Scheduling Lessons from Lessons.church
B1 Admin integrates directly with Lessons.church so you can schedule curriculum for your classrooms right inside your service plans. This keeps everything — volunteers, assignments, and lesson content — in one place.
Before You Begin
- Set up your ministries in the Serving area
- Have an active Lessons.church account — sign up there first if your church doesn't have one yet
Want to see the full setup from start to finish? Our step-by-step guide covers linking providers, scheduling a lesson, and connecting FreePlay to your classroom TV — with short videos and written steps you can check off as you go.
Step 1 — Link Your Lessons.church Account
This is a one-time setup per ministry. You need to connect your Lessons.church account before you can browse and schedule content.
- Log in to B1 Admin and go to Serving
- Open the ministry you want to connect (e.g., Children's Ministry)
- Scroll down to the Content Providers section
- Click Link New Provider
- Select Lessons.church from the list
- A device authorization screen will appear with a code
- Go to lessons.church, log in, and enter the code to authorize the connection
- Once approved, you will see Linked under Lessons.church in B1 Admin
The Content Providers section is per ministry. If you run multiple ministries (e.g., Children's and Youth), you will need to link Lessons.church for each one separately.
Lessons.church is not the only option. The same Link New Provider list also offers other curriculum and file sources, including SignPresenter, The Bible Project, Jesus Film Project, Go Curriculum, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. Link any of them the same way, and they appear as providers you can switch to when selecting a lesson.
Step 2 — Schedule a Lesson
Once linked, you can schedule lessons directly from Plans.
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In B1 Admin, go to Serving → Plans
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Select your ministry tab and click Add Plan Type (or Create Plan Type if the ministry has none yet) — give the plan type a name such as Children's Church or Sunday School
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Click on the plan type you just made and click Schedule Lesson. From that menu you can schedule one lesson, bulk-schedule a series, or Apply Year Plan to drop in a published year sequence from Lessons.church.
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Select the date for the lesson (defaults to the upcoming Sunday)
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Click Select Lesson — a content browser dialog opens
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The dialog opens with Lessons.church selected as the provider (or the provider used for this plan type's earlier lessons). If you have linked other providers, you can switch between them at the top of the dialog
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Browse through the content:
- Select a Program (e.g., "Bible Stories for Kids")
- Select a Study within that program (e.g., "Creation and Early Stories")
- Select the specific Lesson
- Select the Venue — this is the age-group version of the lesson
Other providers organize content differently. For example, Go Curriculum starts with Elementary or Preschool, then a series, then the lesson itself — there is no venue to pick.
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Click Associate Lesson to confirm
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Choose your copy option for volunteers:
- Nothing — fresh plan, no volunteers carried over
- Positions Only — copies volunteer roles from the previous plan but not who is assigned
- Positions and Assignments — copies both roles and assigned volunteers (most common)
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Click Save
The plan is created and named automatically (e.g., "Feb 23 - Elementary"). Volunteers can open the plan to see their assignments and review the lesson content before Sunday.
Make sure to select the correct Venue for your classroom's age group. Choosing the wrong venue means your volunteers will see content designed for a different age level.
Bulk Schedule a Series
To schedule several lessons from the same series at once, click Schedule Lesson → Bulk Schedule:
- Under Starting Lesson, click Select Lesson and pick the first lesson you want to schedule
- Set the Start Date and choose an Interval (Weekly or Bi-Weekly)
- Choose what to copy from the previous plan (Nothing, Positions Only, or Positions and Assignments)
- Review the list — the starting lesson and the rest of its series, each with a date. Uncheck any you want to skip
- Click Save to create one plan per lesson
For Lessons.church, the list also shows the Venue each lesson will use, matched by name to the venue you picked for the starting lesson (if a lesson doesn't have that venue, another is used and marked substituted). Providers whose lessons have no venue level, such as Go Curriculum, schedule the lessons directly and the Venue column is hidden.
Go Curriculum Leader Guides
When you schedule a Go Curriculum lesson, the plan's service order is built from the lesson's Large Group leader guide: each part of the guide becomes a section, and each step inside it is listed with its type (such as say, do, play, or note) and its text. Steps that play a video or other media carry that file with them, so it plays in order. (A lesson without a Large Group guide falls back to a plain list of its media files.)
Each series that has small group material also starts with a Small Group Guides folder. Open it and pick a lesson to schedule that lesson's Small Group guide, named like "Lesson Name - Small Group" -- useful for a separate small group plan type. Small Group guides are mostly discussion steps and usually have no media. Because the folder is listed first, bulk scheduling a series from one of its lessons never picks it up.
Apply a Year Plan
If a curriculum publisher has published a year plan on Lessons.church, you can load the whole sequence onto this plan type in one step:
- Click Schedule Lesson → Apply Year Plan
- Choose the published year plan
- If the plan is calendar-anchored (for example Ark Kids), choose the target year. Easter and Christmas studies land on that year's dates. Adjust the first and last class dates if you are only scheduling part of the year.
- If the plan is not calendar-anchored, set the first class date (week 1 lands on that date; later weeks are seven days apart) and how many weeks to write (12, 24, 44, or 52)
- Optionally copy volunteer positions from the previous plan
- Preview the list. Uncheck any week you do not want — later lessons in that stretch move onto the next open Sunday instead of leaving a hole. Dates that already have a plan are skipped the same way for calendar-anchored plans.
- Save. Each week becomes a serving plan you can edit as usual — change the lesson, volunteers, or date — and FreePlay will play whatever is on that week's plan.
Plan ahead — You can schedule multiple weeks of lessons at once so your team can prepare in advance. Use the past lesson list in the plan view to avoid accidentally repeating content.
Customizing Lesson Content
Once a lesson is scheduled, you can tailor it for your specific classroom — remove sections that don't apply, hide roles your room doesn't use, or reorder the content to match your preferred flow. Customizations can be saved for just one classroom or applied across all classrooms at your church.
See the Customizing Lessons guide for step-by-step instructions.
Playing Lessons on a Classroom TV with FreePlay
Scheduling a lesson in B1 Admin pairs perfectly with FreePlay — ChurchApps' free media player for classroom TVs and Fire Sticks. When your plan is set up, FreePlay can pull the lesson content directly from Lessons.church and play it full-screen in the classroom. Your teacher controls the pace with a TV remote, advancing through videos and slides as the lesson flows.
This means your volunteers see the plan on their phones while the content plays on the room's TV — no separate setup, no USB drives, no last-minute scrambling.
Learn how to connect FreePlay to a content provider →
Don't See Your Curriculum Provider?
The list of available providers is growing. If your church uses a curriculum provider that isn't showing in B1 Admin yet, reach out to us and we'll work on getting them added.
Feel free to copy and send the message below directly to your curriculum provider — once they reach out to us we'll get the integration set up:
Subject: ChurchApps Integration Request
Hi [Curriculum Provider Team],
We love your curriculum and use it every week with our kids. We also use ChurchApps to manage our volunteers and service plans, and we use FreePlay (freeplay.church) to play lesson content directly on our classroom TVs. It has been a game changer for our teachers.
Right now we have to manage your curriculum separately, but if you were integrated with ChurchApps we could schedule your lessons right inside our service plans and play them through FreePlay on our classroom screens — all without leaving the tools we already use.
ChurchApps already works with several curriculum providers and their team is ready to work with you too. Could you reach out to them at support@churchapps.org to get the conversation started? We'd love to see this happen!
Thank you!