As part of a church staff, you understand the importance of a small group. You may have even been part of one (or several) in your life that have profoundly impacted your faith and redefined your idea of genuine community. Small groups help guests coming to church on Sundays connect on a more intimate level outside of the larger service.
They are essential because they allow people within your church to:
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Strengthen their relationship with one another and with God
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Share their stories and pray together
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Do life alongside one another
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Understand the Bible and Jesus’s teachings better
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Grow in leadership
...and the list could go on. Many of your congregants may know the importance of a small group because they are part of one, but what about those who aren’t aware of how valuble being part of a small group can be? What about new visitors to your church and others who haven’t gotten over their initial hesitation and joined one yet? What’s keeping them from doing so?
To learn more about how your church can get the small groups finder, click here!
Connecting Church Visitors and Regular Attenders To Small Groups
If you’ve ever been on the outside of a small group looking to get plugged in, you know what a process it can be. Whether it’s filling out a form and waiting for a call from a group leader, tracking down the staff person in charge of small groups during a gap in Sunday services, or needing more information before you’re ready to commit to a group, there are a lot of bottlenecks in the process of going from visitor/regular church attender to small group participant.
What if those disruptions were minimized?
Oftentimes, there’s a bottleneck between the new person and the contact which results in a longer wait time for someone to get connected to a small group. Having to wait too long for a leader to reach out can make the newcomer less likely to get plugged into your church.
Now, with our new Small Groups Module on Ekklesia 360, it’s easier than ever before to connect visitors and other congregants to meaningful community within your church!
At MonkDev, builders of Ekklesia 360, creating a new Small Groups Layout with more functionality became a priority because we wanted churches to have a dedicated solution to manage their small groups online. The module itself encompasses creating, updating, and deleting small group content as well as member management.
“We decided that small groups needed to be segmented out as we saw the growth and demand for the layouts,” says Scott Beaty, developer at MonkDev, builders of Ekklesia 360. “And once we saw the need to innovate, we involved all of the departments. As a team, we’re excited about seeing churches take advantage of this new option in growing their small group awareness and attendance.”
“This module is specialized just for small groups and as a result, we can push the limits more,” says Korrie Bartels, Account Manager with Ekklesia 360.
Michael Cordell, the lead engineer for the project says, “With the release of the Small Groups Module, we are streamlining the process of small group content management and laying the foundation for better member-engagement tools in the future.”
Take a look around! See our Small Groups Layout here: layouts.ekklesia360.com/small-group-finder/2/
Churches implementing the Small Group Module will find that it has many customizable fields that can be added or subtracted depending on the leader’s needs. In order to ensure that people coming to your site will be able to connect to a group that’s a good fit, we’ve included many ways for leaders to customize the tool to fit their group:
8 Things Leaders Can Customize With The New Small Groups Module
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The Who and the What - Group leaders can add a description of what their group is about, who it is for, and what their mission is.
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Keywords - Add these to make it easy for visitors searching for a stage of life, topic, or meeting area.
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Childcare - Is there childcare available? If so, you can indicate it on the form.
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Resource link- If you want group participants to be able to purchase the book you’re currently studying or curriculum, they can be directed to a place to purchase.
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Image- Provide a picture to help your visitors get a feel for the group.
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Location- Leaders can enter the location of the group in and the large map will show where the group meets so that visitors won’t get lost.
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Day of the week & start and end times - When does the group meet? How long does it run? Let small group participants know so that they can plan.
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Primary leader and other leaders- List background information about the primary leader so that members can get to know him/her. Also, add names of additional leaders if you wish.
Onboarding will be easier than ever before, because it’s extremely simple with this new tool. It’s straightforward and easy-to-use. As more churches roll out the new Small Groups Finder, we’re excited to see how they use it.
