Groups & Group Types

Groups keep track of how people serve, learn, and gather together in your church—whether on a finance committee, a Wednesday small group, a ministry team like the choir or ushers, an adult Sunday school class, or the board of deacons.

In Parsonage, groups are distinct from two other ways people are organized in your church:

• Groups vs. Households: Households record family units who live or attend together and share a mailing address or weekly attendance check-in. Groups bring people together across any number of households for a shared ministry, class, or committee.
• Groups vs. Team logins: Every member of a group comes from your People directory. Being on a group roster—even as a group Leader—never requires a person to create a Parsonage login account or remember a password. Login accounts and church roles are managed separately under Team & Roles.

Each group maintains a roster of Leaders (sorted to the top with a Leader badge) and Members, along with an optional custom title for anyone on the roster—such as Chair, Treasurer, Secretary, or Teacher.

Instead of keeping separate lists in spreadsheets or email folders, a group’s roster connects directly across the rest of your church office tools:

• Church email & saved lists: When composing a Church Email, you can send a message to one or more active groups at once, or save an Email List tied to those groups. Whenever someone joins or leaves a group, any saved email list that includes that group updates automatically.
• Sunday bulletins: In Sunday Bulletins, any Volunteers serving today role can be filled from an active group’s roster with one click. Group leaders are listed first, and Parsonage warns you if someone is about to be scheduled for a third consecutive Sunday.
• Events: You can assign a group as the host of a church event in Events & Calendar. All upcoming events hosted by that group appear directly on the group’s page so leaders and staff can see what is coming up.
• Group notes & tasks: Staff can record Staff Notes (such as meeting room preferences or class curriculum notes) and track Tasks right on a group’s page.

Everyone with a church login can browse your church’s groups and rosters, while creating groups and editing rosters is reserved for church staff.

Owner & Admin

Full access. Create, edit, archive, and delete groups; manage group types; add or remove members and assign Leader roles or titles; view and write staff notes on groups; and manage group tasks and hosted events.

Member

Read-only access to groups and rosters. Can view active and archived groups, member lists, leader badges, titles, group tasks, and upcoming hosted events, but cannot edit groups, manage group types, or see staff notes.

Managing group types

Every church starts with five default group types: Committee, Small group, Ministry team, Class, and Board. Owners and Admins can tailor this list to match your church’s language.

1. 1

   Open the Group types manager

   At the top of the Your groups list on the Groups page, click Group types (sometimes referred to as managing types).

2. 2

   Add or rename a type

   To add a new type (for example, Life group or Choir), type its name in the Add a type box and click Add type. To rename an existing type, click the pencil icon next to its name, enter the new name, and click Save—every group using that type updates right away.

3. 3

   Delete unused types

   Each type shows how many groups currently use it. If a type has 0 groups, you can click the trash icon to delete it. If one or more groups still use that type, the delete button is disabled until you edit those groups and move them to another type first.

Creating, searching, archiving, and deleting groups

1. 1

   Create a group

   Click New group in the top-right corner of the Groups page. Enter a Group name, choose its Type, add an optional Description (such as when and where the group meets), and click Create group. Leave Also create an email list checked to give the group its own email address right away (see below).

2. 2

   Search and filter your groups

   Use the Search groups… box to find a group by name, or use the type dropdown (All types) to narrow the list to a single category such as Ministry team or Class.

3. 3

   Archive a seasonal or past group

   When a seasonal class, VBS team, or study ends, open the group, click Edit group, check Archived (keeps the group and its members, but hides it from the active list), and click Save group. Archived groups stay out of your everyday list and volunteer pickers, but you can view them anytime by checking Show archived groups in the left sidebar.

4. 4

   Permanently delete a group

   If a group was created by mistake, open Edit group and click Delete group, then confirm. Deleting removes the group, its roster links, and its group notes, while every person on the roster remains safely in your church directory.

Managing the group roster & viewing a person’s groups

1. 1

   Add a person to a group

   Open the group and click Add member below the roster. Pick a person from your directory, choose their Role (Member or Leader), optionally enter a Title (such as Chair, Treasurer, or Teacher), and click Add to group.

2. 2

   Change a member’s role or title, or remove them

   Next to any person on the group roster, click the pencil icon to switch their role between Member and Leader or update their title, then click Save. Click the remove-person icon and confirm Remove to take them off the group’s roster without affecting their directory profile.

3. 3

   See and jump to a person’s groups from their profile

   On any person’s profile in People, open the Family & groups tab to see every group they belong to—along with each group’s type, their leader role or title, and whether the group is archived. Click any group in that card to jump straight to the group’s page and manage its roster.

Giving a group its own email list

A group’s email list is an address, such as choir@your-church.lists.example.org, that reaches everyone in the group. It always follows the current roster: people added to the group start getting its emails, and people removed stop. Owners and Admins can create one when they create the group, or later by opening the group and clicking Create email list in its Email list section.

The list is named after the group. When incoming email is set up, group members can email the address and replies go to the whole group; otherwise only staff can send to it from Email, and replies go to the sender. To change its name, address, or who can post, use Email → Lists. See Email lists for every setting.