Introduction: What is all this?
Ma-amad (English spelling) has an archaic meaning, something like "ministry" or "service." It's also quick and easy to type. This is a place where I collect and test software that can be used in the ministry of the Gospel, either by churches or by those called to serve them. For those who don't mind paying a small fee for the service that will help to offset my hosting expenses and time, I also host some of the same software on this web site for their use.
I am a Lutheran pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Synod. These software projects began as ideas for improving my own efficiency and that of my parish. They have matured over time to the point where they are probably useful for others. If you subscribe to have something hosted here, it removes the necessity for you to install the hosted software to your own web site, and to maintain the installation. Everyone wins!
How do I get started?
A subscription for a hosted application costs $10/quarter, which is billed automatically through a Paypal invoice sent to your email address. You may pay it securely through a Paypal account of your own, with a credit card, or any other way that Paypal supports. Since you receive invoices for the service, you also have something you can submit for reimbursement.
Invoices overdue by three months are subject to having the subscription cancelled and the installation deleted. That means all you have to do to quit your subscription is stop paying the invoices. On the other hand, if you want to try the software for up to three months before compensating me for my time and supporting my expenses, you can do so.
Service Planner
Pastors need a system for planning church services that can contain enough information in one place to assemble the parts of the service. The parts include the rite that will be used with any modifications, as well as the propers for the particular day. It can include the sermon text and even the sermon itself. It certainly includes the hymns. It would help greatly to have the system be aware of the church year and capable of finding the propers on its own, and yet configurable enough so that alternative propers may be used. It would also be helpful to archive past service plans indefinitely either for reuse or for reference.
Organists, altar guild, ushers, and other contributors to a service need a way to see the plans for upcoming services and organize themselves according to those plans. It can include a schedule for taking turns serving, or special notes that the pastor may find useful.
All of these collaborators need to be able to work together in a way that is
- conveniently accessible to all
- encourages a standardized set of information so that nothing important is omitted
- flexible enough for unusual circumstances
The Ma-amad Service Planner is designed to fit these needs.
A limited comparison of capabilities:
| Ma-amad | Paper | MS Office | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can contain your service plans | Yes | ||
| Can contain your sermon plans | Yes | ||
| Modifiable from any web browser, anywhere | Yes | No | |
| Automatically published for access by others | Yes | No | |
| Helps to coordinate service contributors | Yes | No | |
| Automatically finds lectionary days | Yes | No | |
| Reminds last use of hymn choices | Yes | No | |
| Special support for block plans | Yes | No | |
| Automatically shows lesson texts | Yes | No | |
| Comes with technical support | Yes | No | |
| Includes sortable hymnbook cross-reference | Yes | No | |
| Can integrate into your existing web site | Easily | With lots of work | |
| Lists Reverse-chronological past OR Chronological future | Yes | No | |
| Integrates Custom/Other Lectionaries | Yes | What? | No |
| Includes Hymnary propers | Yes | No | |
| Forum to request new features | Yes | No | |
| Proceeds benefit a Lutheran elementary school | Yes | No | |
Noted Features
The Ma-amad service planner provides a web-based solution for planning church services, and is optimized for the Lutheran tradition as found especially in the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary.
For the convenience of pastors and service planners
- It is aware of the church year, and comes preprogrammed to handle the 1-year Historic lectionary, as well as the 3-year ILCW lectionary in the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary.
- Other lectionaries, festivals, and propers may be added if needed.
- For those whose needs exceed the defaults, the propers and church year configuration are adjustable, and can be exported or imported via a CSV (comma-separated value) format. Any spreadsheet software can use that.
- Services may be grouped into blocks which share certain attributes, for a series like "Midweek Lent, 2016" or "Trinity I, 2015."
- The listings of planned services are configurable, and may show not only the hymns, but many of the propers, as well as free-form notes.
- A configurable report listing provides essential information in a table that can be printed or viewed online, while the regular service listing provides much more.
- The interface for entering a service is aimed at making the experience as convenient and painless as possible.
- Collaborating pastors can each have full-access logins.
Pastors no longer have to send their hymns or other service info to organists and others. You can do your planning in a web browser. As soon as you finish, the service is immediately available to your organists, etc. through their own web browser.
For the convenience of organists and other service contributors
- Listings may be simplified by individual users to suit their needs.
- Though the system is password-protected, service listings and plans are available for anyone to read who has access to the web site.
- Individual services in the main listing can be formatted for convenient printing with a click, making it unnecessary for organists and others to write down their own lists of hymns or other details.
- Logins can be provided for specific people. Organists and the like can have limited access to show their availability for specific services.
- All contributors can see the availablity of others, and when they have been scheduled.
There are many more features, too many to list here.
Video Tutorials
How to Find the Hymns
The "Introduction to All Parts" video was made before it was possible to fold service information up. Folding makes it much quicker to find the service you want, but it also may confuse some users because it hides the hymns and other things. This quick video explains how to see the hymns in services when they are folded.
Introduction to All Parts
How to Add a Service
How an Organist Can Show Availability For a Service
How to Use a Reminder Message
Status and Support
If you think you have found a bug, or if you have a suggested improvement, please contact me. The best way may be through the Ma-amad Google group, where you may also find support from other users of this software.
Subscription for Hosted Service Planner
Subscribe to a service planner by clicking on this painfully-obvious, glossy
button:
If you wish to install the service planner to your own web site, you may do so. In fact, you may also customize it to your heart's content. You can see and download the code from the public Git repository. The only catch is that if you distribute the service planner or make it available for download in a modified form, you are also required to make the source code of your changes available. That's what "open source" means. Your improvements may be incorporated back into the Ma-amad Service Planner.
Flexical: an Online, Month-printable Calendar
This is actually an older project than the service planner, but it's not as near to being ready for public deployment. The author has used it for over a decade, as it has slowly developed to its present form. With the change in circumstances in the 2020 pandemic, the author now has no installations of this in use.
Unlike the Service Planner, the calendar shares a niche with many other choices, including very slick ones from the likes of Google and Yahoo!, not to mention desktop applications in practically every operating system. The difference with Flexical is simply that you can access it from any web browser, and it can be printed in a nice, traditional, landscape-oriented calendar for church members who may have resisted the Internet so far. Not even Google's online calendar can do that, though there are desktop applications that do. Flexical started as a fork of another person's project called PHPEventCalendar.
The code is available for anyone who wants to install it at this public Git repository.
Church Database
There are expensive solutions in this domain. This one is free. Built upon the database component of OpenOffice/LibreOffice called Base, this database is really a work-in-progress. It was once implemented as a database-driven web site. Though it worked well for me, it was not an easy thing for other people to install and learn. Now it is reimplemented in Base, which is freely available on multiple computing platforms. All that is needed to install it is to install OpenOffice or LibreOffice with its Base component, and open the database file provided in the archived folder. To use it, you will begin by entering data using one of several Forms you can open. Eventually, there will also be reports that allow you to present various data and the results of processing it.
Church Database stores the usual vital statistics that churches record about individuals and families in a relational database that can be backed up by copying a collection of files.
Download Church Database from here: http://www.ma-amad.com/download/ChurchDatabase.zip Since first making this avaialable, the author's circumstances have changed significantly. As a result, it hasn't been further developed. That time may yet come, but meanwhile, feel free to use this link as a beginning for meeting your own needs.