Can I create a Google Group by directly adding members?

There is indeed a way to do that, but as you might expect, it's not recommended and more often than not, sadly, it's a sneaky way for spammers to send out mail that slips through a lot of spam filters because it's from Google, not some oddball fly-by-night system.

If you agree that it's a legit use, I'll show you, but if you're a spammer, don't abuse this and mess it up for us legitimate users, okay? Thanks.

I'll assume that you have a Google account and that you're logged in to it already (perhaps for Gmail, or Google Reader) so that when you go to groups.google.com, you'll be able to directly proceed...

First step is to click on "Create a group...":

Now you'll be able to name your group and offer up a description:

Those are obviously important fields, but what's likely more important to you is located a bit further down on the same page:

You'll probably want to mark the group as "Restricted" so that it's a closed, private group and your discussion doesn't end up in the search engine database some day.

Click on "Create Group" and you'll need to verify that you're not a robot with one of those annoying CAPTCHA systems:

Click on "Create my group" and you'll be ready for the next step:

That's where we need to really pay attention. Along the top it says 'Add members directly'. That's what you want to click on. If you're not a spammer. But we've already gone over that, right?

Here's what Google says:

Right. We're in agreement on that one!

Scroll down a bit and you'll see:

That's it. Enter the email addresses of the people in your church group, add a welcome message so that they have a clue about this new group you've created and added them to, and click on "Add members".

Done.