Hi, I am little confused about the difference between serving teams and groups. They seem to have some of the same features. Are many of you using both serving teams and groups for your churches or just one or the other? What are the biggest difference between these two things or where can I find more information?

Groups is more for participants in a ministry, such as Bible study group, a small group, or a Sunday school class. Serving teams is for coordinating volunteers running a ministry who follow a schedule such as Sunday School teachers, AV team, band members, etc.

We use both; however, it's all a little confusing. They each have functionality I wish the other would have. It would seem to make the most sense to combine the two functions and allow a single group to be customized to fit the need. As opposed to trying to decide which features you'd rather do without.

Dan Scott Thank you for your help!

Alex Shea Will Thank you for your support. What you said make a lot of sense. I do think a combined feature would be nice!

I think changing the name from Serving to Volunteer in the Community sections makes more sense, especially since under the Admin panel, it is called Volunteer. In some churches, the term "serving" is often used for roles reserved for clergy and altar servers. Our difficulty is Leaders are so used to using Groups to communicate, that the switch over to Serving Groups, with similar personalities (Group Newsfeed/Inbox, etc.) it is hard for them to switch over. I recall when we used The City, we could flag a group to be a General Group or a Serving Group. The Serving Group would enable the volunteer and sign up aspects as needed. We really like that.

Alex Shea Will totally agree with you.. it would be better served to have one model that served all functionality.

These are great comments and I encourage you to add them in UserVoice as well. Go to Support in Realm (bottom left). Click Share Your Feedback (top right).

I do wish Serving teams had the same communication history as Groups does too.