WhatsApp Community

The Saddleback Church Berlin WhatsApp Community is a way for us to gather and organize the various WhatsApp groups that exist in our church life, to facilitate communication and community. A WhatsApp Community consists of an announcement group, where only admins can post information, updates, and encouragements. In addition, the community provides an overview of the different community and chat groups within our church. WhatsApp Groups of Ministry Teams will not be added to the SBB WhatsApp community for now.

It makes it much easier for people to find and join groups that are relevant to them. It also gives us the ability to message everyone in the community via the announcements group, which will harmonize our communication . WhatsApp has a broad user base. We hope that SBB WhatsApp Community will help us to engage more people.

​Yes, your contact information is only shared with those who you are in groups with - apart from the announcement group, where your contact information are not visible to others. This is exactly the same way any WhatsApp groups you’re already in operate. Your details can also be seen by the overall community admin, which is the Saddleback Berlin staff. It cannot be used as a directory to look up people’s numbers. 

No, the community or chat groups you’re already in will start to move into the SBB WhatsApp community over the coming weeks. Once a group you’re in has been added to the WhatsApp community ‘Saddleback Church Berlin,’ you will receive a notification and be added to the community and its announcements group. You can then click on the ‘Communities’ tab in the WhatsApp app and browse other groups that may be of interest.

You simply click on the group and request to join it. An admin of that group then can accept or reject your request with the option to message you directly if they don’t already know you.

Of course. Like any community it needs some rules to keep it working well. Here they are:
 

1. We're all in this together to create a welcoming environment. Let's treat everyone with respect. Healthy debates are natural, but kindness is required. Before you message or reply think, would you say what you're sending to someone's face?

2. Please avoid statements, particularly anything unnecessarily political or controversial, which might damage rather than promote our unity in Christ. Some conversations may be best taken off group chats and continued separately one to one, either online or face to face.

3. Give more to the community than you take. Self-promotion, spam and irrelevant links aren't allowed.

It’s a work in progress. First of all we’re just gathering existing groups into the community and seeing how it goes. However it’s got lots of potential to create interest based and district focused groups too. We’re not trying to do everything at once but if you have an idea, or know of a group that you think could be added contact a Saddleback Berlin Staff member or drop us an email: hello@saddleback.de

You can leave individual groups at any point, just like any WhatsApp groups you’re already in. You can leave the community too if you want to. You can’t leave the announcements group without leaving all the groups you’re part of in the community though. We don’t use the announcements group too much but you can mute it if you want to.