Small Group Basics

Small Group is an important part of a church. It is a place where congregations can get to know one another and develop closer relationships. Apart from that, the Small Group is also a place for the congregation to have their voices heard which cannot happen during Sunday services.

Erista provides the Small Group feature as a place where groups in your church can be managed properly. That way, church leaders or pastors know the situation in the church, and can even know the condition of the congregation.

Erista also recommends that each group leader be given access to Erista, so that all church administration processes can be delegated to the group leaders. That way, the church can collaborate in the same container, making it easy for leaders to monitor.

Create a new group

To create a new group, you can follow these steps:

1. Make sure you are on the Small Group menu

2. Press the Add Small Group button on the top-right of the screen

   

3. Masukkan informasi kelompok seperti nama, pemimpin, alamat, dll. Informasi lainnya dapat Anda tambahkan nanti.

4. Press the Save button. If all is safe, then you will see your new group has been formed.

   

Add new members to the group

To add members to a group, you can follow these steps:

1. Click on the Members tab
2. Press the Add Group Member button
3. Select the new member to add. You can add more than one at a time.
4. Press the Save button

Create a new custom note

Notes or notes can be used by group leaders to record various things about the group. This note can also be seen by other Erista users so that it can be used as a forum for collaborating with other church officials.

To add a new note, make sure you:

1. Already on the Notes tab
2. Press the Add a new Note button
3. After the new page comes out, you can write notes in the available column
4. Don't forget to press the Save button when the note has been written

Scheduling volunteers for ministry

Often in a small church group there is a schedule for gathering together, perhaps to do Bible study, or sharing together. For this, Erista provides a scheduling feature or Schedule. Within this feature, group leaders can:

• Create a service schedule for members
• Send invitations to members via email or WhatsApp
• Create automatic reminders

To create a new schedule, you can follow these steps:

1. Press the Add new Schedule button on the Schedule tab
2. Enter schedule info like schedule name, schedule date and time, etc.
3. Enter a list of people in charge of the Roles & Volunteers section
4. Set the configuration for Auto Reminder if you want Erista to remind members automatically
5. You can choose to send invitations to members by selecting the Send Email Invitation or Send WhatsApp Invitation options

Record Attendance of group members

One of the things that is important for the church is to know whether the congregation is still active in the church or not. If the congregation starts to become inactive, it's good if the church knows about it so it can immediately take follow-up action, perhaps by contacting the member.

To help the church in this regard, Erista provides a place where group leaders can attend to their members. To add new attendance data, follow these steps:

1. Make sure you are on the Attendance tab
2. Press the Add new Attendance button
3. After the new window appears, enter the appropriate Attendance Type (such as: Sunday Service, Small Group Activities, Ministry Group Activities, Other Activities)
4. Then, enter the attendance date. Hours and additional notes you can skip if not necessary.
5. After that, you will see a list of group members at the bottom along with their presence status. There, you can change the attendance status of each member (such as: Present, Sick, Out of Town, Other, Don't Know)
6. After all the attendance statuses are correct, don't forget to press the Save button

Easily email all group members

As a group leader, you may often need to communicate with its members. Perhaps one of them is to share announcements or news from the church. For this reason, Erista provides a feature that can make it easier for you to send personal emails to all group members. Here's how it works:

1. In the Small Group profile section, there is a Message button, press the v button on the right
2. After that several options will appear, press the Email (group) option
3. After that, your device will switch to the default Email software on your device
4. If your group members have email addresses, their email addresses will be automatically filled in