Last night we had our regular community group (midweek home groups). As regular readers will know, we use our community groups to revisit the sermon we heard on Sunday. It is an opportunity for members to ask questions, for us to clarify understanding and to dig further into the applications of the text.
At least, that is what they are usually for. Sometimes, you have to screw up the plans and do something altogether different. Sometimes, it is because – though you might start on the sermon – an interesting thought or comment crops up that needs addressing and you spend most the time focused on that. It isn’t entirely uncommon for that to happen. You sense, as you are leading, the more pressing matter is the stuff that has arisen – whether correcting significant misunderstandings, concerns or just because it is such a vital matter that it bears discussing more fully – and so abandon sticking strictly to the plan to carry on with digging into the sermon. After all, we have heard the sermon. That isn’t to say there is no more to be said, just that the new thing that crops up might be more pressing than revisiting the thing we’ve already heard on Sunday.
Other times, something entirely outside the sermon crops up. It may be that you want to make an aside before you get down to the study or it could be that there is an issue you want to address but it isn’t the primary thing you wanted to talk about. Nevertheless, sometimes the discussion takes off and it seems really important, given the nature of the subject, to run with it. Sometimes, we have to do that. The need is more pressing than the plan.
Several things are probably worth saying here. First, we have to be clear that home groups as an invention are nowhere to be found in scripture, let alone how you specifically run them. They are, at best, a potentially helpful means of achieving some more specific biblical ends. That means we want to be careful about being hard and fast over how they are run and demanding about exactly what happens in them. When we think of them in these terms, abandoning the plan is ultimately okay.
Second, we have to be clear what we are actually hoping to achieve with our home groups. The way ours are constituted, there are a few things. We want to foster better fellowship and so eat at ours and spend a reasonable chunk of time chatting over food. We then want to pray meaningfully for one another so make sure we build time in for that. We, further, want to use them as an opportunity to correct misunderstandings from Sunday teaching, address questions and encourage further reflection. That being said, if some specific points of misunderstanding arise (perhaps not immediately connected to Sunday’s sermon), it seems broadly in line with what we are aiming to do through the discussion to run with them rather than brush them to one side.
Third, part of the skill of running any home group and/or discussion-based bible study is knowing when to go down the rabbit holes and when to drag conversation back from unfruitful tangents. We are unlikely to always get it right, but it is part of what we broadly need to do. Again, when issues arise, knowing whether to give time over to them or to steer the conversation back to what we think is more profitable is part and parcel of the wisdom, discernment and skill needed to run a successful home group. Sometimes, ripping up the plan entirely is part and parcel of exactly that.
Fourth, we can rest in the fact – in our setup – that we have preached a sermon on this on Sunday and trust that might have some desired effect and most people have understood it. Most churches operate on the principle of doing some entirely different bible study midweek to whatever they are doing on Sundays. As per my first comment, that is entirely legitimate if that is what is deemed most helpful. But if it is the case that this is what most churches do and find it functions acceptable, our occasionally effectively tearing up our usual plan of revisiting the sermon to do something different isn’t such a big deal really. Whilst we think – in the ordinary run of things – our folks are best served by revisiting the sermon from Sunday, clearly sometimes they are best served by something else. There are no hard and fast rules and, clearly, most churches who always do something different midweek will affirm this is absolutely fine.