Create and manage cell groups

A cell group is a home where a small group from the church meets regularly: it has its leaders, its members, the person who hosts it at home, and its encounters, each with its attendance and its report.

Cell groups is on every plan: the Starter Plan includes up to 2 cell groups, and the Growth and Expansion plans as many as your church needs.

The Cell groups list with three active cell groups, their leaders, how many members and hosts each one has, and their next encounters

The name your church uses

Not every church calls them “cell groups”: life groups, houses of peace, small groups. In Account › My church, under Name for cell groups, you choose what they’re called (in singular and plural), and the app uses that name everywhere, for your whole church.

Create a cell group

In Cell groups, select the button to create one.
Fill in the Identity: the Name, which must be unique in your church, and Started on, the date it started meeting.
Fill in Where it meets: the Address and the City.
Under Who is on it, choose the Leaders, the Members and the Hosts.
Save.

Who can fill each place is decided by the Growth Ladder:

Leaders: 1 to 20 people on a rung that can have people in their care.
Members: 1 to 500 people on a rung that doesn’t lead anyone yet.
Hosts: whoever opens their home. It can be any member of the church, whether or not they’re on the list, or a contact.

Nobody can be both a leader and a member of the same cell group.

Active, paused or closed

Active: it meets and schedules encounters.
Pause stops it from meeting until it’s reactivated.
Close cell group stops it from meeting indefinitely.

When you pause or close a cell group, its scheduled encounters are cancelled and its series ends, with an optional notice to the group. Nothing that was recorded is lost, and a paused or closed cell group can be brought back with Reactivate, although the cancelled encounters don’t come back. A closed cell group can’t be edited.

A cell group can only be deleted if it has no encounters at all, not even a scheduled or cancelled one. If it has already had encounters, close it.

How many cell groups your plan includes

On the Starter Plan, each active or paused cell group takes one of the 2 places it includes: only closing one frees it. With both taken, New cell group is switched off and says why, and so is Reactivate on a closed cell group. You can always reactivate a paused one, because it never gave up its place.

If your church ends up with more cell groups than its plan includes, for example when it moves to the Starter Plan, none of them meets until you close the extra ones: in the meantime the screen lists them so you can pause or close them, and nothing that was recorded is lost. Pausing them isn’t enough.

The cell group’s record

When you open a cell group you see its Details: where it meets, who is on it and how many encounters it has had. You also see its History, which keeps every change: who joined, who left and when its status changed.

You see the cell groups your role reaches: a leader sees their own and those in their branch. You can search the list by name or address, and the filter narrows it down by status, city, leader and person.

On the map

Each cell group can have, besides its address, the point of its house: set it when you create the group or with Edit, by searching for the address, dragging the pin or with Use my location. Its record then shows a small map and Get directions, which opens Google Maps directions to the house.

The point is the home of whoever hosts the group: if the address is deleted, the point goes with it, and if the address changes and you don’t place the house again, the point is removed when you save: the form warns you below the map. The history says the location changed, never where it was.

The houses on the map From the Expansion Plan

In Cell groups, the Map view shows each placed house where it is, with the same filters and search as the list. Nearby houses are grouped as you zoom out, and tapping one opens its record.

With Radius you draw a circle of 500 m, 1, 2 or 5 km around each house, in a straight line and not by street, to see which areas are near a house and which aren’t. The radius you pick is remembered in your browser. On other plans, the view shows a padlock.

The Cell groups Map view with the church's houses, each with a 1 km circle around it

Continue with Encounters and reports.