Initial Setup for Groups
Information to set up groups in the Platform, including group types, their fields and what they mean, and group roles, their fields and what they mean.
Define Group Types
To use groups and group participants, SPoCs must define and set up some things with applicable ministry staff.
Group types are the general categories that define a group. Your system came with several standard group types that came hard-coded into applications that use the API. The default group types are:
- Small Groups: These groups are 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: These groups are 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: These groups are 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: These groups are made up of at least one teacher and one or more students. These groups are generally short-term in purpose, and you may use them alongside a program that has a series of events. Churches that do traditional Sunday School may use this group type for the classes.
- Parent Group: You may create parent groups to organize other groups. A parent group of "Elementary" may help organize the primary school grades. This group name becomes a label to organize the groups on summary reports.
- Small Group Area: A special type of parent group that displays as an option to search 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 . If you want to delete any of the standard group types, contact Support before doing so to ensure it doesn't affect the hard-coded information.
Group Type Fields
- Group Type
- A friendly name that indicates what the group type represents.
- Description
- A brief explanation of the group type to further explain what it represents.
- Default Role
- The group role that is automatically assigned to new participants added to groups with this group type if you don't define a group role.
- Activity Log Start Date
- If set to Yes, being in this group a good indicator of whether a person is active. This updates the Activity Log.
- Show On Group Finder
- If set to Yes, groups with this group type display in the Group Finder widget.
- Show On MPMobile
- If set to Yes, groups with this group type display on MPMobile.
- Omit From Engagement Group Life
- If set to Yes, the Participnat Engagement routine will not consider this group type.
- Volunteer Group
- Indicates whether groups with this group type are designated as a group whose members will volunteer in roles.
Define Group Roles
A group role is a position or job you can assign to someone in your church. It's how 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 create group roles:
- Consolidated List: Use the same 7-10 group roles throughout ministries. Each role is clearly defined for the type of participant you want to assign it to. This way, ministry leaders can all speak the same language and easily identify which participants do what in each group when they look at the data. You can also easily search on the Group Participants page and create views for each role.
- Expanded List: Use a variety 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 you create is assigned to the appropriate type 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 person to communicate with their groups and run reports.
Whichever approach you choose, it's important that you assign group roles consistently. The decision about whether to give a specific role the type Servant or Leader should be made based upon a church-wide policy. For example, one church may consider a deacon a servant while another church may consider them a leader. The youth pastor may consider the kids who play in the band to be leaders in his ministry, but the church may not agree that those jobs rise to the level of leadership. We recommend having a simple definition of group role types to clarify things, such as:
- Leader: Oversees those who serve.
- Servant: Ministers to others.
- Participant: Receives ministry from servants and leaders.
You can define as many group roles as you need to reflect the language you use for different ministry positions. Go to .
Note:
- Group Roles should not include time period or status, like "2020 Ushers" or "Inactive Ushers".
- When you create a group role, the Direction field (Inward, Outward) has no real definition; you can define how those roles work for your church.