Set Up Groups & Teams for Children's Ministry
A guide on the settings we recommend you use for your children's ministry Groups. This guide includes recommended and alternative setups, and any maintenance these settings require for children's groups, volunteer groups, and inherited group structures.
Children's Groups
- Create distinct Age or Grade Groups for your children's ministry.
- Set the Congregation to be Church-wide (if you have a Congregation by that name) so that all your worship service Programs can use these Groups regardless of the number of Congregations you have.
- When you assign the Group to a Program or Event, you can define the Room.
- You can use and nest Parent Groups for organization. For example, your Parent Group is Middle School and the Groups within that Parent Group are 6th grade, 7th grade, and 8th grade. Note: Parent Groups should not have Group Participants; Group Participants should always be in the lowest level Group in the hierarchy.
- Examples:
- Nursery 0-6 Months
- 1st Grade
- Some churches choose to create campus-specific Age or Grade Groups. This is typical when the campuses are geographically far apart, making it unlikely that people would visit multiple campuses.
- Some churches choose to create service-specific Age or Grade Groups. We recommend using the Class Group Type in this case. This approach is most common in a traditional Sunday School model where kids are personally connected with one teacher.
Volunteer Groups
- We recommend you build Groups for team members around one of two philosophies:
- Groups can include people who serve at the same time, or
- Groups can include people who are led by the same leader.
- We generally don't recommend that you create Groups based on a specific job someone performs. Instead, include the jobs they perform in the Group Role you assign them when you add them to the Group.
Alternate Setup
Some churches choose to add servants and leaders directly into the Groups with the children they teach or care for. This is most common in situations with classroom ratios or in Sunday-School-style programs. You can add a teacher or helper to more than one Group, but this is typically not required.- When you add a volunteer to a Group in Children's Ministry, make sure you understand Background Check procedures at your church.
- Be sure to change an individual's Group Role if they change the job they perform as part of the team.
- If a team member resigns, end date their Group Participant record.
- To delegate management of a Group to a layperson who is not a MinistryPlatform User, consider using My Groups.
Inherited Group Structures
When you migrate data, you may inherit different Group structures. Some systems force the church to create Groups for each Program, where some systems force the church to create Groups for each worship service. While these inherited structures may be a good starting point, consider the most efficient way to set up your MinistryPlatform Groups and teams. Remember, you can invite a Group in MinistryPlatform to attend any Event, and you can associate it with any ongoing Ministry Program. This can greatly decrease the number of Groups you need to manage!