Creating an Event Series With a Template

Most churches run the same handful of recurring events week after week -- Sunday Worship, Wednesday Bible Study, the monthly board meeting. Instead of typing the recurrence rule, start time, duration, and serving positions every single time you create one of these series, you can pick a template and have everything pre-filled.

This article walks through the Start from Template flow on the series creation form.

For information on creating and managing the templates themselves, see Event Series Templates.

Why Start From a Template

A template captures the four things that define a recurring event:

1. Title (e.g., "Sunday Worship")
2. Time (start time + duration)
3. Recurrence (e.g., "Every Sunday")
4. Default serving positions (e.g., 1 Sound Tech, 2 Greeters, 3 Vocalists)

When you start from a template, all four are pre-filled with sensible defaults. You can edit any of them before saving -- the template is a starting point, not a contract.

Step-by-Step

1. Open the Series Creation Form

1. In the admin sidebar, expand Planning and click Events.
2. In the top-right of the Events page, click the Event Series button.
3. Click + New Series.

2. Pick a Template

At the top of the form, you will see a Start from Template dropdown listing every active template your church has created.

1. Click the dropdown.
2. Pick the template that matches the series you are creating (e.g., Sunday Worship).
3. The form fields below the dropdown will instantly populate with the template's defaults.

If the dropdown is empty, your church has not created any templates yet. Either:

• Skip the template and fill the form by hand (recommended for one-off series).
• Hop over to Events > Event Series > Templates and create the template first (recommended if this is a pattern you will reuse).

3. Review and Adjust the Pre-Filled Fields

After picking a template, every section of the form will already have values. Read down the form and tweak anything that does not match this specific series:

4. Adjust the Default Serving Positions

The Serving Positions section near the bottom of the form is where the template really pays off. It will already list the positions the template defined (e.g., 1 Sound Tech, 2 Greeters, 3 Vocalists, 1 Worship Leader).

For each position you can:

• Increase or decrease the slot count (e.g., bump Greeters from 2 to 3 because this is a bigger venue).
• Remove a position if it does not apply to this specific series.
• Add another position that is unique to this series.

The serving positions you save here become the default for every event the series generates. You can still override them on a single occurrence later.

Tip: If your team templates already auto-apply to the matching event type, you do not need serving positions on the series at all -- the team templates will pre-load them on each generated event. In that case, leave the serving positions empty here. See Team Schedule Templates.

5. Save the Series

Click Save Series at the bottom of the form.

What happens next:

1. The series record is created.
2. TimelyChurch immediately materializes the upcoming events -- by default, the next 3 months of occurrences are generated as actual event records you can open and edit.
3. If your team has Team Schedule Templates that auto-apply to this event type, each generated event arrives pre-loaded with those positions too.
4. You are redirected to the series detail page, where you can see all upcoming occurrences, run Auto-Fill Series, or jump into individual events.

What "Start from Template" Does Not Do

A template is a starting shape, not a live link. After you create the series:

• Editing the template does not retroactively change this series.
• Editing this series does not change the template.

If you want changes to propagate to every series created from the template, edit the template and recreate the series, or accept that future series will pick up the new defaults while the existing one stays as it is.

Walkthrough: A Complete First-Time Setup

A new church admin setting up Sunday Worship for the first time:

1. First, build the template. Go to Events > Event Series > Templates and create Sunday Worship: event type Worship, every Sunday at 10 AM, 90 minutes, with default positions for Sound, Greeters, Vocals, etc.
2. Then, create the series. Click New Series, pick Sunday Worship from the Start from Template dropdown. Adjust the start date to next Sunday, add the location ("Main Sanctuary") and room.
3. Save. The next 3 months of Sunday Worship events appear on the calendar with serving positions ready to fill.
4. Optional polish. From the series page, click Auto-Fill Series to draft a volunteer roster across all 12+ events in one click.

That is a fully scheduled quarter of Sunday services with maybe ten minutes of admin work -- and zero of it spent retyping recurrence rules.

Related Articles

• Event Series Templates -- creating, editing, and deactivating the templates themselves.
• Managing Event Series -- editing, exceptions, and series-wide actions after creation.
• Recurring Events -- the underlying recurrence rules that templates encode.
• Team Schedule Templates -- the team-side counterpart that auto-applies positions to events of a matching type.
• How Volunteer Scheduling Is Organized — the mental model the template flow fits into.