Groups
The Groups module is where you organize members into the smaller circles a church actually disciples through — home groups, life groups, Bible studies, new-believer classes, choir, prayer cells. Anything that's a named gathering of members belongs here.
Groups vs ministries
GCM ships two parallel modules for grouping people, and the difference matters:
| Groups | Ministries | |
|---|---|---|
| Mental model | Small groups, classes, fellowship circles | Teams, departments, ministry assignments |
| Examples | Tuesday Home Group, New Believers Class, Young Adults | Worship Team, Ushers, Children's Ministry, Tech Team |
| Membership lens | "Who fellowships together?" | "Who serves where?" |
| Typical lifespan | A semester to a few years | Ongoing, structural |
A single member can be in many groups and many ministries at once. A worship leader (ministry: Worship Team) might also attend a Wednesday home group (group: Wednesday Westside) and teach a new-believers class (group: New Believers Spring 2026). All three relationships live side-by-side on their profile.
If you're not sure which one to use: groups are for meetings people show up to, ministries are for jobs people do.
What a group is, in the data
Each group has:
- Name — what staff and members see everywhere. Required.
- Description — short blurb, shown on the card and detail page. Optional.
- Org unit — which branch, region, campus, or sub-unit owns the group. Optional but recommended once you have more than one campus.
- Leader — the member responsible (stored on the group; surfaced as the group leader on the detail page).
- Meeting day / time / location — when and where the group gathers (free text — "Tuesdays 7pm" or "Every other Saturday morning").
- Visible columns — which member fields show on the detail roster (phone, last-attended date, member type, etc.).
- Members — many-to-many via
group_members. A member can belong to as many groups as you like.
TIP
The org-unit assignment isn't required, but on multi-campus / multi-branch orgs it lets the hierarchy filter on the Groups page narrow the list to the campus you're standing in.
Permissions
Group access rolls up through RBAC v2 keys:
| Action | Permission |
|---|---|
| View groups | groups.view |
| Create / edit / delete groups | groups.write |
| Manage group members | groups.write |
Pastors with a unit-scoped role only see groups whose org_unit_id is inside their assigned scope — a regional pastor sees their region's groups, not other regions'. Platform admins and superadmins see everything across the org.
How groups connect to the rest of GCM
A group isn't a silo. Once members are assigned, several things start working:
- Members page — "View all" on the group detail page opens Members pre-filtered to the group, so you can run a bulk action (add to workflow, send a message, export) against the whole group at once.
- Attendance — group attendance is recorded the same way as service attendance. The check-in station and manual attendance flow both let you scope to a group event.
- Messaging — when composing a WhatsApp / SMS / email blast, "Group" is one of the audience picker options. Pick the group, hit send — the message goes to every active member of that group.
- Workflows — the "Member added to group" trigger fires whenever a member is added to any group (or a specific one). Pair it with a welcome-message action and you've got automatic onboarding.
- Reports — group rosters can be exported from the detail page; the Members page export honors the group filter.
Next steps
- Create a group — your first home group or class.
- Add members — populate the roster.
- Leaders, meeting day & location — capture the when and who's responsible.
- Group attendance — track who showed up.
- Group reporting — rosters, exports, and dashboards.