Providing Effective Pastoral Care for Church Small Groups

First published on: 25th November 2017

Mid-week small group meetings are the beating heart of church life, it is where we fellowship together, where real life issues are brought forward and we can encourage one another. 

Thriving small groups affect the whole church and whilst many churches have great accountability systems in place to help facilitate the health these groups, as a church priest, vicar or pastor, it is impossible to really see how each one is doing on a weekly basis, let alone after a month or year. It is for this reason that we created the ability in iKnow, for each small group leader to take attendance of its group members on a week-by-week basis, to assist in pastoral care.
 

Church attendance statistics

Many areas of iKnow, such as the Groups Module, feed into wider church statistics to provide deeper pastoral insights. Rather than simply being a tool that creates a cumulation of static data, iKnow uses the data being stored to provide relevant and beneficial insights into the spiritual state of the church, giving leadership teams the right knowledge needed to propel the church forward by providing revelations into trends that may otherwise not have been noticed.

iKnow’s church database system provides the same pastoral care thread throughout all of its modules, each area providing a small step to be taken by different teams, which then accumulates together to provide leaders with relevant insights, this allows for the burden to be lifted and shared amongst the church.

A church database is only as useful as the content that is going into it, so taking small, consistent steps to adding in data is recommended.

Encouraging your small group leaders to form the habit of filling this data out on a weekly basis however, especially if they have never been asked to keep records before, can understandably be an uncertain and difficult task, which we understand. At iKnow HQ, we are often asked by church leaders how to approach unpredictable tasks such as this, because many churches have never had a church database system in place previously and new methods inevitably produce unexpected but practical complexities. 

The iKnow team come from a variety of church backgrounds and have helped many churches through the practicalities of implementing a church database system, so if you find yourself unsure of how to approach a situation or need reassurance that you are implementing the system correctly, then contact our office and a member of our team will gladly talk through any concerns with you and help you to put a plan in place. Our help and advice is free and unlimited, we simply want to help churches to grow healthily.

You can call us on 0121 651 1125 or email hello@iknowchurch.co.uk  iKnow Church - Church Admin Made Simple!
 

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