The steps
- Choose the Church of England wording. The preset sets an 8:00 Holy Communion, a 10:00 Parish Eucharist and 6:00 Evensong, with readers, intercessors, sidespeople, chalice assistants, servers and the flower rota.
- Adjust the services. Rename, add or remove services to match your pattern, and set how many of each role every service needs.
- Add the people. Paste the electoral roll volunteers or the old rota list, with the roles each person does and any dates away.
- Set limits for the flower rota. Flowers usually go to one person a week; give each flower arranger a monthly limit, such as two, so the rota turns over.
- Build and print. Build the month or quarter, then print the grid for the church porch and the list by person for the pew sheet.
Worked example: a parish church in January
On the Church of England preset the ministries are Reader, Intercessor, Sidesperson, Chalice assistant, Server, Flower rota. Take 18 volunteers for January 2027, across 15 services. That is 75 places, and PewRota fills 70 of them. The flower rota has 5 turns that month, one each Sunday at the Parish Eucharist; 4 are filled, shared among 2 arrangers with nobody doing more than 2, because each arranger has a limit of two a month.
Two sidespeople in the example are a couple, entered with one family name, so they are never on different services on the same Sunday. Two of the servers are ticked senior, and 5 of the 5 senior server places are filled, one at each Parish Eucharist.
Words that change, rules that do not
Parishes use different words for the same job: sidesperson or steward, reader or lector, intercessor or leader of prayers. The words are only labels in PewRota. The rules are the same underneath: trained, available, one role at a time, and whatever else the parish chooses.
Festivals and special services
Harvest, Remembrance Sunday, the carol service and Easter morning need more sidespeople and a bigger flower team. Add each as a one-off service with its date and its own counts; the builder fills them with the weekly services and keeps the same rules, so nobody who is on at the carol service is also put down for Evensong that evening unless they have said they are happy to do two.
When the rota is built, print the grid for the porch notice board and give each volunteer their own list. The Print and export tab writes a short reminder for each person to paste into your own email, so the parish office never has to type the same dates twice.
Common mistakes
- Keeping the same two sidespeople on Evensong for years because nobody asked.
- Putting a reader on to read and lead the intercessions at the same service.
- Forgetting that the flower arranger for Christmas is also away for New Year.
- Pinning the rota up with home phone numbers on it. PewRota keeps no phone numbers.
Open the rota builder, choose the Church of England wording on the Ministries tab, and replace the services and ministries with the preset.
Sources
Checked on 28 September 2026. PewRota applies your parish's own policy; it ships no liturgical rules. Where your diocese, your parish safeguarding policy or your clergy say something different, follow them.
- PewRota's rota builder. Every example on this page is built by the same solver the rota builder runs, at build time, and pinned by a test.