We use our Groups functionality mainly to discuss ideas for ministry and plan upcoming events.

Therefore some kind of an IM service would be excellent!

It would also be put to great use by just being able to chat to everyone on the profile thats currently online, as opposed to using the lengthy message or comment methods...

Thanks a lot, and know we here in South Africa appreciate what you guys are doing to help grow the online church community!

We are just getting started with groups but I would tend to think of groups like sub-areas of the church. In concept they should have the same basic features as the church itself (which is like a mega-group).  So things like events/calendar, group blogs, photo sharing (ability to stream from FLICKR would be a good upgrade), RSS feed for updates, etc. 

Thanks for seeking feedback and continuing to improve the site! 

Greg 

I would like the IM service also

Toni 

We actually use it to play games.......though we've slowed down on them lately

http://www.mychurch.org/church/groups/viewgroup.php?c=71356&id=180

New Hope is loving the groups!  Our two most active are our Praise Team and our Women's Bible Study groups.  With the Praise Team group we post on Wednesday the following Sunday's Worship songs so they'll know what we'll be practicing that night.  We also just send idle chat from time to time for fun/fellowship.  The Women's Bible Study group was initially formed for the single purpose of including a dear church member who had moved away to care for her ailing parents.  She bought the study guide and takes part in it via the MyChurch group.  It has also become a way to post anything that we might want to share with each other before our weekly meeting.

We'd be all over a chat room or IM, too.

Great job, MyChurch Team! 

I just came up with something a little different, maybe doable and maybe not. I just read one of my Pastor's blogs, and there were a few people that would like to come and visit our church, and I was thinking that one day, we could have some of the mychurch people around meet somewhere and have a meal together and talk with some of the one's that we talk to on here. I'm just not sure how that would really work or if it would even be doable, if anyone would have any ideas, or if you think it is a good idea or bad one, please let me know, it was just a thought that popped into my head Thanks.

Toni <>< 

1. How we've been using it:
I’m involved with several groups in my church, but my fellowship group (some people might also call this a home group, bible study, small group, etc) is using the group function the most actively.  Our group uses the function to:

-         continue discussions that carried over from our bible studies

-         plan service events

-         plan out-of-town retreats

-         point people in our group to interesting things on the web

A couple other ways we use the groups:

-         have our fellowship group leaders talk to one another to share ideas

-         identify people in our church by which service they attend

-         the youth group leaders use it to plan events and discuss how past events went

3) Ideas for  new features:

 -         A more intentional and specific tool for churches and groups to organize projects of all types (service, within the church, on-going volunteer opportunities, etc.). I’ve already talked to the MyChurch Team about this, but love the idea of using social networking to bring people together for the purpose of doing projects that show the love of Christ and serve their neighbors and communities. I’m not sure if this idea makes the most sense within the group functions, but I’m excited about the idea and thought I’d post it here. 

-         Ability to post and share pictures

-         Ability to post and share files

-         Allow for ability to edit documents without downloading them.  Like google docs and spreadsheets. This would be hugely popular!

-         Events Calendar (that might sync with other calendars (google, yahoo, etc)

-         Perhaps put a thin lined light colored box around the bulletin comments so that it’s easier to distinguish each comment

-         Latest personal blog postings (anywhere on mychurch) by your group members

-         Upcoming birthdays (listed somewhere on page)

-         Ability to send a message to entire group without having to post bulletin (sometimes you’d just like to send a message but not have it stay on the page)

-         Currently, the way that group bulletins display in your mailbox is a little awkward.  It might make more sense to just have a link that takes a person to their groups page so they can read the bulletin there.

-         Show who’s online when in group function

-         A “recently joined” function that could be turned off and on depending on whether the group is adding more people or is fixed.  This could be controlled by the group administer.

-         Some control for the group administrator to choose which of these functions they’d like to activate and which ones they’d not like to have for their group

-         IM service

I would love to see a sub group for "youth pastors", Children's Pastors", etc for the purpose of sharing ideas, resources, and training notices.

One more thought...allowing groups to have some sort of voting or polling options. 

This could be really interesting.  I could think a lot of ways to use this function if given the option.  For instance, a youth group had two ideas for events they might do next.  They decide to put it to a vote to see which event the group would decide to do and allows all the members to vote.  This is another way to make the MyChurch groups more functional than the typical yahoo or google groups.