Define Group Types

Group Types are the general categories that a Group falls within. Several Group Types came standard with your system and are hard-coded into parameters in use by applications that use the API. The default Group Types are:

• Small Groups: Made up of people who meet regularly. In some churches, these groups may be mutually exclusive (cell groups). Use the Group Finder widget to help people find these groups. Teach leaders to manage their group members with the My Groups widget.

• Age or Grade Groups: Made up of people (generally children or youth) who are the same age or in the same grade at school. There may generally be many people in each of these groups. A single "1st Grade" Group can serve a church regardless of size. Most churches can then use these Groups to secure children's check-in across all worship services and all campuses.

• Ministry Teams: Made up of people who serve together, at the same time and/or under the same leader. These Groups are generally small and there should be as many of them as needed for communication and accountability. Ministry Teams should have people with different Group Roles in them.

• Mission Trip: Groups of this type exist to allow mission trip leaders to leverage the My Groups widget.

• Class: Made up of at least one teacher and one or more students. These groups are generally short-term in purpose and they may be used in combination with a Program that has a series of events. Churches that do traditional Sunday School may use this group type for the classes.

• Parent Group: Parent Groups may be created strictly to organize other groups. A Parent Group of "Elementary" may assist in organizing the primary school grades. This Group name becomes a label organizing the groups on summary reports.

• Small Group Area: A special type of parent group that will appear as an option for searching in the Group Finder widget.

• Small Group Request: Indicates a Group that someone suggested through the Suggest a Group button (if enabled) in the Group Finder widget.

You can create additional Group Types under Lookup Values > Group Types. If you want to delete any of the standard Group Types, contact Support before doing so to ensure none of the hard-coded information is affected.

Group Type Fields

Define Group Roles

A Group Role is a position or job that someone in your church might be assigned. It's the manner in which the individual group member relates to the group itself. For example, a Group Type of Class may have teachers, helpers, and students.

There are two approaches to creating Group Roles:

• Consolidated List: Utilize the same 7-10 group roles throughout ministries. Each role is clearly defined for the type of participant it should be assigned to. This enables ministry leaders to all speak the same language and easily identify which participants are doing what in each group when they look at the data. This approach also allows you to easily search on the Group Participants page and create views for each role.

• Expanded List: Utilize a myriad of roles. Each ministry can work with their SPoC and develop roles that work for their various groups. In this approach, it's important to use the role type and ensure that each role that is created is assigned to the appropriate type in order to classify participants for views. One benefit of the expanded list approach is that you can create fewer groups with more group roles. Having fewer groups makes it easier for the casual user to communicate with their groups and run reports.

You can define as many Group Roles as needed to reflect the language you use for different ministry positions. Go to Church Structure > Group Roles.