CCB Serving Setup | NextStep Metrics Help

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Why This Matters

Serving is one of 7 engagement metrics in NextStep

Serving is one of the clearest indicators of discipleship engagement — someone who is actively giving their time to the church is in a different place spiritually than someone who only attends. NextStep tracks whether a member has served in the last 8 weeks and factors it into their overall engagement score.

The goal: Get serving data flowing automatically from CCB so your staff isn't entering it by hand. This guide explains how to set that up — and what to do if it isn't possible for your church right now.

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How NextStep Tracks Serving

Event attendance, not CCB's Schedules tool

NextStep pulls serving data through CCB's attendance API — the same way it tracks worship and small group attendance. This means serving needs to be recorded as event attendance in CCB, not just through CCB's built-in Schedules tool.

Important: CCB's Schedules feature (where you schedule volunteers for specific roles) does not expose its data through the CCB API. NextStep cannot access scheduling data — only event attendance data. If your church only uses Schedules and never records attendance against events, see Option B or C below.

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Your Options

Choose the approach that fits how your church operates

Option A — Serving Teams as CCB Events

Recommended

Set up your serving teams as recurring events in CCB and record attendance when people serve. NextStep will pull that attendance automatically — no manual entry needed.

Works best for: Churches whose serving teams meet on a regular, predictable schedule (worship team rehearsals, hospitality, greeting, setup crews, etc.)

Option B — We Track Serving Another Way

Partial Sync

If your church tracks serving through a spreadsheet, a separate scheduling tool, or another system outside of CCB, you can still use NextStep — you'll enter serving data manually or import it via CSV. Automatic sync won't be available for this metric.

Works best for: Churches with informal or varied serving structures that don't map neatly to CCB events.

Option C — Skip for Now, Set Up Later

Manual Entry

You can skip serving sync during initial setup and come back to it. NextStep includes an in-app guide to walk you through configuring it when you're ready.

Works best for: Churches that want to get started quickly and configure serving sync after the initial setup is complete.

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Setting Up Option A in CCB

How to configure serving teams as events

If your church isn't already recording serving as event attendance in CCB, here's how to set it up. You only need to do this once per serving team.

1

In CCB, go to Events and create a new recurring event for each serving team. For example: "Worship Team," "Hospitality Team," "Greeting Team."

2

Set the recurrence to match how often that team serves — weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.

3

Each time your team serves, record attendance against that event in CCB. This can be done by a team leader or your admin — whoever currently manages that team.

4

Once the events exist and attendance is being recorded, come back to NextStep and enter the event IDs for each serving team. See Finding Your Serving Event IDs below.

Tip: You don't have to set up every serving team at once. Start with your largest or most active teams and add others over time. NextStep will count serving across all event IDs you've added.

Heads up: NextStep looks back 8 weeks for serving activity. If you're setting up a new event in CCB today, attendance from before that event was created won't be available. Historical serving data will need to be entered manually for the first 8 weeks.

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Finding Your Serving Event IDs

One ID per serving team event

1

In CCB, go to Events and open one of your serving team events.

2

Look at the URL in your browser's address bar and find the number after ?id=.

https://yourchurch.ccbchurch.com/event_detail.php?id=218

In this example, the event ID is 218.

3

Repeat for each serving team event. In NextStep, you can enter multiple serving event IDs — one per team. Serving activity will be tracked across all of them.

Once you're set up: NextStep will automatically check each member's serving attendance across all your configured events during every sync. No manual entry needed going forward.

Setting Up Serving in CCB

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