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 pattern, start time, and duration every time you create one of these series, you can pick a template and have them pre-filled.

This article walks through the Start from a template (optional) 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 things that define a recurring event:

1. Title and description (e.g., "Sunday Worship")
2. Event type (e.g., Worship Service)
3. Time (start time + duration)
4. Recurrence (e.g., "Every Sunday")

When you start from a template, these 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 Events page header, open the More menu and click Event Series.
3. Click New Series. The Create Event Series form opens.

2. Pick a Template

At the top of the form, you will see Start from a template (optional), a dropdown listing every active template your church has created ("Prefills time, recurrence, and default positions. You can edit anything afterwards.").

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 your church has no active templates yet, the box doesn't appear. Either:

• Fill the form by hand (recommended for one-off series).
• Go to Events → More → Templates and create the template first in the Event Series section (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. Set the Volunteer Positions

With Volunteers turned on under Features, the Volunteer Positions section near the bottom of the form lists the positions every generated event should get. Series templates created on the Templates page don't store positions, so this list usually starts empty ("No positions yet — pick a template above or add one manually.").

• Click Add position to add one (e.g., Worship Leader), optionally pick a team, and set the number of slots.
• Change a position's slot count (e.g., bump Greeters from 2 to 3 because this is a bigger venue).
• Remove a position that does not apply to this specific series.

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

Tip: If your team templates already auto-apply to the matching event type, you do not need positions on the series at all. The team templates will pre-load them on each generated event. In that case, leave the list empty here. See Team Schedule Templates. For a whole service day (teams, service plan, and extra roles), you can also pick a Day Template later under Edit → Serving Setup. See Event Series Templates.

5. Save the Series

Click Create 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 All Events, 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 → More → Templates, click New Template in the Event Series section, and create Sunday Worship: event type Worship Service, Every Sunday, 10 AM, 90 minutes.
2. Then, create the series. Click New Series and pick Sunday Worship in Start from a template (optional). Adjust the start date to next Sunday, add the location ("Main Sanctuary") and room, and add positions for Sound, Greeters, Vocals, etc. (or rely on your team templates).
3. Click Create Series. 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 All Events 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 none of it spent retyping repeat patterns.

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 recurrence patterns that templates store.
• 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.