Church service registration, free tickets and the big Sundays

The short answer

Most Sunday services don’t need tickets. People should be able to walk in. Registration earns its place for a few things: services with limited room, like Christmas and Easter; programs where you need details, like kids' and youth groups; and courses or meals where you have to plan numbers.

When you do register people, keep it free, quick, and possible without an account or an app. And keep donations separate from tickets, so nobody is confused about what’s a gift and what’s a booking.

When a service needs registration

Probably not

• a regular Sunday service with room to spare
• a midweek prayer meeting
• anything where turning someone away at the door would be the wrong message

For these, a page that says what, when and where, with a map, is enough. It helps visitors find you without asking them to book.

Probably yes

• Christmas and Easter services that fill up, where free tickets spread people across service times
• Kids' programs and youth groups, where you need a parent’s contact, allergies and permission
• Courses and studies with a fixed number of places or materials to prepare
• Church lunches, dinners and camps, where catering needs a number
• Special services with a guest speaker or limited seating

Free tickets for the big Sundays

Christmas and Easter bring visitors who don’t know your service times or how full they get. Free tickets solve two problems at once: they tell people which service has room, and they tell your team how many to expect.

A few things make it work:

• Offer every service time on one page, each with its own capacity, so people can move to the 8 am when the 10 am is full.
• Keep some room for walk-ins. Set the capacity a little under the real limit so nobody who turns up is turned away.
• Turn on a waitlist for the popular times, and offer places as they free up.
• Ask for one ticket per person, or use a family ticket that counts each person against the capacity.
• Remind people the day before. A free ticket is easy to book and easy to forget, and a reminder helps. How to stop no-shows at a free event has more ideas.

Weekly programs: kids, youth and small groups

A weekly program runs on the same families every week. Asking parents to book each Friday quickly becomes a chore, and someone always forgets.

Two setups work well:

• Register once a term. Make one event with every date of the term on it. A family registers once, each child gets a ticket that checks in each week, and the questions you need are asked once: a parent’s phone number, allergies, photo permission.
• Open-ended programs. Make it a weekly series with free tickets for each session. Youth and adults who come every week can take a free subscription instead, and get a ticket to every session without booking. Each person on a plan needs their own email address, so this suits older youth and leaders better than young children.

Either way, keep a single free ticket for visitors and friends.

Donations and pay what you want

Many churches want to let people give at a free event, or let people pay what they can for a dinner or a camp. Two things to keep straight:

A ticket isn’t a gift. In Australia, a payment is generally only a tax-deductible gift when it goes to a deductible gift recipient and the giver gets nothing material back. The ATO lists entry to a fundraising event as the kind of benefit that means you can’t claim a gift deduction. See the ATO’s gifts and donations page, and check with your treasurer before calling any ticket payment a donation.

Separate giving from booking where you can. Your regular giving method is usually the right home for tithes and offerings. On an event, a “Donation” ticket type with a minimum of zero, or a pay what you want price with a suggested amount, lets people contribute without making the booking feel transactional.

Keep it easy for everyone

Your congregation spans every age. Registration should be:

• free to book, with no fee on a free ticket
• no account needed, just a name and an email
• phone-friendly, since most people will book from a link in the newsletter
• easy at the door, with a volunteer checking names on a phone, and a guest list to search for someone without their ticket

On One Ticket

Free tickets cost nothing to anyone on every plan, and you don’t need Stripe connected to run a free event. For a service that only needs a page, No tickets needed under Ticket settings shows what, when and where with nothing to book. A term program can be one event with every date on it: one registration, a ticket that checks in once each day, and questions at checkout asked once per ticket. An open-ended program becomes a series with a session for each week, each with its own capacity and waitlist, and a free subscription plan issues regulars a ticket to every session. See Repeating events and series.

For Christmas or Easter, make each service time its own event, or a series, each with its own capacity. A ticket type can admit a group (up to eight people), and each person gets their own ticket and counts against the capacity. Everyone booked is reminded the day before and the morning of. A volunteer can check people in from a door link with no sign-in.

Pay what you want and donation tickets are on Pro and Team; a minimum of zero, named “Donation”, lets people give what they choose. Pro and Team are open now: upgrade any time in Settings › Plan. Limited-time offer: A$1 for your first year (first 100 organisers), then A$29/month for Pro or A$79/month for Team. Cancel anytime.

See pricing, the Events page and ticketing for churches.

Back to the complete guide to recurring events. Related: Tickets and registration for a church event or fundraiser, Community groups' regular events and How do I give someone a free ticket?