Small groups are very important to the health and growth of a church. According to Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, “Most people who have been a part of a group say the greatest benefit is the close relationships and friendships that develop.” These relationships make the church stronger and more vibrant. How can a church empower small group leaders? Are there tools to help them be more effective?

Most churches have a PC based church management system that is only accessible by office administrators. If a group leader wants to contact church members or visitors to invite them to the group’s events, they need the office administrator to create a contact list for them. And the office administrator may not have the time or the tools to do the research for the them.

A web hosted church management system with good search tools allows group leaders to find and invite potential group members. From home or during a break at work your group leaders can go online to browse your church database.

For example group leaders can use the powerful filter tool in Fresh Vine to find members and visitors that meet specific demographics or that have similar interests. Then plot these members on a map to find those who live near their meeting location. After every event they can enter attendance online and follow up with group members who may have stopped participating.

A web hosted church management system can be a powerful tool for your small group leaders. The more intuitive and easy to use the more enthusiastically your group leaders will use it to more effectively lead their groups.

Read Part 1: The Importance of Small Groups

We’ve had many churches as us if there was an easy way to link to Fresh Vine from their website. This icon makes it very easy. Place it on your site, and then your leaders need to only go to your site, and click the icon to get to Fresh Vine.

Best of all the icon is designed to go along with a gorgeous set of social icons for everything from Facebook, and Twitter to the icon we put together for our friends at Table Project (free private social platform for churches).

Download the Fresh Vine Icon

To help make it easier for the leaders of your church to get to Fresh Vine, use one of these icons on your website, and in emails to leaders. The icon is styled after another great free resource from Icon Dock – Vector Social Media Icons. These are very sharp looking graphics, and they also include vector versions which mean they will scale to any size you could ever need.

Download the Fresh Vine Icon | Related Icons

Every tech person I have had the pleasure of meeting who helps the church have been fantastic individuals. They love what they do, they are passionate about technology, and excited about being able to use that passion along with their passion for Jesus in such a tangible way.

Unfortunately most non-techies struggle to understand their world. And while cases of Red Bull or Mountain Dew are appreciated (and often required during very long/over-night projects) I have seen many ministries struggle to appreciate these people as best as they can. Here are some simple suggestions.

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Our president – Paul Prins – shared his thoughts on the curent legislation known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protecting Intellectual Property Act). Here are some excerpts.

This legislation assumes that it is the responsibility for those who run websites to police all of the user-generated content for any IP violations, or be threatened with the loss of their livelihood. This threat to the web community has drawn an unprecedented response to inform all web users what our elected officials are attempted to do. The burden upon web-companies to police content will effectively kill all innovation and progression on the web. YouTube receives more than 8 years worth of content every day, how can this content be proactively monitored for IP violations.

Furthermore any site that link to a site hosting illegal IP content can also be shut down in the same way. One would not only be required to monitor the content their users submit, but also all the content on websites with links on their sites (including in user profiles and generated content). Overwhelmed yet?

Keep Reading the post on his blog

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