Small Groups
Here's everything you need to know about small groups.
Group Structure
There are several common small group structures. All of these are supported, and MinistryPlatform can be extended to support variations.
- Home-based groups - Often consist of groups organized by geographic regions.
- Sunday School - Groups are generally divided according to age or stage of life. These generally reflect the departments of the church.
- Cell - Groups descend from other groups. Accountability exists between the parent group and child group through a teacher/disciple relationship between the leaders.
Regardless of your structure, each group should be set up in the Groups page with the group type of "Small Group". This group type can be renamed appropriately for your church.
Group Fields
- Ministry
- The Sunday School model may require that this value reflects the department that oversees the group. Cell and Home-based models may have a single ministry assigned to all groups.
- Congregation
- Multi-site churches should set the correct Congregation for each group. For on-site groups, this is the congregation where the group meets. For home-based groups, this may be the geographically closest congregation. This field is searchable in Group Finder.
- Parent Group
- Home-based groups may want to make the Parent Group the geographic region (community/area). For example, the Parent Group may be called "Northwest Community", and additional tiers might exist in the structure, like "Greater Cityville Area". This area would be the Parent Group of the "Community". The person who oversees the community or area is the contact person of the group.
Home-based groups may also elect to make the Parent Group the coach or pastor who is responsible for that group. For example, the Parent Group may be called "Coach Bob Smith's Groups", with Bob Smith as the Primary Contact of the group. Each of the group leaders that Bob oversees may be participants in his group. And each group that Bob oversees has this group listed as the Parent Group.
Sunday School groups may want to make the Parent Group a subset of the ministry. For example, for Children's Ministry, this may be "Elementary". For Adult Ministry, this may be "Empty Nesters".
Cell groups may want to make this the group of the person who discipled the leader of this new group.
Promotion
Visitors to the church website can use the Group Finder to identify a group that fits their life stage and schedule. From the widget, the person can inquire about a group or sign up for a group. A SPoC can set up a process to notify the right people in either case that someone has inquired or joined their group. The Group Leader can follow up with either an inquiry or signup from My Groups or GroupLife.
While the Group Finder works well as a passive self-serve tool, some churches have made the Group Finder more readily available. For example:
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A computer in your lobby can be directed to the Group Finder.
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Church staff can use the New Message Tool to email people who are not currently in a small group and send an invitation directing them to Group Finder. It may also be helpful to promote specific groups with a direct link to their page.
Attendance
There are many ways to take attendance for your small groups. Each of these approaches is covered in the following sections:
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Group leaders can post attendance via GroupLife.
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Group leaders can post attendance via My Groups.
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Group Leaders can post attendance using the Classroom Manager app.
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Attendance is posted automatically if the Check-in System is used.
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Staff can process attendance with the Group Attendance Tool launched from an Event record.
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Staff can process attendance with a barcode reader using the Roll Scan Attendance Tool.
Remember, people can be added to Groups or to Events. Events and Groups are separate but related concepts in MinistryPlatform. These tools add a person to an Event and reference the correct Group record at the same time.
Group attendance is only different from regular attendance in one respect. In addition to knowing who attended the Event, we know they attended that Event as someone who has a role in a Group. In this sense, an attendance record in MinistryPlatform is always found in the Event Participants page. It is always visible from an open Event or Participant record. A subset of a person's attendance history may also be visible if you open one of their Group Participant records.