In 2019, our church made the decision to require membership for anyone serving at Hope Church Mississauga, in any position. This is primarily because we feel the Bible makes it clear that the community of believers that make up a given church should be identifiable - there are those who are part of the church, and those who are visiting, but there isn't a Biblical category for "attending but not committed." Your attendance, giving, and participation should all be as part of one local expression of the body of Christ. 

Formal membership is the process we use to identify those who are committed. That's why we want people who are serving to be members first; we know you're with us and you're here to stay! 

If you're already serving but you're not yet a member of Hope Church, we want you to become one, and the process is really simple for those already serving. Click below to let us know you need to become a formal member and we'll get it done quick.

BECOME A MEMBER

We try to put the schedule out as far in advance as possible, to a maximum of 4 months at a time. Doing it this way creates 3 trimesters of scheduling in the life of our church, which overlap major events in our church calendar. The three trimesters are November to February (overlapping Christmas and New Years), March to June (overlapping Easter and Pentecost), and July to October (overlapping summer holidays and Fall kickoff/anniversary weekend).

Unless you let us know otherwise, we try to schedule people serve around once every three weeks. We've found this to be a good balance between serving and rest, and is frequent enough that you don't forget how to do everything between serving opportunities. Some people prefer to serve more often, and some less. 

We do the best we can to include you in the scheduling process by asking you to update your serving preferences and blockout dates in Planning Center Online before we put the next schedule together. When planning the schedule, we do our best to work around your preferences and blockouts. In some cases we need to flex things a little bit, and we appreciate your flexibility in that!

Generally speaking: no. There may be occasions where we have to shift things around to accommodate a change in availability, or to include a new volunteer. When that happens, all affected parties will be notified via email.

If you fail to include your blockouts in PCO before the schedule goes out, or if your availability changes after the schedule is sent out, we kindly ask that you try to arrange your own coverage by trading dates with other volunteers who serve in the same position you're scheduled for. Using the Whatsapp chat is an easy way to do this!

Finding your own replacement helps us out massively - like really, we can't stress how helpful it is. So thank you in advance for taking care of that! If you've already tried to find your own replacement for a week you're no longer available and haven't had any luck, let us know so we can help.

Well, it’s not because we are all morning people, we can tell you that! 

The band starts their setup at 6:30am, and this is planned to give them ample time to run through all worship songs before doors open for the first service. The reason we have the rehearsal on Sunday mornings is that we’ve found it to be simpler for most people. The other option would have to be a weekday evening, meaning another night out in a busy schedule.

The production team starts at 7am to line up with the beginning of the band's rehearsal. This gives you a good idea of what the service will look like, and lets you prepare for it. It also leaves lots of time to troubleshoot, as problems do come up. 

We want everyone to be confident and ready to go by 9am, and we also want to be conscious of  your schedules outside of church, and arriving early in the morning is currently the best way we can do that. Remember, everyone who is serving is able to get a free coffee or tea at the cafe; we hope that helps! And as always, we thank you for your dedication!