You can invite people to your church group or assign people to a subgroup in your church group from the group or subgroup page.
Inviting versus assigning—what’s the difference?
When you invite someone to join your church group, they receive an invitation. They’re added to your group only if they accept that invitation. For subgroups, you can assign people, which adds people to the subgroup without their confirmation (as long as they’re already a Follower or above in the parent group). Assigning people makes it easier for you to onboard those who need access to specific permissions or communities.
To begin, navigate to your desired group. Login to Faithlife.com and choose your group or subgroup in the left-hand Groups panel.
Once viewing your group or subgroup, you’re ready to send out invitations or assign members.
1. Click Invite.
While viewing your group, click the blue Invite button in the top right.
2. Choose your invitation level.
By default you will invite people as Members. To invite people as Followers, Moderators, or Admins, click Members and choose a different Invite as option (depending on your role in the group, not all of these options will be available to you).
A person’s role in your group determines the level of control they have over group content and permissions:
- Followers can interact with public content or content marked for followers.
- Members can actively participate in the life of the group by posting on the group page, sending messages to others, and interacting with the group’s content.
- Moderators help manage group content and have higher access to group settings and permissions.
- Admins have complete control over group content, settings, and permissions.
Note: Admins of your church group can customize your group content permissions for each of these roles. Learn more.
3. Add invitees.
Add email addresses and then confirm your choice below in the dropdown. You can bulk-add people to your invitation by clicking Add contacts and uploading a CSV file with email addresses in a single column. The email addresses in the CSV files will auto-populate the To field. Faithlife only imports email addresses from the CSV file. Any other data in the CSV file will be ignored.
Note: You can invite people to join other groups or subgroups you have inviting privileges in using the +invite to addition groups option. This speeds up the invitation process if someone should belong to several groups you manage.
4. Finalize and Invite.
Consider adding a personal note to give some context to the invitation, and click Invite.
If invitees already have a Faithlife account associated with the email address, they can sign in and join your group. If they don’t yet have a Faithlife account, they’ll be prompted to quickly provide their name and a password to join your group and create an account at the same time.
Note: To withdraw an invitation or change an existing person’s status, select the person’s row in your Directory, expand the blue Actions button, and choose Withdraw Invitation or Change to…[Follower, Member, Moderator, or Admin] respectively.
Assign people to a subgroup
You can assign people to subgroups. Unlike invitations to your church group, assigning people automatically adds them to your subgroup (as long as they’re already Followers or above in your parent group). For this reason, it’s usually best to invite people to your parent group first and then assign them to subgroups.
1. Click Assign.
While viewing your church group, click the blue Assign button in the top right.
2. Choose your invitation level.
By default you will invite people as Members. To invite people as Followers, Moderators, or Admins, click Members and choose a different Invite as option (depending on your role in the group, not all of these options will be available to you).
A person’s role in your group determines the level of control they have over group content and permissions:
- Followers can interact with public content or content marked for followers.
- Members can actively participate in the life of the subgroup by posting on the activity homepage, sending messages to others, and interacting with content.
- Moderators help manage subgroup content and have higher access to settings and permissions.
- Admins have complete control over subgroup content, settings, and permissions.
Note: Admins of your subgroup can customize your group content permissions for each of these roles. Learn more.
3. Add invitees.
We recommend searching for people by name, though this assumes they have a Faithlife account. As a general rule, it’s usually best to invite people to the parent group first and then assign them to subgroups. This process makes it easier on you, as people who already belong to your parent group can be added to a subgroup without additional confirmation on their part. To limit the search to people already in your church group, leave Limit search to church checked.
Note: You can also add people by email address or bulk add people to your invitation by clicking Add contacts and uploading a CSV file with email addresses in a single column. The email addresses in the CSV files will auto-populate the To field. Faithlife only imports email addresses from the CSV file. Any other data in the CSV file will be ignored.
If any assignee is not part of your parent group, a second checkbox appears. Check Send an email inviting your assignees to create a Faithlife account to send an invite to your parent church group and (if necessary) create a Faithlife account. Some churches leave this unchecked when initially setting up their subgroups so they can get people organized ahead of time before officially extending invitations. Checking this option also enables a personal message you can customize.
4. Finalize and Assign.
When you’re ready, click Assign. Depending on your selections above, one of the following will occur:
- Assignee is already a part of your parent church group: the assignee will be added to your subgroup membership without confirmation.
- Assignee is not a part of your parent group: the assignee will receive an email inviting them to create a Faithlife account (if necessary) and join your parent church group. Upon accepting the parent church group invitation, they will be added to your subgroup without additional confirmation.
Note: The above options assume you’ve checked “Send an email inviting assignees to create a Faithlife account” for any assignees who are not part of your parent church group. If you leave the option unchecked, these assignees will not be notified but a record will be created in both the subgroup and church group. You will then need to officially invite/assign people from the Members section of your subgroup at a later time.
To view someone’s status in your subgroup, select Members in the left-hand sidebar.
Note: To change an existing person’s status, withdraw an invitation, or remove someone from your subgroup, select the person’s row in your Members section, expand the blue Actions button, and choose your desired action.