One of the most important concepts to understand as you create new group types is the relationship that groups have to each other. There are two basic hierarchy types to choose from: Structured Hierarchy: In this configuration, the levels of hierarchy are defined and limited. For example, you may want to define the hierarchy of your small group ministry to have a single leadership team, under them a level of lay leaders who act as coaches to the groups, and then the groups themselves. In a structured hierarchy you can be sure that this structure is enforced. Flexible Hierarchy: For some ministry types, you want your groups to have a more unstructured hierarchy. An example of this might be how you set up serving teams. You may want serving teams to be able to have sub-teams that might have additional sub-teams themselves. These hierarchies may be very deep in some ministry areas (like First Impressions) but shallow in others. You define these hierarchies by configuring what child groups each group type can have. In the structured example, you would create a group type called Small Group Leadership, which would allow child group types of Group Coaches, which would allow child groups of Small Groups. The Small Groups would not allow any child types, ensuring that your hierarchy was fixed at the third level. In the flexible hierarchy example, you would configure Serving Teams to have child-types of itself. This guarantees that you can have an unlimited hierarchy.