Potted Proverbs: Sit to be seen

There are always arguments in my family about who sits where at the table and why. And the gospels record a famous argument among the disciples about the seating arrangement in the new creation - The Thunder Brothers wanting the posh chairs on either side of Jesus (Mark 10:35-45).

Seating arrangements are especially important when you are leading a homegroup as well. Here are some thoughts on how you can subtly (and not so subtly) make chair choice change the dynamics of your time together:

• Your chair: like it or not, the chair you choose to sit in can give the wrong dynamic to the group. If it is taller than everyone else's, or larger and more comfortable than everyone else's, then you can unhelpfully give the impression that you are the teacher/guru that everyone else should listen to. If you insist on occupying the same chair every week - even if it's your chair - your favorite chair - you can reinforce an idea that you are in charge/in control/top dog. Christian leadership is, remember, all about being a humble servant, not about being overbearing - see Jesus reply to the Sons of Thunder above. And it is about helping your group discover what is in God's word for themselves - We want them to sit at Jesus' feet - not yours.
• Their chairs: soft sofas are squashy armchairs are good for relaxing, but also for putting people to sleep. Think about ringing the changes every now and then, and putting people round a table on dining chairs. This can create a more "business-like" atmosphere that will help to focus people for some harder work on the Bible text. If you are tackling a particularly tricky part of scripture this may help. Particularly if you pike the table up with Bible dictionaries and commentaries etc, and encourage you group to grab and read.
• Eye contact: you most naturally make eye contact with whoever you are sitting opposite, and you can use this to good effect. If you are anything like a typical homegroup, then you will have some quieter, more shy people who are reticent to contribute. They will naturally gravitate to a quieter corner in the room so that they will not be noticed. Simple plan - sit opposite them, so that you catch their eye more often. These visual "body language clues" will encourage them to speak up.
• No eye contact: the opposite of the above. You may have a group member that always answers the question before anyone else gets a look in, and tends to hog the conversation. By sitting next to them, you will catch their eye less often. And you'll be able to dig them in the ribs when they've gone on too long!

And while we're on environment, you should also keep an eye on temperature (not too hot to put them to sleep - not too cold to distract them), oxygen (opening the window for fresh air will keep them more alert); and lighting (dim light creates a cosy atmosphere - but will not help people read small Bible print - especially older ones or those who struggle with sight.

Any more practical points that anyone can suggest for other homegroup chairmen?

What's it all about?

I asked a group of Home group leaders that question this last week:

Can you give me a single word that sums up what you think your house group is about?

The answers were varied and interesting. We had caring; fellowship; worship; growth; love; and several others along the same lines. The slightly surprising answer I shared to that question was the one found in Hebrews 10:23-25.

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Encouragement.
As far as I can tell, this verse in the NT is the only one which actually commands us to meet together as believers. It doesn't specify what day, or in what numbers, or in what set, or subset of the local congregation we should meet. Simply that we should not neglect doing so, and that the purpose of our meeting together is for mutual encouragement. But encouragement for what? The context of the verse tells us.
The writer to the Hebrews has been establishing for his readers some of the enormous privileges of being Christians. And our verse is a part of the paragraph where he sums them up with a call to action. The primary call is to "draw near to God" because Jesus has opened up the way for us to meet with God through his own blood. We should stand before God with absolute confidence, says the writer, because what we receive from Christ is absolute forgiveness, cleansing and removal of our guilt before God.
More than that, the writer tells us that Jesus is our great high priest, who is now in the heavenly temple making intercession for his people.
But we also need (v 23) to "hold fast" to our confession (belief and trust in Jesus as God's one true King) in face of opposition, with the encouragement that "God is faithful". And more than that (v 24) we must think hard how we stir each other up to live the new life that we have received - by doing good to others, and being filled with the love of the Lord Jesus for our lost world. And there is an urgency to this (v 25) because we know that a day is coming when Jesus will return and the world will be judged, and the new creation established.
So central to any gathering of God's people, and therefore your homegroup, I would suggest is that people leave with the following things having been underlined, impressed upon them, stirred up within themselves, or taught to them for the first time:

• The past work of Christ. The facts of the gospel, and their new status in Christ. Forgiven, cleansed, renewed by the blood of Christ
• The present work of Christ. He is your King and Priest in heaven, and is utterly committed to getting you through to the end. We need to know this, because life as a believer can be brutally hard.
• Our calling to follow him now in very practical ways. Expressed not just by being known as a Christian, but through being loving, and doing good works. Our badge of recognition as a believer is not church membership, but the character of Christ, a passionate lover of all people, and being committed to doing good to others.
• and all this set in the context of...
• The future work of Christ. Who will return as judge.

One lady at the training session said that her aim with the group she leads is "to keep them going as Christians for another week". A brilliant answer. And the way to keep people going, is not just to care for them, and look after their human needs for friendship, food and fun. It is to feed their souls by reminding them of what the Lord has done, is doing and will do for them. It is to remind them who they serve, and what he calls us to.

How does your homegroup match up to this standard?

Potted Proverbs for home group leaders: we don't believe in the Big Bang

I'm not talking about the dawn of time and all that bewildering Cosmology stuff that lots of clever people like to think about with their calculators at hand.

I'm talking about what so often happens at the end of home groups:

We've finished reading and thinking about the Bible together. We've been amazed at how brilliant / surprising / strange / terrifying God is. We've been challenged deep down to think about how we can serve Christ better. And then the leaders says:

"Right, what shall we pray for?"

And then comes the Big Bang! The sound of Bibles closing around the room.

The Problem
The problem is that we falsely think of prayer and Bible reading as two separate and distinct activities. But when you think about it, this Big Bang really amounts to a bit of an insult to God. We've been sat round trying to hear and understand the voice of God, as he has spoken to us in Scripture. God has been talking to us - amazing!

But as soon as soon as we have finished listening to what he is saying - we quickly change to subject to talk to him about how much Dave's knee has been bothering him! Weird!

I hate it when I have conversations like that - because they are actually not really conversations at all. If I talk to my daughters about how much I love them, and what plans we have for our family future, and then they don't comment on it, but start to talk about something completely different (not to mention totally irrelevant), I will just assume they haven't really been listening. (OK - they're teenagers, so this happens a lot!).

In the Bible, the great prayers of God's people nearly always come as a response to something that God has done or said. And these great prayers, like Nehemiah 1 or Daniel 2 or Acts 4, are all filled with God's people quoting back to the Lord things he has said, or promised to them. They actually talk to God about the things he has said to them! It's a single conversation - not two separate ones that never meet.

A Soloution
So here's one solution I've come up with to help the groups I have been part of deal with this issue.

I have two prayer times! 

I make sure that, after we have finished the "listening to God from the Bible" part of our time together, we give ourselves time to "pray in" the things we have heard - either by saying sorry to God for the way we have failed him, by praising him for something we have seen more clearly about how fantastic He is, or by crying  out to him for help to change so that we can serve him more faithfully. It's only after we have done this, that we open our eyes again and ask if there are any specific things that people would like prayer for.

Of course, sometimes there are things going on in people's lives that are so enormous that they need to be brought before God before we do anything else. Including read the Bible together. So I think it's worth being flexible in what you do. If you pick up at the start of your time together that someone's relative is on the point of death, or if someone comes in looking jittery or haggard, it's worth asking what's going on, and have the group pray for that issue at the start.

But whatever you do, don't let the Big Bang happen in your home group. It's just plain rude.

Potted Proverbs: cross the ball - don't score the goal!

It’s a familiar scene to anyone who knows football. The soccer player who tries to “go it alone” runs at the defence, takes a wild shot, and completely misses - while his team-mates, completely unmarked, stand by helpless. The furious team coach is yelling from the touchline: “Pass the ball, don’t score the goal!”

One of the most important lessons I learned early on in my unusual career as a home group leader is contained in this pithy potted proverb. It's one of many I've collected over the years, and will blog on here over the next few months.

Everybody knows that Discovery is the best kind of education. I will always learn something more thoroughly if I’m put in the position where I discover it for myself, rather than if someone just tells me. But it's remarkable how many of us fail to work it out in practice.

If someone comments on a Bible passage and tells me what it says, I will register it. I may agree or disagree. I will wonder if it's your opinion, rather than what the Bible passage is actually saying.

But if I am prodded, provoked and encouraged to say what I see there, then it does a whole load of different things. I learn how to teach myself from God's Word. I encourage myself: Expression deepens impression as the saying goes. And I actually apply it to myself much more deeply. The experience of discovery is so much more exciting than listening to a lecture.

If you are a conscientious leader you will have done your prep on the passage. You pretty much know what the big idea is - the main point that we need everyone to grasp in the middle of all those other little observations. And because we've thought about it, and maybe even read a commentary or two, it's crystal clear in our minds, and so obvious to us when we look at the bible passage.

But then we get frustrated that no-one seems to get it, or traumatised by the silence. So we end up blurting out the answer before the cogs in their minds have really begun to turn properly.

This is something that the Lord Jesus understood. When he was asked directly, he gave a full and complete answer - but much of his teaching had that 'self discovery' element to it. An intriguing story was told, or a forehead-wrinkling question was asked, or an awkward piece of Old Testament Scripture was quoted, and then he walked away saying over his shoulder: "He who has ears to hear let him hear." Waiting for the penny to drop in its own time.

Frustrating as it might be, if you're a good leader, you'll know that your group will grow more, be more encouraging, and learn more deeply and thoroughly if you let them score the goal, by passing them the opportunity with a careful question.

And there's the big skill to develop. Asking questions that open up the passage for us in a way that connects with our lives - not just as an academic exercise in prising out good thoughts from a Bible passage.

So, not "What does v 16 say?" but " "What does v 16 say to us if we're feeling like we want to give up?"

And not "What does  v20 say about God?" but " "What surprises you about God in v 20?"

So please. Don't be a glory hunter -  cross the ball, and watch with delight as your group members do a dance of delight after seeing the ball hit the back of the net.

What is a house group for?

Been working on a seminar I'm running for home group leaders at CRE Peterborough next week, and keep coming back to a fundamental question: What exactly is a housegroup for?
When you ask a random selection of small group leaders, you get a huge range of responses:

• Reading and studying the Bible together
• Praying together
• Mutual support and encouragement
• Friendship/fellowship
• Food!
• Worship

But when you quiz people to find out how they actually spend their time in the small group, you often discover that many groups are given over to what we might call the human needs of the group, rather than on listening to God's word together. They eat, they talk they laugh (a lot!), they share needs, they enjoy each other's company, they feel supported, loved, affirmed, prayed for.

I try to point out (as gently as I'm able) that this surely has to be the tail wagging the dog.

In Acts 2:42, we read a familiar description of what the first Christian community did when they met together:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (ESV)

 They did a whole lot of stuff - but the first thing they did was devote themselves to the Apostles' teaching. All the other stuff they did sprang out of this fundamental activity - they listened to the authoritative word of God, delivered to them through his chosen representatives.
And this is a pattern that persisted: In Colossians 3:16 we read:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 

The first Christians did many things when they met together, but the thing that was at the heart of each of them was that the Word of Christ was there - giving shape to their songs, their prayers - even the way the told each other off!
People come to homegroups for many reasons. They may be lonely and need company; they many be hungry and need feeding; they may be discouraged or struggling in their lives, and need support.
But if you are the leader of a homegroup, you need to have firmly fixed in your mind that the way you will really meet their real needs is to let the Word of Christ from the Bible take centre stage in your time together.
Bacon sandwiches help with the physical hunger, but the hunger in our hearts will only be fed by allowing the words of Jesus, and the Bible's witness to Jesus, to be the menu for the evening.

Welcome to the blog

Hi everyone,

this is a new blog roll that I am hoping to use as the basis of place to regularly encourage and help the many people who run Christian home groups.

What is a home group?
A home group is simpley a group of people who meet together regularly to  study the Bible, to pray together, to support and encourage each other, and to share their lives together. It is an expression of what genuine Christian faith does in the lives of ordinary people.

Call back regularly for reviews, tips, ideas and experiences to help you be more effective as a home group leader.

Tim