Can Your Small Groups Meet Online?
If you've never wondered about helping your small groups meet online...you might have just turned that corner.
With more COVID-19 news every minute, you might find information about helping your small group meet online. And you really might want to do a little bit of research to familiarize yourself with available options and ideas.
See also, What To Do When You Can't Meet in Your Auditorium?
Here's what I know:
Jay Kranda, Saddleback's Online Pastor, has a free course on online small groups. You can access the course right here. You can also find out much more at jaykranda.com.
Small Group Network has had many questions about online small groups (and provided many great answers). You can see the whole post thread right here.
Set up a Facebook group. This allows your group to communicate easily and post a link/invite to the online platform you plan to use. For example, if your online meeting is on Zoom you'd post a link that leads right into the video call.
There are a few online platforms that make it easy (and affordable) for groups to meet online.
- Zoom offers an easy to use platform that will enable you to send an invite to your group members and host a meeting in minutes. The free version has some constraints, but it is worth looking at. You can find out more right here.
- Skype is a very popular service that makes organizing an online meeting easy. Like Zoom, it is easy to launch a meeting in minutes.
- Google Hangouts a free browser based option.
- Go To Meeting is another option that makes it easy to get started.
- Here's a list of the "best web conferencing" programs.
This is just some of the information available about launching online small groups. There's a whole world out there, but this will get you started.
My recommendation? Just try it out yourself! I use Zoom every week and it's easy to use. Watch the Jay Kranda online course. There's a ton of info and it's free.
The key? Don't sleep on the potential of online small groups!
