Children's Groups

Recommended Setup

• Create distinct Age or Grade Groups for your children's ministry. 
• Set the Congregation to be Church-wide (if you have a Congregation by that name) so that these Groups can be used by all of your worship service Programs regardless of the number of Congregations you have. 
• When you assign the Group to a Program or Event, you can define the Room that's used. 
• Parent Groups can be used for organization. You can nest Parent Groups. For example, your Parent Group is Middle School and the Groups within that Parent Group are 6th grade, 7th grade and 8th grade. Note that Parent Groups should not have Group Participants; Group Participants should always be in the lowest level Group in the hierarchy.
• Examples:
  • Nursery 0-6 Months
  • 1st Grade

Alternate Setup

• Some churches may elect to create campus-specific Age or Grade Groups. This is typically done when the campuses are geographically separated by a fairly large distance, making it unlikely that people would visit multiple campuses.
• Some churches may elect to create service-specific Age or Grade Groups. We recommend using the Class Group Type in this case. This approach is most common in a traditional Sunday School model where kids are personally connected with one teacher.

Children's Volunteer Groups

Recommended Setup

• We recommend that Groups for team members be built around one of two philosophies:
  • Groups can reflect people who serve at the same time, or
  • Groups can reflect people who are led by the same leader.
• It is generally not recommended that you create Groups based on a specific job someone is doing. The job they are doing should be reflected by the Group Role you assign the person when you add them to the Group.

Alternate Setup

• Some churches elect to add servants and leaders directly into the Groups with the children they teach or care for. This is most common in situations where classroom ratios are being observed or in Sunday School style programs. It is acceptable to add a teacher/helper to more than one group if that facilitates management; however, this is typically not required.

Maintenance

• When adding a volunteer to a Group in Children's Ministry, make sure you understand Background Check procedures at your church.
• Be sure to change an individual's Group Role if they change the job they are doing as part of the team.
• If a team member resigns, end date their Group Participant record.
• To delegate management of a Group to a layperson who is not a user of MinistryPlatform, consider using My Groups.

Final Thoughts

During data migration, you may have inherited group structures from a system with a different perspective. Some systems forced the church to create groups for each Program, where some systems forced the church to create groups for each worship service. While these migrated structures may prove an adequate starting point, please consider the most efficient way to setup your MinistryPlatform groups and teams. Remember, a Group in MinistryPlatform can be invited to attend any Event and it can be associated with any ongoing Ministry Program. This can greatly decrease the number of Groups you need to manage!