Your Church, Your Programme: Templates, Smarter Sharing, and a Cleaner Editor

Every Seventh-day Adventist church has its own rhythm.

Some open with an Introit, move into a Call to Worship, and treat the offering as a moment of worship in its own right. Others run a tighter Praise & Worship segment before settling into the sermon. Communion Sabbaths follow a completely different pattern. Youth Sabbaths are different again.

For a long time, PewPlan launched new programmes with a fixed set of starting points — Divine Service, Communion Service, or Blank. Helpful, but not quite yours.

That changes today.

Build your own templates

Owners and editors can now create, edit, and reorder their church's programme templates from the Settings page.

Open Settings → Templates, and you'll see your current templates — by default the built-in Divine Service and Communion Service structures, ready to be customised. Rename them, rearrange the blocks, add items your church always includes, remove the ones you never use. Each template can hold up to its own block order, with editable titles for every item.

When an editor creates a new programme, they see your church's templates — not a generic list. The right starting point, every time.

For organisations running multiple churches under one account, there's a system-wide default set by the platform admin. New churches inherit it automatically, and each church can then customise further for their own needs. One consistent foundation, with room to adapt.

Share and branding, now in one place

Previously, the share link and programme branding (logo, footnote) lived in two different places. That was confusing. They're the same thing, really — you're deciding how your programme appears to your congregation.

Now, a single button in the editor opens a Share & Branding sheet. From one panel you can:

• Generate a public link for your congregation (no login, no app, just a URL)
• Set how long the link stays active — 7, 14, 30, 60, or 90 days
• Copy and share the link instantly
• Revoke it if plans change
• Override the logo and footnote for this specific programme, or fall back to your organisation's defaults

Your congregation opens the link on their phone before the service. They see a clean, formatted programme with your church's branding. If you update a song title at 10:50 on Sabbath morning, the link reflects it immediately.

A cleaner editor toolbar

The four icons at the top of the editor were — let's be honest — not the clearest. A cog that opened branding settings. A clock for activity history. A blank page that somehow also generated share links. A share icon that actually downloaded a file.

We've replaced them with three icons that say what they do:

• List icon — opens the programme's activity log, so you can see exactly who changed what and when
• Download icon — exports the programme to your projection software
• Link icon (highlighted in blue) — opens Share & Branding, the primary action for getting the programme out to your congregation

The blue highlight on the link button isn't accidental. That's the thing most editors reach for on Sabbath morning — and it should be the easiest thing to find.

Export to your projection software

PewPlan now has a dedicated Export panel, built to grow. Right now it generates a FreeShow project file — every programme item becomes a labelled section, songs carry their hymnal numbers, and the whole thing imports into FreeShow in a few seconds.

ProPresenter and other export formats are coming. The panel is designed so each new option just appears as another card alongside FreeShow, with no disruption to what already works.

If your church already uses FreeShow for song and announcement projection, the export is part of the Pro plan. Set up the programme in PewPlan, export once, import into FreeShow. Your projection operator works from the same source of truth as the rest of the team.

The activity log: who changed what

For larger teams, accountability matters. The activity log — accessible from the editor — keeps a record of every change made to a programme: which block was edited, by whom, and when. You can trace a mysterious title change back to exactly who made it, without any awkward conversations.

It's also genuinely useful on Sabbath morning. If someone wonders why the offering song moved, you can show them the exact edit. No guesswork.

Why we keep building this

PewPlan started from a simple frustration: church teams are organised, dedicated, and hard-working — but they're often fighting their tools instead of focusing on the service.

A Word document emailed around on Friday night isn't a programme management system. Neither is a shared Google Doc with no structure, no roles, and no way to see what the congregation will actually receive.

Every update we ship is aimed at the same thing: less friction between your team and the service they're preparing. The templates mean you start from the right place. The share sheet means one tap gets the programme to the congregation. The cleaner toolbar means you spend less time hunting for buttons and more time on what matters.

Free to start, free to try

PewPlan's free tier gives your church five programmes, two editors, and unlimited congregation viewers. Everything described above — templates, share links, the activity log, the new toolbar — is available on the free plan.

FreeShow export and custom branding are Pro features, but the core of what makes PewPlan useful is free, and it stays free.

If your church team is still building programmes in a word processor and emailing them around on Friday evening, sign in and give PewPlan a try. Your first programme takes about three minutes to set up. Your congregation will have a link before the week is out.