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House Groups 4 - How to arrange a house group evening ...

Thursday, Nov 5, 2009. A house group evening can be easy to arrange and organize. When you have three or four people coming, that's perfectly fine. Of course, sometimes its nice to have eight or ten people, since then the diversity is broader. But it does not depend on the numbers, to have a wonderful and fulfilled time with perspective.

Let's talk a little bit about how and what we do in a house group evening. First of all, its great to have a relaxed environment. Often, we offer coffee and tea, water and some juice. There are biscuits and cookies on the table, sometimes some chocolate. Usually, we arrange bible study group in our living room. The kids are there at the beginning and then go to bed soon. We use the time when everyone arrives to have a chat and exchange the most recent news. If someone new is coming, we start with a round of introductions, who is who, who is married, has children and what do people to earn their living. Sometimes people say something about their faith as well, but usually they don't at this point.

Usually we start with some songs. We have a piano available, and someone plays the guitar. We also had evenings with more instruments, but that was quite rare. There are various song books for worship songs. Either someone has prepared some songs (3-5), or we just pick songs on the fly. Both can be great. When people have the choice to select a song they like, and when different people make a choice, that can also be very attractive.

After the worship part, we usually do a bible study session. Someone prepares this session, and depending on their background it can be very different. Usually we choose a bible passage, and the leader prepares some background information (which can be quite brief, in fact) and some questions. Talking about what God tells us in this passage is one of the key parts of the evening. It is good that there are usually participants who are gifted in explaining the text further. That does not necessarily need to be the leader. And usually everyone has to bring some ideas, questions and experiences which reflect the text or are reflected in it. We had many evenings where everyone came out of the bible study session with the feeling that he or she learned a lot.

Finally, we do a prayer round. Usually we collect prayer requests and exchange some personal reports. It has been a good tradition to just do a round, where everyone says one or two things which happened in the last week in his life and comes with one or two prayer requests. Then, we pray together. Usually one at a time prays loudly, the others join him. Of course everyone can pray silently all the time. We keep it open, whoever wants to contribute a prayer, can do so. If you want to be silent, you can remain silent. Someone closes this round by a final prayer. After these three parts there is usually some further chat and a nice atmosphere of talking about this or that.

There are of course many other possibilities, how to arrange a house group evening. Every group should find its style. The key point is that the Lord is the center of the activities. He is the source of life, the beginning and the end. [R.W.E.P., jesusnetwork.eu]

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jn_en_2009_11_05.txt · Last modified: 2017/06/18 16:48 by 127.0.0.1