know that often times churches just ask everyone to bring something.  To make sure you don't end up with no meat, 5 potato casseroles, and a plate of brownies; take advantage of a Churchteams registration.  Then just email or text it to everyone with an invitation or reminder.  It's pretty simple.

1. Create a Registration field to list and limit the number of menu items desired.  From the main menu > Groups & Events > Settings > Registration Fields.  Something like this:
2. Create the group or event.
3. Click on Registrations > Settings.  Customize these as desired.
4. Add the Potluck attribute to the registration form and Save.
5. Here's the form people complete to register.  Notice Drinks are grayed out.  
   
6. Use the group to see who is bringing what and to communicate with everyone.

One of the HUGE benefits of being part of a church family is the opportunity to care for others and be cared for during times of challenge and crisis.  Providing meals is a very meaningful and practical way to do both of these.

Before the Internet these were organized by phone calls and a piece of paper.  Google it and you'll see a bunch of apps that you can use to sign up people and manage meal trains.  But, why not use Churchteams?  You already have everyone's information and it's really not that hard.  In fact, just follow the same steps for creating a Potluck.  Here are some replacement images that tell the story.

If you've use Churchteams registrations, all you needed is the idea behind this blog post.  I would recommend clearing out and reusing these registrations for each new Potluck or Meal Train. No need to create a new registration for every Potluck or Meal Train.  The system will keep some history for you, but it's unlikely that you will use that data.

One of the challenges of software being able to do so many things is being able to focus on specific tasks like these.  Hopefully, this quick blog post will give you yet another insight into what's possible with Churchteams, software designed to serve churches.