Building the infrastructure for connection beyond the main event.

Event Type: Community Programming / Program Design & Launch
My Role: Program Designer/Lead, Community Manager
Scale: 15-20+ active groups; 364 participants across all groups

Background

Renaissance Church had strong Sunday programming and a robust calendar of structured courses and events. What it didn’t have was a low-pressure, low-commitment way for people to connect around shared interests outside of a formal church setting. For a congregation of 1,000 spread across three service times, many members had been attending for years without ever meeting someone from a different service. Growth had created distance, and the existing programming infrastructure wasn’t designed to close it.

Summers presented a natural entry point. Renaissance traditionally scaled back structured programming during the warmer months, leaving a gap in the community calendar. That gap became the pilot window.

Goal

Design and launch a volunteer-led, interest-based small groups program that gave members and their guests a casual, no-pressure way to build genuine relationships outside of structured programming, and in doing so, make a community of 1,000 feel significantly smaller and more deeply connected.

Strategy

The program didn’t exist before I built it. That meant designing not just the concept but the entire infrastructure: a format for volunteer members to pitch their group idea, a sign-up and approval process, a communication structure, and a framework flexible enough to accommodate groups meeting on varying schedules. I presented the program to primary leadership for approval and launched a pilot of 8 groups in summer 2024.

The design was intentionally low-barrier on every level:

• Group size: 5 to 20 participants depending on format
• Leadership: 2 to 4 volunteer hosts per group, taking turns planning on their own schedules
• Commitment: No attendance requirements, no formal structure; participants can join multiple groups and float freely between them
• Formats: Interest-driven and member-pitched; spanning fitness and outdoor activities, sports watch parties, game nights, arts and culture outings, professional and affinity groups, and neighborhood-based connection groups for members across the tristate area.
• Communication: Managed through WhatsApp Community channels to keep things informal and accessible

Results & Impact

The pilot response was strong enough to change the program’s original scope entirely. What was designed as a summer filler became a year-round program running concurrently with Renaissance’s structured programming calendar. New groups have been added every semester since launch.

Meetups gave people a way to build genuine friendships around the things they actually love, a deliberate answer to one of the hardest problems any growing organization faces: how to keep a large community feeling small.