Home Groups

I wonder how many of you reading this have ever been in a home group? What is a home group exactly? Well there are lots of different types but all of them are there to bring fellow brothers and sisters in Christ together in fellowship. This might include doing a bible study each week but I prefer to refer to that as a bible study and keep home groups as a separate thing.

Home groups should be fun, friends gathering together over coffee or lunch often to talk about our faith and how it affects our lives or...maybe not talking about our faith at all. Maybe one of the group is struggling, there’s nothing more wonderful than being prayed for by a group of friends when you haven’t got a clue what’s going on in your life.

Home group topics

There are great topics, some more serious than others. Here are things we discussed in my last home group:

• Recognising Temptation - you can't overcome temptation if you don't know what it is!
• When did you get baptised? Maybe someone would like to give their testimony.
• What are your spiritual gifts or do you know if you have any? 
• Putting God first in your marriage.
• What is one question you want to ask God?
• Do miracles exist?
• Who is your favourite person in the Bible besides Jesus?

Tough questions

If you want, there could be tough questions of course like…

• Can you take the Bible literally?
• How are Christians called to love LGBTQ+ people?
• How should the Church respond to racism and injustice?
• What does the Bible say about divorce & remarriage?

Fun questions

There can also be some fun questions to get the party started…

• What's your favourite childhood memory?
• What's your favourite movie and why?
• What was your worst date?
• What was your favourite subject in school? 
• What do you enjoy doing in your free time? 
• What's your favourite family holiday tradition?

Take CoGS home?

As we don’t have any home groups in the church at the moment I would love to know if there would be any interest. Please let me know if you think you might enjoy something like this. I can fit about ten of us into my lounge and I think that might be a good place to start. I think it’s fun for everyone to have a go at leading the evening (only if they want to) and they could choose one of the subjects mentioned in this article or come with their own.

Just to give you an idea, I would normally start with a few songs. I have a large TV so we can get them up on YouTube with the lyrics. Perhaps we could take it in turns each week to choose three songs. I’d probably go with something modern but others might prefer traditional hymns. After that someone will lead us in our discussion and we can end with prayer.

I really do hope that the idea of meeting together with other Christian friends appeals to you. Home groups don’t always have to be about our Christian faith, but our Christian faith will always have a big part to play in the home group.