Church Admin Plugin

Small Groups

⭐ Premium

The Small Groups module manages your church’s ongoing community groups — home groups, cell groups, life groups, or whatever your church calls them. It supports multi-level oversight structures, an interactive map for finding groups, attendance tracking via Sessions, and public-facing shortcodes so members can find and join a group on your website.

Setting up — the recommended order

Before adding groups, it helps to think through your oversight structure. Moses couldn’t look after the whole of Israel on his own, so Jethro advised him to organise people into thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. Churches using Church Admin range from 20 to 2,000 people — the right structure for you depends on your size. A small church might just have groups and group leaders. A larger church might have groups, coaches overseeing several leaders, and zone pastors overseeing several coaches.

The recommended order is:

  1. Set up your directory with people first — group leaders, coaches, zone pastors, and members all need to be in the directory before you can assign them to roles
  2. Define your oversight structure levels
  3. Populate each oversight level with the right people
  4. Add your small groups

Step 1 — Define your oversight structure

Go to Church Admin → Small Groups → Small group structure. This screen lets you define the levels in your oversight hierarchy — for example Zone Pastor, Coach, Group Leader.

Small group oversight structure diagram

Add each level using the form field and click Save. Drag and drop the levels into the correct order — the top of the list is the most senior level. See Small group oversight structure for the full details.

Oversight structure screen in Church Admin

Step 2 — Populate each oversight level

Go to Church Admin → Small Groups → Oversight list. For each level, assign the people responsible — for example your Zone Pastors might each cover a geographic area of your town, with John Smith covering the East and Jane Smith covering the West. Each person at an oversight level can be linked to the groups or coaches they are responsible for.

Zone pastor oversight detail screen

Step 3 — Add your small groups

Go to Church Admin → Small Groups → Add a group. Fill in the group details — name, leader, meeting day and time, location, and any description you want to show publicly. If you have a Google API key set up, click Please click here to update map location after entering the address to geocode it so the group appears on the small groups map. See Google API key setup.

Small group edit screen

Showing small groups on your website

Add the small groups shortcode or block to any page to show your groups publicly — useful for helping people find a group near them:

Help! I don't know my password

Or search for Church Admin in the Gutenberg block inserter and select the Small Groups option. This displays your groups with their details and an interactive map if addresses have been geocoded.

What else you can do with small groups

  • Small groups map — an interactive admin map showing all groups and their meeting locations, with colour coding showing which members are in a group and which are unattached. See Small groups map.
  • Small group metrics — attendance and growth data across your groups. See Small group metrics.
  • Small group PDF form — a printable summary sheet for each group. See Small group PDF form.
  • Sessions — track attendance at individual group sessions with per-person detail. See Sessions.
  • Unattached list — see who in the directory is not in any group so you can invite them to join one. See Unattached to group list.
  • Follow up funnels — create small group funnels to trigger pastoral follow-up when someone joins a group. See Follow up funnels.

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