Our Last Blog Update

Greetings small group leaders,

It is not possible to overstate how important your role is to Springbrook for accomplishing our vision to Reach & Build Passionate Followers of Jesus Christ. In fact, I would go as far to say that it can't be accomplished without you!

Small groups are our front line pastoral care. Small groups are where our vision and mission come together. Small groups are where relationships are forged and grow, and where disciple really happens. Thank you so much for your faithfulness and leadership, and willingness to open your home!

This blog has been a resource and the landing page for our small group leaders after they have completed their meeting reports for 8 years. The intent was communication, training and keeping our small group leaders up-to-date.  I have never received feedback, and it takes time to keep it relevant. Maintenance has been an issue for me as my responsibilities and our church culture havechanged over the years, and so now the time has come to make a needed change.

Rather than maintaining this blog, I will be focusing my time an attention on our Springbrook Church app.  If you have not yet downloaded our app, you will need to do that immediately!  Download the app, setup your account, familiarize yourself with the menus, and begin to share it with your group!

The landing page after you complete your meeting reports will soon take you to our main webpage, and I will be interacting with you from our app moving forward. Click the Small Group / Leader Resources page in the app to find this content and more moving forward. If you haven any small group questions, or questions about our app, please contact me as soon as possible!

Follow this link for more information about our Springbrook Church app, or select the app for your platform below.  Thank you for all you do, and count on my continued prayers for you and your small group!

On the journey together,

Pastor Rich

Important... Update

Just a reminder: please update your small group information ASAP!

You can click the 'update our group information link' from within your weekly email, or enter your password and select your group from the Small Group page at springbook.org,  Keeping your group information up to date with improve the integrity of your group, and help new families at Springbrook make decisions about how to best get connected to a small group!

If you have any questions, please contact your coach, or drop me a note.

I hope you are having a great summer so far, and watch for more information about our small group host/leader barbecue at the end of July!

On the journey together,
Pastor Rich

LifeTogether Health Survey

Many of your are asking about the LifeTogether survey we took in our training class, so I thought I would post some quick instructions.

Hard Copy
If you are interested in printing a hard copy to pass out in your group, simply click the Small Groups Website link to the right. Then click on the the Host/Leaders link of the website and you will find the assessment available to download at the bottom of the page.

On-Line
If you are interested in having everyone in your group take the survey on-line, ChurchTeams will summarize your group's results for you. Simply log into ChurchTeams using your password, click groups link, click on your group, and then click the "Invite group to take the survey link."

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact your coach or Pastor Richard!

Updating Your Group Descriptions

If your group will be taking a break for the summer, or if you are coming back from summer break, please update your group information! Log into ChurchTeams, click on your group, click on Group information, and then make the following changes:

Study Topic: On Summer Break or Study Topic

Group Description
Come join our mixed adult group each Tuesday from 7:00 to 8:00pm for our 6-week Bible Study, "Growing in Christ Together." If you have any questions, please let us know, and we look forward to seeing you!

Start Date: 08/15/2010

Here is a [quick video] if you want to watch how to update your group information, or please feel free to talk with your coach or Pastor Richard.

Thank you!

Update Your Group Descriptions!

Need help updating your small group information? Take a moment to check out this helpful video: http://screenr.com/A18

Summer Small Group Plans

If your group is not going to be meeting over the summer, be sure to set you group to inactive on ChurchTeams. This will prevent you from getting a meeting report each week and prevent people from signing up for your group from the website.
HOWEVER, if you are going to be meeting occasionally socially, we recommend that you update your group information to reflect that, and leave your group active so that you can connect with new people over the summer!
If you have any questions, please contact your coach or Pastor Richard.

Setting Up a Small Group on ChurchTeams

To create a your small group, simply log in to ChurchTeams using your host/leader password, click on Springbrook Small Groups, and then click on Add a new group at the bottom of the list. The link below will take you directly to the page to create your group.

http://www.churchteams.com/Login.asp?oID=5274&page=CreateNewGroup.asp

Take a moment to click on the link below to watch an 8 minute "How-to and Walk Through" setup for leaders:
http://www.churchteams.com/coaching/ChurchteamsLeader.asf

Adding someone to your group in ChurchTeams

I received a question from one of our small group host leaders this week. Here is the question and the answer:

Question:
I have someone that wants to join our small group for the 6 weeks! I tried to go to the site this morning to add them to the group, but the link for "JOIN THIS GROUP" is gone. Is there another way for me to add them to our roster?

Answer:
Because people’s names appear in a public website environment with the “Join this Group” option, it will only be active on the weekends during a small group sign-up period for security purposes.

To add someone to, or remove them from your small group at any time, go to our www.springbrook.org website, go to the small group page, and log into ChurchTeams as a small group leader with the password you were given, using all lower case letters.

After you log in, there are several things you can do as a leader, but click on the Springbrook Small Groups link and page down to your group. When you click on your group, as the leader, you have the ability to maintain all the information pertaining to your group.

At the bottom of the list of people in your group, you will find a link that says, Add New Members; click the link, and select their names from the list that pops up. If they are new to Springbrook, you might have to add their information. The whole process is pretty easy, and should be able to be done within a minute (probably less time that it took to read this email !)