Software for small group leaders

What does a small group leader's week look like?

A small group leader's week is mostly ordinary life with one evening set aside. Most leaders are volunteers with jobs and families, and the group is something they carry on top of that. The week usually goes something like this: read ahead in the study, send a reminder, answer a message from someone who cannot make it, tidy the living room, host the meeting, and then lie awake wondering about the person who has not been for three weeks.

The leader is the church's front line of care, and the tools they are given are usually a group text and a sign-in sheet that nobody collects.

What pain points do small group leaders bring to us?

• The group text. It mixes prayer requests with dinner plans, new members never see the old messages, and people leave it quietly.
• Not knowing who is actually in the group. The church's list and the leader's list drifted apart months ago.
• Attendance nobody looks at. Leaders mark it, or do not, and nobody notices a pattern until someone has gone.
• Prayer requests that vanish. They are shared on Tuesday and forgotten by Friday.
• Feeling alone. Leaders rarely have somewhere to ask another leader "how do you handle this?"

How does Churchory help a small group leader run a group?

Churchory's Groups product gives every group a roster, meetings, attendance, prayer and weekly content, all tied to the church's one people directory. For a leader, that means:

• A roster that stays current. When someone joins through the group finder, they appear on your roster. When their phone number changes in the directory, it changes for you too.
• Attendance in seconds from your phone after the meeting. Churchory keeps a missing-attendance list, so gaps are noticed and chased by whoever oversees groups, not by you.
• Prayer requests logged from your phone and kept with the group that carries them.
• Weekly guides that a leader or the church writes once, sent by email and shown in the app.
• Capacity and waitlists. Set a limit, and when a seat opens the next person on the waitlist is promoted.
• A group finder on a map, with a privacy radius so your address is never published.

Your church can call groups whatever it calls them, such as life groups, community groups or home groups. The small groups solution page walks through setup.

How do leaders stay in touch with their group between meetings?

With Chat, every group can have its own channel in the Churchory app, instead of a group text. New members see the conversation when they join, and it stays with the group if someone changes phones. Leaders can schedule a meeting from the conversation, share an event as a card people can RSVP to, and run polls. Leaders moderate their own group's chat and do not reach into anyone else's.

Chat also includes the leader forum, a back room where leaders ask questions, share wins and talk about hard weeks with each other and with staff.

What happens when someone stops coming?

When a church owns both Groups and Care, a run of missed meetings is flagged for a check-in. With prepared work, which is in beta, the leader finds a check-in note already drafted, waiting for them to read, change and send; Churchory never sends it on its own, and the AI page explains what is available today. If someone in the group has a hard season, such as a surgery or a new baby, Care's meal trains let the group, and neighbours without an account, sign up for meals or send a gift card instead of cooking.

What permissions does a small group leader have?

Churchory creates a Small Group Leader role for every church. With it, a leader can:

Churches can change any of these. If your leaders should not edit the wider directory, lower People to Manage (assigned), which limits them to members of the groups they lead. The full permission grid is described on the people solution page.

How do coaches and staff support group leaders?

A Small Group Coach is assigned to particular groups, and what each coach can see is set per group. The coach role carries no church-wide access on its own, so making someone a coach does not open the directory to them. Staff with Manage (all) on Groups see every group, create and delete groups, move people between them, and watch group health in the groups insights area. The pastors page describes what staff typically look at.

Which Churchory products does a church buy for its small groups?

Prices are per church, not per leader or per member. Every group, every leader and every member is included. Yearly billing saves $201 a product, and Churchory One is $599 a year, or $129 a month, for everything, including your church's own app. One becomes the better deal from the sixth product on monthly billing and the seventh on yearly billing. For leaders the value is that the roster, the group chat and the meal train live in one place on one directory, instead of a spreadsheet, a group text and a separate sign-up site. Churches start with a 45-day free trial and no card.

Youth and college groups are groups too, so a youth pastor running a midweek group uses exactly the same tools.

Is this right for a church whose groups are growing fast?

Yes. Waitlists, the group finder and coaches exist for a church that is adding groups faster than staff can track them. The growing churches page explains how churches handle that stage, and the switching page explains how your current group lists come across.