I wrote fairly recently about home groups. You can read what I had to say about them here. TL:DR: They aren’t mandated by scripture, but they are a legitimate means of achieving some biblical ends. That is to say, you don’t have to have them, you don’t have to go to them, but I think they are a legitimate, more helpful than not, thing to have in your church.
One of the problems with home groups is when we aren’t really sure what they are there to do. Some of us do them because everyone else does them, without really thinking about whether we should do them or they are even helpful to us in our context. Others of us load all sorts of expectations that aren’t necessarily why they are being run. Some of us expect them to do things that they just aren’t capable of doing. All of which begs the question, what are home groups there for?
Given they are not a mandated thing in scripture, they aren’t there because Jesus commands us to do them. They are there because some churches have decided they are a helpful way to do something that Jesus does ask us to do. But given the lack of specific mandate, it seems to me that all sorts of churches use them differently. They all see different things they might achieve through home groups. I imagine different churches tool theirs differently depending on what they perceive as the particular needs of their congregation.
So, what are home groups for? In a sense, whatever you want them to be for. But it pays to be clear about what you think they are for as a church and then to set expectations accordingly. As such, here is what ours are for.
Fellowship
The main reason we set ours up was because we had factions. Our church was beginning to splinter along language and ethnicity. So, we decided to put people into home groups. They were to be mixed groups, at which we would eat some food together, and pray for one another. We thought it was hard to ignore people in a small group, sat a metre away from them, whilst you were eating together. It is also harder to ignore and “other” people when you are praying meaningfully for them. So, we setup home groups particularly with this in mind. By God’s grace, that seemed to work over time.
Reminder
I am under no illusions that everybody remembers everything I say in the pulpit. It is tempting to think because we said something once that everybody heard it, understood it, remembers it and puts it into practice. It just isn’t so.
So, home groups provide a helpful opportunity to revisit what we said on Sunday. It causes people to read the passage again, to recall key points and allows us to address any misunderstandings. Many people hear very different things from what was said sometimes. Some people hear you but don’t fully grasp what you were saying (which is by no means always their fault, but highlights deficiencies in the preaching itself too). But it allows us to remind people of what we actually said, to address any misunderstandings and to help people actually grasp what a passage is really saying and what it means for them.
Extension
Inevitably, though we work hard to pointedly apply our sermons to those in front of us, you can’t pointedly apply every point to every person in the room equally. We tend to offer two or three common or indicative examples – relevant to at least some of the people in front of us – and hope those to whom it doesn’t apply have seen enough to recognise how it applies to them. But in a home group, you can ask the questions that lead people to pointedly apply to themselves what might not have been so directly applicable on Sunday. So, our home groups exist to help extend and even more pointedly apply the application from Sunday.
Support
There are not many natural opportunities in church life – certainly not in main meetings – to pray for one another. An awful lot of our prayer meetings, for good reason, focus on our prayer partners and the ministry of the church rather than individual members and their needs. So, another function of our home groups is to get people in church praying meaningfully for one another. Each week, we split our home group into two (usually men together and women together), then in those even smaller groups, go round and share at least one point for prayer and another for praise. Then we pray for each other. It has proven a great way to find out more about what is going on with people, actively helps us pray for each other and even causes us to sometimes pray and then realise how we can practically help in a matter too, in ways we might not have otherwise found out.
You may have other things you want to achieve with your home groups. As I said at the top, they are not a mandated thing that Jesus says we must do in any particular way, or even at all. So, you may find other things more helpful in your context that would make your groups much more helpful. I think that is great. But whatever you use them to do, it pays to be clear so that expectations are properly set and you can tool them to achieve whatever it is you are planning to do with them.