One of the  things I have most enjoyed using in 2010 was this real-time group communications tool via my phone called GROUPME.  It’s free and it has been amazing with many different uses.  Our student ministry staff no longer uses text messaging as our means of communicating with each other because this has been so helpful.  We utilize this so that instantly we all receive the message and in real time we can all view each person’s response.  The downside with text messaging is even if your phone can send a message to multiple recipients, the recipients don’t know who else received the message and they can only respond back to you.  With GROUPME, this is not the case. It’s like a little text conversation for a group. It has brought our team even closer as we can celebrate with each other, joke with each other, grieve with each other over bad news, pray with each other, and instantly alert each other so that no one is left out of important information.  We have even used this tool with our leaders for events.  For example, I’ve set up a groupme text group for a pre-teen retreat and our fall retreat.  I’ve entered in all of the volunteers numbers and instantly we have communication in text that links us all together even when we are spread out across a campus.  It is a time saver when we are doing cabin checks or passing out the student meds or getting bible study supplies to students.  It is really handy because someone in bible study group can quickly use groupme to alert us all that a student has yet to show up. We were quickly able to identify that a cabin had overslept and missed their wake-up call instead of having to run all over campus trying to see where the group was.

You can then terminate the group at the end of retreat so that volunteers don’t get annoyed with the ongoing dialogue.  The only downside is that there are only 25 people allowed to a groupme number.  I had to set up 2 groups for our fall retreat.  They also have a feature if you use the GROUPME iphone app to make a conference call and get everyone on the line.  And now you can upload images that all the group can see and respond to.  Very cool.  So how do you get started?  Just go to groupme.com and you’re ready to start.  But before you do, check out some ways we’re using groupme.

Here are some ways I think you could utilize GROUPME in your ministry to girls:

-Use GROUPME with the girls you are discipling.  Just make sure you create some digital boundaries to mute the conversation after a certain hour.  You might also want to bring in another adult onto the GROUPME just for accountability.

-Use GROUPME for a volunteer checkin with your smallgroups and for announcements for the evening or Sunday AM.

-Use GROUPME for your student staff like we have been doing.

What are some other ways you could utilize GROUPME? Share below.