Your serving preferences
Availability says when you cannot serve. Preferences say what you would rather do — which Mass suits your family, how often you are willing to be called on, and whether you want an email or a printed sheet. None of it is a rule your leader must obey, but all of it is information they would otherwise have to guess at.
Open Preferences in Serve.
Which services do you prefer?
Every service your ministries staff is listed. For each one, choose:
| Choice | What it tells the scheduler |
|---|---|
| Prefer | Place me here when you can. |
| Fine | No strong feeling. |
| Rather not | Please avoid this one if you have someone else. |
These are soft preferences. A leader can still schedule you at a service you marked Rather not, and when they do, the assignment carries a visible note saying so. That is the point: they know they are asking, and you know they knew.
"Only this service"
Above the list is a stronger setting. Turn on Only this service for every service you are actually willing to serve; once any one of them is on, every other service is blocked outright.
Only this service is a hard restriction, not a preference. If you turn it on for the 8:00 Sunday Mass and nothing else, you will never be scheduled anywhere else — including for replacements. Use Prefer and Rather not unless you genuinely cannot serve at the other times.
If your ministries have no services set up yet, the section says No services are set up for your ministries yet.
How often would you like to serve?
Serving target tells the scheduler how much of the rotation you want.
| Option | What it means |
|---|---|
| Usual parish rotation | Whatever a fair share works out to be. The right choice for most people. |
| A set number per period | You choose a number and a period — twice a month, once a week, six times a year. |
| Relative to the usual rotation | You serve a multiple of the normal share — half as often, or twice as often. |
Below the target are hard caps. Your target guides the scheduler; these limits stop it:
- Maximum per week
- Maximum per liturgical weekend — a Saturday vigil and the Sunday Masses count as one weekend
- Maximum per month
- Minimum days between assignments
Leave any of them blank to use your parish's default. Tap Save frequency when you are done.
Your parish also sets its own caps. Whichever is stricter wins. If the parish allows two services a weekend and you set one, you will be scheduled once — but you cannot use this to serve more often than the parish allows.
How should we reach you?
Two contact choices:
- Email me about my schedule — turn this off and you will stop receiving publication notices and reminders. Your assignments still appear in Serve; you simply have to look.
- I need a printed schedule — turn this on and the parish office prints your schedule for you after each publication. This is the setting for a volunteer who does not use email, and it is worth turning on for a family member who does not.
Turning off email and never opening Serve is how volunteers miss services. If email is too much, turn on the printed schedule instead, or subscribe to your calendar feed from Your serving schedule so the assignments appear where you already look.
Getting the balance right
Preferences work best when they describe your life honestly rather than defensively:
- Mark "Rather not" sparingly. A volunteer who marks every service Rather not has told the scheduler nothing.
- Use a serving target instead of blocking dates. If you want to serve monthly, say so once, rather than marking three weekends unavailable every month.
- Set a minimum gap if back-to-back weekends are the problem. That is a spacing issue, not an availability one.
- Revisit them once a year. The preferences you set when your children were small are rarely the ones you want now.
Troubleshooting
"Could not save that preference"
Try again in a moment, then reload Serve. If a save keeps failing, your parish may have set preferences to require a leader's review — check whether the change shows up after a day.
My preference was not honored
Preferences are soft. If a service could not be staffed any other way, a leader may schedule you at a service you marked Rather not, and the assignment records that they did. If it happens repeatedly, talk to your ministry leader — usually it means their roster for that Mass is too thin.
I set a maximum and am still scheduled more often
Check whether the extra assignments came from a standing arrangement or a position you claimed yourself; caps govern normal scheduling, not commitments you made directly. If none of that applies, tell your ministry leader.
"We could not load your preferences"
Tap Try again and wait for the page to load before changing anything.
What's next
- Your availability — the dates you truly cannot serve
- Open positions — serve more than your rotation gives you
- Your serving schedule — check what you are committed to
Related articles
- Serving in a ministry — opening Serve
- Replacements and trades — handing back a date you cannot make
- Families and young servers — how family scheduling interacts with your preferences