Church Small Groups Software

Ekkli's small groups and community tools let your church run open or approval-gated small groups, a group message stream with photos, files, and emoji reactions, and staff-managed forum boards — all from the same login as your church's website, member database, and rota. These community features are off by default for every new church, and the church admin can turn them on for free, whenever the church is actually ready to use them.

This page is a product spec: what small groups and group chat actually do, how joining and moderation work, and how forum boards fit alongside them. If you're weighing this against your church's membership setup, see the member management page for how the underlying member database works, and the volunteer rota scheduling page for how team coordination works elsewhere on the platform.

Small groups: open or approval-gated

A small group in Ekkli is a named group tied to your church — a home group, a youth cell, a prayer team, a newcomers' group, a men's or women's ministry, whatever structure your congregation already runs. Each group has its own membership list, and your church decides how people get into it:

• Open joining. A member browses the list of groups and joins the ones they want — no gatekeeping, useful for groups that are genuinely open to anyone who shows an interest, like a general newcomers' group or a public prayer chain.
• Approval-gated joining. A member requests to join and a group leader or admin approves the request before they're in. This suits groups that need a leader to actually know who's coming — a home group meeting in someone's living room, a youth group with a safeguarding requirement, or any group where numbers or fit matter.

Your church can run both models side by side — some groups open, some gated — because the setting lives on the group, not the whole church. A newcomers' group can stay open while a youth cell stays approval-only, without one policy forcing the other.

Group chat: a message stream built for a small group, not a public feed

Once someone's in a group, the group has its own message stream — closer to a group chat than a public social feed. Members can post text, share images and files, and react with emoji, which covers most of what a small group actually needs day to day: sharing a prayer request, sending the address for this week's meeting, posting a photo from the last gathering, or just a thumbs-up to confirm attendance without cluttering the thread with a reply.

Moderation is built in at two levels, so a group doesn't depend entirely on one person catching every message in real time:

• Self-delete, briefly. Anyone who posts a message can delete it themselves for a short window right after posting — enough time to catch a typo, an accidental send, or a change of mind, without needing to flag down a leader for something minor.
• Staff moderation after that. Once a message is older than that short self-delete window, removing it is a staff action — a group leader or church admin, not the original poster. That split keeps casual self-correction easy while making sure anything that needs a considered removal (rather than a quick undo) goes through someone accountable for the group.

The result is a message stream that behaves like a small group actually talks — quick, informal, image-friendly — with a moderation model that matches how responsibility really works in a volunteer-run church: light-touch for the person posting, staff-owned for anything that's sat there a while.

Staff-managed forum boards

Alongside group chat, Ekkli supports forum-style discussion boards that staff set up and manage — a more structured, threaded space than a group's live chat stream. Where group chat suits fast back-and-forth inside one small group, a forum board suits longer-running, church-wide discussion: a Q&A board for a sermon series, a board for a specific ministry team to coordinate over weeks rather than days, or a general discussion space for the whole congregation.

Because boards are staff-managed, your church controls what boards exist and who can post in them, rather than members spinning up their own topics unsupervised. It's the same underlying philosophy as group chat moderation — members get a genuinely useful space to talk, and staff retain the structure and oversight a church community actually needs.

Off by default — turn it on when you're ready

Every one of these community features — small groups, group chat, and forum boards — ships off by default for a new church on Ekkli. That's a deliberate starting point, not a limitation: plenty of churches want the website, presentation tools, and member database running smoothly first, and aren't ready to manage an active group-chat and forum space from day one.

When your church is ready, a church admin turns the module on from the church's own settings — it's a toggle, not a paywall. There's no upgrade, no separate purchase, and no plan requirement: group chat and forum boards are part of every plan, including the six-month free trial, the moment you choose to switch them on. Turn small groups on for your home groups this term and leave forum boards off until your youth ministry is ready for them, or turn everything on at once — the sequencing is entirely up to your church.

How this fits with the rest of your church's admin

Small groups and community features sit on the same member database your church already uses for the website, rota,— so a person who joins a small group is the same record as the person on your rota or your membership list, not a separate account to manage. Group leaders don't need a different login than the rest of your admin team, and there's no second system to keep in sync with who's actually in your congregation.

That matters most for smaller churches without a dedicated communications volunteer: one member database, one login, and community features that stay quiet until someone in your church decides it's time to use them.

Frequently asked questions

Are small groups and group chat included in Ekkli's free trial?

Yes. Small groups, group chat, and staff-managed forum boards are available on every Ekkli plan, including the six-month free trial for up to 50 people. They're off by default for a new church, and a church admin can turn them on at no extra cost whenever the church is ready.

Can members delete their own messages in group chat?

Yes, for a short window right after posting — enough to fix a mistake or an accidental send. After that window, removing a message becomes a staff action handled by a group leader or church admin, rather than something the original poster can undo themselves.

Can we require approval before someone joins a small group?

Yes. Each group can be set to open joining, where members join freely, or approval-gated joining, where a group leader or admin approves each request. Your church can mix both models across different groups.

Who can create or manage forum boards?

Forum boards are staff-managed — church admins and designated leaders set up and control which boards exist, rather than members creating their own. This keeps church-wide discussion spaces structured and accountable.

Do we have to turn on small groups and forum boards right away?

No. Every new church starts with these features switched off, and there's no requirement or deadline to enable them. Turn on small groups, group chat, or forum boards individually whenever your church is ready — it's a free toggle in your church's settings, not a plan upgrade.

Is group chat a public feed, or private to each group?

Each group's message stream is scoped to that group's own members — it isn't a church-wide public feed. Someone has to be a member of a given small group to see and post in that group's chat.

This guide is maintained by the Ekkli team, who build and run the church small groups software described above. Have a question about how groups or forums would work for your church's specific setup? Reach out — we're happy to help you think it through, whether or not you end up using Ekkli.