Create a group
A group is any named gathering of members — a Tuesday home group, a new-believers class, a young-adults fellowship, a recovery circle. Create one before you start adding members or recording attendance.
TIP
If what you're creating is really a team that serves — worship band, ushers, kids check-in team — that belongs in Ministries instead. Groups are for meetings people attend, not jobs people do.
Open the create-group dialog
From Groups, click the Add Group button in the top right of the page header.
The dialog is intentionally short — just the fields you need to get the group on the books. Leader, meeting day, and roster details all happen on the group detail page after the group exists.
Fill in the group
Name
The name shows up everywhere — the Groups list, member profiles, the messaging audience picker, attendance reports. Keep it specific enough to disambiguate but short enough to scan in a list of 30.
Good names:
- Tuesday Westside Home Group
- New Believers Spring 2026
- Young Adults — Downtown
- Marriage Enrichment (Pastor Joe)
Avoid:
- Home Group — fine when you have one; useless once you have eight.
- Group 1 — readable nowhere except the list it was created in.
The name is required and must be unique within your organization. If a name collides, GCM will surface the error in red below the field.
Description (optional)
A one-line blurb. It shows under the name on the group card and on the detail page. Use it to clarify the audience or rhythm — "Couples, every other Tuesday, 7–8:30pm" or "For everyone who finished Alpha".
The description is searchable from the Groups page search bar, so a phrase like "couples" will surface every group that mentions couples in either the name or description.
Org unit (optional)
If your org has multiple campuses, branches, or regions, picking an org unit ties the group to that part of the hierarchy. Two things happen:
- The hierarchy filter on the Groups page can scope the list down to one campus.
- Unit-scoped pastors (regional pastors, campus pastors) only see groups inside their scope.
You can pick a unit at any depth — top-level campus, sub-region, even a sub-sub-unit. The dropdown shows every level with the level label in parentheses (Downtown (Campus) vs Downtown North (Sub-Campus)) so you don't accidentally pick the wrong level.
If you only have one campus, skip this — leave it blank.
WARNING
Reassigning a group's org unit later doesn't move its members. Members keep their own unit assignments (set on the member profile). The group's unit is just a label for which leadership team owns this group.
Save
Click Save. The dialog closes, the Groups list re-fetches, and your new group appears as a card with zero members.
From here, click the card to open the group detail page where you'll:
- Add members to the roster.
- Set the leader, meeting day, time, and location.
- Start recording attendance for group meetings.
Editing or deleting
Edit
On the Groups list, hover any card and click the pencil icon — or open the group detail page and click Edit in the header. The same dialog reopens; change anything, save.
Edits propagate immediately: the card refreshes, the detail page header refreshes, and the next attendance / message / report run picks up the new name.
Delete
Click the trash icon on the card or use the bulk-delete bar after multi-selecting groups (hover any card to reveal the checkbox, then check the ones you want).
The delete dialog is reference-aware — if the group has members, you'll be asked what to do with the assignments:
- Remove from this group — strips the member↔group link. Members are unaffected; they just no longer show in this group's roster.
- Reassign to another group — moves every member to the target group you pick. Useful when you're renaming or merging groups.
Once you confirm, the group is soft-deleted (set deleted_at, not hard-removed). It disappears from the Groups list immediately but is recoverable from the database for 30 days if needed.
WARNING
Bulk delete applies the same reassign-or-remove choice to every selected group. If you need different handling per group, delete them one at a time.
Permissions
| Action | Required permission |
|---|---|
| Create a group | groups.write |
| Edit a group | groups.write |
| Delete a group | groups.write |
| Bulk delete | groups.write |
Unit-scoped pastors can only create groups inside their assigned units; the org-unit picker is filtered to their scope.
Next steps
- Add members — populate the roster.
- Leaders, meeting day & location — capture the when and who's responsible.
- Compare with Ministries if you're not sure which module fits.