A group is one of the bodies that govern or advise the parish: the Pastoral Council, the Finance Council, the Liturgy Commission, the Building Committee. Nave keeps each one's members, its running agenda and its meetings in one place — private to the parish unless the office decides otherwise.
Open Governance → Groups. The page lists every body the parish has recorded with its member count and open items. Press Add new to create one:
Each body then expands into a card holding its details, its Members and its Agenda & projects; Open meeting workspace leads to the body's own page, where its meetings live.
Nothing here is on the website unless the office publishes the body (see "Putting a group on the parish website"). Meetings, agendas, minutes and documents never appear on a public page, the public calendar or the calendar feed — only in the back office, the admin calendar, and the parishioner portal for the group's own members.
A seat on a body is a name, a title, and — where it helps — a link to the person's Nave account or parish record. Most of a council never logs in, and that is fine.
Who: the parish office, or the body's chair.
The word "Chair" in a seat's title is just a word. What makes someone the leader is Make leader (or Co-leader) under Leaders & members on the group's own page, and only the parish office can press it. A chair who adds a "Co-Chair" to their own body gets a plain seat carrying that word; the office promotes it. Nave enforces this in the database, not just on screen.
When the office adds a seat whose title reads like leadership — chair, president, head, coordinator, director, lead — Nave marks it as a leader from the start. Clear removes the title and the leader mark together.
A leader whose seat is linked to their Nave account gets My Group in the back-office menu — even with no other access — showing only the body they lead. There they can:
They cannot create, rename or delete a group, change its type or goal, set its cadence or group email, appoint a leader, link a seat to a parishioner record, or publish the body. Those stay with the office. The same reach can also be given in People & Team → Access by setting Groups to Write on that one body, or by inviting someone as a Group chair and answering "Which group will they chair?"
Until a seat is linked to a parishioner record, the spelling is the identity. "Fernando López" on one council and "Fernando Lopez" on another read as two people — here and, once published, on the website. The Groups page warns you when it sees this, listing the spellings and the bodies, and never corrects a name on its own. The fix is Link to a parishioner… under the seat, which makes the parish record the one source of the name on every body. Linking is office-only, because chairs cannot see the parishioner list.
Separate from any single meeting, each body carries a running list of what it is working on — "Approve 2026 budget" — each with an optional detail and due date and a status of Open, In progress or Done. The open count is what the Groups page shows beside the body's name.
A body's page is where its meetings live: schedule them, run them from an agenda, record the minutes, keep the documents, and find any of it later.
Who: the parish office.
At the top of the group's page: Meeting cadence ("2nd Tuesday, 7:00 PM PT") and Group email. The email is meant for a shared mailbox — council@yourparish.org — never a member's personal address copied in. Both print on the public page once the body is published. The field displays an address; Nave does not send mail to a group from this screen.
Who: the office, or the body's chair.
Open a meeting to reach its page.
Meetings on or after today that are not cancelled are Upcoming, soonest first. Past and cancelled meetings are the Archive, most recent first. Search past meetings looks through titles, minutes and locations, so "budget" finds the meeting where the budget was discussed even if it was titled "Monthly meeting".
A member whose seat is linked to their Nave account finds My councils & groups in the parishioner portal: each body they serve on, its meetings, and each meeting's agenda, minutes and documents — read-only. A seat entered as a name alone gives no portal access.
Renaming a committee and printing twenty-four parishioners' names on a public page are not the same decision. Nave keeps them apart.
The public Leadership page shows the parish's staff from the org chart. Whether it also shows a governance body is decided one body at a time:
Every body starts unpublished. Switching the Leadership feature on never publishes a council as a side effect; neither does creating one.
Publishing is its own level in People & Team → Access: the Groups row offers Read, Write and, above Write, Publish. Write lets someone run every body; only Publish puts one on the website. A chair never can. The Pastor, Parish office and Site admin starting points include it.
A body with no members recorded still publishes — "the parish has a Finance Council, here is what it does" is an answer a visitor came for. On the org chart under People & Team, a node can also be a body, so its name and chair follow the group.
Two things must be true: their seat is linked to their Nave account, and the office has pressed Make leader on it. A seat that merely says "Chair" in its title is a member with a title. Once both are set, My Group appears in their menu on the next page load. Inviting them as a Group chair and naming the group does the same job from the other direction.
Their seat needs an account behind it: remove the typed seat and add it again choosing Link a Nave account (invite them first if they have none). They will then see the body under My councils & groups in the portal, read-only. There is no way to share minutes with someone who is not on the body.
Almost always the same person entered twice — two spellings, or a typed name and an account. The "One person, spelled two ways" notice on the Groups page lists what it found. Remove the duplicate seat, or link the seat to the parishioner record so the spelling comes from one place.
Look at their Access row. Read on Groups opens every body and its meetings but refuses each change — the row says so: "Cannot add a member, edit a body or publish one to the website." Inside Write, the Add / Modify / Delete switches can also be off individually. Set what they need.
You can — Delete commission at the bottom of its card removes the body with its seats, agenda items and meetings — but consider leaving it. A deleted body takes its minutes with it, and "who sat on the Building Committee in 2027?" gets asked late. Removing it from the website costs nothing and keeps the record.