I've heard of a few pastors mention that they do not study who donates what amounts in their parish. They do not want to be tempted to play favorites. However, I think it is helpful to instead see giving as a spiritual gift. Most pastors enjoy listing to good music and then applauding, rewarding, and encouraging those music ministers. In fact, the long term health of the music ministry depends on the pastor's fatherly support and encouragement and direction. Most pastors enjoy attending service projects and supporting and encouraging those parishioners who have a knack for volunteering and organizing. So, when it comes to giving, I would encourage pastors and parish staff to watch and see who donates what amounts. Giving is a spiritual gift just like music, volunteering, helping, organizing, etc. And, like music ministry, everyone is encouraged to sing but only some are gifted and guided enough to lead the music. And, that is okay. Often those leading music need encouragement in order to lead more. And, often a timid parishioner needs to be encouraged to step up and join the music ministry team. 

If we look at giving like we do music ministry, we'll see some opportunities for the pastor and parish staff to actually encourage and support giving. The large and regular donors should be patted on the back, thanked, and even encouraged to give more. Some large donors are only giving a portion of what they can give. They are looking for and need their pastor to thank them, encourage them, and ask for more giving. Many parishioners are capable of giving much more and stepping up to significant giving levels, but one one is watching them give or pastoring them. In the same way that an amazing singer may be unnoticed in the pews, many potential large donors are not being noticed. 

So, I would encourage pastors, parish staff, and development directors to pay attention to the donor rolls. This can be done prayerfully. Ideally through conversation and discernment, a pastor will feel led to deepen his relationship with some donors in order to thank, encourage, and increase their giving. 

Much like a pastor should know which parishioners are doing well in music, volunteering, serving, and outreach, so he should also know who is giving well. Giving is a spiritual gift like any other. It needs to be noticed, thanked, and fostered. 

While you may have a long term goal of perpetual adoration, you can easily get started with only a few hours of Adoration per week. The advantage to starting small is that you, as the administrator or coordinator, can slowly work your way into learning everything that goes into running an Adoration program.

There will be many logistics to learn such as exposing the Eucharist and reposing the Eucharist. You will also need to manage sign ups, sign ins, and attendance. Of course, we highly recommend that launch your Adoration program right from the start by using AdorationPro, our custom program for scheduling Eucharistic Adoration. 

Easy Signs Ups
AdorationPro provides you with a public website address from which people can sign up for individual hours. You can share this URL in the various ways:

• bulletin
• email announcements
• projector slides
• announcements
• newsletter
• personal emails
• emails from faith formation and other groups
• iPads or computers after Mass

By directing everyone to the online sign up, adorers are entered exactly into the system where they need to be. You save yourself the time of converting paper signs ups into sign ups in the system. However, if you prefer, you can still manually enter adorers into AdorationPro.

Easy Hour Adjustments
In AdorationPro, you can easily adjust how many hours you have Adoration. A simple start might be to begin with 5 hours on Friday such as from 9am-2pm.  You can select only these hours to show in AdorationPro which means when you do your above promotion, it will be very easy to fill those 5 available hours. You can even make AdorationPro turn off the sign up button for a given hour once a certain number of adorers sign up. For example, you can set AdorationPro so that after 3 adorers sign up for an hour, the sign up button disappears.  This forces adorers to pick another time slot.  Under this plan, you only need 15 adorers to fill your 5 hour slots. If you are able to fill these slots quickly, then you can easily add more hours in AdorarationPro and do the above annnouncements and promotions again to fill your new slots. Or, you can run Adoration with only 5 hours a week for a few weeks to study all the moving parts. If you run the program smoothly for 3 weeks with only 5 hours per week, then you will likely run things smoothly for 10 hours per week. So, you could add in more hours such as from 2pm-7pm on Fridays.  Or, instead of extending Fridays you could add Thursdays from 9am-2pm.  Of course your local schedule of Masses and other activities may dictate which hours work best. The point is to start small and to grow carefully.  The success of few hours will signal to the parish that you know what you are doing and that the program is sustainable.

Consider Saving Night Hours for Last
It probably makes the most sense to fill in the day hours for 5-7 days per week before moving into night hours. With day hours you likely have staff at the church who can help with any problems. You also completely avoid any nighttime security issues. While 24/7 adoration is a wondeful goal, it probably makes sense to expand into the daytime hours first. Again, the beauty of using AdorationPro is that you can easily add these hours and request sign ups.