Church Admin Plugin

Smallgroup Map

⭐ Premium

The Small Groups Map displays all your small groups as pins on an interactive Google Map, centred on the average location of your groups or on your church site. It gives a geographic overview of your small group network — useful for identifying areas of the town or city with good coverage and areas with gaps where a new group might be needed.

Go to Church Admin → Small Groups → Smallgroups map. You need the Groups permission level to access this screen. See Permissions and roles.

Before you start

  • A Google API key must be set up — the map won’t load without one. See Google API key setup.
  • Small groups need geocoded addresses — a group only appears as a pin if its meeting location has been geocoded. When adding or editing a group, enter the address and click Please click here to update map location to save the coordinates. See Geolocating.

How the map centres

The map centres automatically on the average location of all your geocoded small groups. If no groups have been geocoded yet, it falls back to your church’s site location instead. If neither is available the map may not display correctly — add your church site at Church Admin → Sites & Services to ensure a sensible default centre.

Using the map

The map loads at zoom level 13 — a neighbourhood-level view suitable for most towns and cities. You can zoom in and out and drag the map in the normal way. Each pin represents a small group meeting location. Click a pin to see the group’s details.

The map fills the full width of the screen at 750px tall, giving a clear view of the geographic spread of your groups.

What the map is useful for

  • Identifying gaps — areas of your town with no nearby small group, where planting a new group would serve people who currently have a long journey to attend
  • Helping people find a group — showing leadership teams which group is geographically closest to a new member’s home
  • Strategic planning — reviewing the distribution of groups across your church’s catchment area as part of a small group growth strategy

Public-facing map

This admin map is for internal leadership use. If you want to show a small groups map to members or visitors on your website — so people can find a group near them — use the shortcode or Church Admin block on a public or members-only page instead:

Help! I don't know my password

See Small groups overview for how to set up the public-facing groups page.

If groups aren’t showing on the map

  • No pins at all — no groups have geocoded coordinates. Edit each group and click the map location update link to geocode the address.
  • Some groups missing — those groups haven’t been geocoded yet, or their address couldn’t be found by Google Maps. Open the group, correct the address, and geocode it manually by dragging the pin to the right location.
  • Map doesn’t load at all — check your Google API key is correctly entered and that the Maps JavaScript API is enabled in your Google Cloud console. See Google API key setup.

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