— Similar sounding name · very different products
Pastor Center vs. Planning Center.
Short answer: we're not Planning Center. The names sound alike, but Planning Center is a Church Management System. Pastor Center is a pastor's workflow tool — and our Ministry AMS is an AI agent that runs your Planning Center for you. We're complements, not competitors.
See how Pastor Center Ministry AMS runs your church tools →
Use Planning Center for
Your church database, giving, check-in, scheduling, registrations — the system of record for your congregation.
Use Pastor Center for
Sermon prep, media clipping, spiritual gifts assessments, and an AI agent that operates Planning Center on your behalf.
The honest answer
Most of our customers keep their Planning Center subscription. Ministry AMS makes it dramatically more useful.
— Ministry AMS · Agentic Ministry System
We don't replace your Planning Center. We run it.
Ministry AMS is an AI agent that connects to your existing Planning Center, executes the weekly tasks you'd normally do by hand, and surfaces the people and decisions that actually need your attention this week.
01 — Runs the weekly tasks
Schedules. Texts. Follows up.
Slots volunteers from your PC teams. Sends reminder texts. Chases the no-shows. Confirms next week's lineup. The work that takes your assistant six hours — done in ten minutes, every Monday morning.
02 — Surfaces what matters
Tells you who to call.
Reads your PC data and flags the things you'd never notice manually: first-time guests who haven't been contacted, faithful volunteers about to burn out, families that quietly stopped attending five weeks ago. Your Monday brief lands at 7am.
03 — You stay in charge
Approve, edit, or override.
Every action the agent takes is reviewable, editable, and revertable. Nothing fires without your sign-off the first month. After that, you set the trust level — full autopilot or hand-on-the-wheel.
— On the naming
Yes, the names sound alike. No, we're not them.
Planning Center is a beloved, deeply-built ChMS. They run the database for thousands of churches, and they should — they're great at it.
Pastor Center exists at a different layer. We don't store your member list. We don't process your giving. We don't run your check-in iPads. What we do is sit on top of the systems you already have — Planning Center, Breeze, Church Community Builder, whatever — and take the repetitive work off the pastor's plate.
Think of it this way: Planning Center is the filing cabinet. Pastor Center is the assistant who actually does something with what's in it.
Where each one fits.
No marketing weasel words. Different products, different jobs.
Planning Center
Pastor Center
People database / ChMS
✓ The category leader
✗ Not what we do
Giving / online tithing
✓ Built in
✗ Not what we do
Check-in / kids' security
✓ Industry-standard
✗ Not what we do
Service planning / song lists
✓ Their flagship use case
✗ Not what we do
Sermon research + writing
✗
✓ 23 AI agents, full module
Sermon clipping for socials
✗
✓ 20 clips per sermon
Spiritual gifts assessment
✗
✓ Unlimited, full church
AI agent that runs your ChMS
✗
✓ Ministry AMS
Auto-schedules volunteers from PC teams
~ Manual scheduling
✓ Agent fills slots automatically
First-time guest follow-up automation
~ Workflow templates
✓ Agent drafts + sends in your voice
Weekly "who needs your attention" brief
✗
✓ Mondays at 7am
Connects to your existing Planning Center
N/A — they are the system
✓ Two-way sync
What Planning Center does (and we don't)
- Owns the database. Member records, households, giving history, attendance — they're the system of record.
- Service planning, song scheduling, and worship-team workflow are best-in-class.
- Check-in iPads, kids' security tags, calendar bookings — full ChMS surface area.
- An ecosystem of integrations and a deep mobile app for staff and members.
- Pricing per module — predictable line items for finance teams.
What Pastor Center does on top
- Runs the weekly tasks inside your Planning Center automatically — scheduling, follow-up, reminders.
- Surfaces the people and decisions you'd otherwise miss in the data you already have.
- Owns the pastor's actual workflow — sermon prep, clipping, spiritual gifts, volunteer mobilization.
- Brings AI to the data you've spent years putting into PC. The data was always there. Now it works for you.
- Co-exists. We don't ask you to leave Planning Center. We make it more valuable.
Run them together.
Planning Center · Mid-size church
~$199/mo typical
People + Services + Giving + Check-in bundle for a 200-person church.
Add Calendar, Registrations, Groups as you need them.
Keep it. We're not asking you to switch.
Add Calendar, Registrations, Groups as you need them.
Keep it. We're not asking you to switch.
You already pay this
Pastor Center · Ministry AMS module
$19.99/mo per seat · coming soon
AI agent that connects to your existing Planning Center.
Runs weekly volunteer scheduling, follow-up, and Monday brief.
Or get the whole platform: $89.99/mo for full staff.
Runs weekly volunteer scheduling, follow-up, and Monday brief.
Or get the whole platform: $89.99/mo for full staff.
Adds value to PC, not replaces it
— Pastors deserve the best tools for ministry
Keep your Planning Center. Add an agent.
We'll connect Ministry AMS to your existing Planning Center on day one. The agent runs your first week of volunteer scheduling and follow-up while you watch — then takes over when you're ready.
7-day free trial · Cancel anytime · We import your data for you