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So you want to start a new group?

If you are starting a new group, make this the first meeting, not session 1. The first meeting should be devoted to setting out goals, establishing roles, and getting to know each other. this meeting have them read 1 Timothy 2:1-8; 1 Cor 12-14, then when you get together you should engage in some fellowship (a shared meal or beverage is always a good idea), and have a discussion with the following questions:

1. What makes someone a Christian?

2. What is the role every Christian is supposed to play?

3. What role am I supposed to play in the church?

4. What makes a church successful?

I would also make sure to set up some roles here as necessary, but that will be highly specific to your group. For mine I set out a role of facilitator (which is presumably you reading this) and a worship leader (we had someone who lead worship every so often on sunday lead us in a song or two). Your roles will be highly dependent on who is in your group and what your group’s goals are, which should be set in this meeting as well. My goal was the creation of this material as well as revitalizing our church through the multiplicative power of proper discipleship within the church. 

Before you Meet

Before you meet, establish a meeting time and place. The location should be somewhere neutral for now like the church building. I highly encourage you to meet within a home eventually, but for the initial meeting it’s important to keep things neutral for now and let the group naturally transition into the home of a regular host or a rotation of hosts. 

Also make sure to get everyone’s contact information. Now is the time to set up how communication will be primarily handled within the group. I would suggest something like a group text or discord channel depending on your group (especially the age of your members). It needs to be something where information can be pushed out, but also allow members to communicate back towards you and the other group members. Thus if anything pops up, say someone is sick or a car breaks down, you are able to get that information directly and are able to make decisions, like changing a meeting time or date, without anyone being left out of the conversation.

In this communication channel, send out some initial homework for everyone. It may be  a little awkward at first, but you will be setting out expectations at this session 0, one of those expectations will be homework. For this week send out a blurb that looks something like this: (and don’t forget to make it your own!)

Hey everyone, I’m very excited to meet with you all this Thursday at 7pm. Don’t forget we will be meeting at the church building this week! Before we meet you need to have read 1 Timothy 2:1-8 and 1 Corinthians 12-14 (yes chapters 12-14). Please also come ready to discuss this following questions:

• What makes someone a Christian?

• What is the role every Christian is supposed to play?

• What role am I supposed to play in the church?

• What makes a church successful?

Then all you will have to do is read 1 Timothy 2:1-8 and 1 Corinthians 12-14, prepare to answer the questions, and that’s about it for prep. As a quick side note you can change up these passages and questions to better fit the needs of your group, this is to just get them thinking about those roles because the main purpose of this session is to build those roles and build goals for your group.

Preparing for the Discussion

The two things that should go without saying are reading scripture and tons of prayer. These will be the primary bulk of your preparation for these sessions. In addition I will also include some information on each passage to help you understand and answer any questions that might pop up. This extra information on the topic will be called the “Teacher’s Guide” and is a resource you could share with your people who are more inquisitive, but is by no means necessary for them in this program. Though I do highly encourage facilitators read through the teaching so they can help guide the discussion in biblically accurate ways. A Teacher’s Guide will not be included for session 0 because the main focus for this session isn’t a deep dive into scripture but is merely to get to know one another and set up the group’s dynamic.

Facilitating the Session

Congratulations, you made it to your first session. It’s okay to be feeling anxiety at this point. You are likely worrying about if everyone will actually show up, and if they will be willing to go along with the program. Once you get a few sessions in this anxiety will dissipate some, both because you’ll be feeling more confident and everyone will grow more comfortable with you and how your group runs.

So how do you run this session? Well  it’s important to keep in mind what your goals are tonight. First and foremost is to get comfortable with everyone. Make sure you leave an extra 10-20 minutes before the session starts for just getting to know each other some, or catching up if everyone already knows each other. For this portion of the session it could be useful to have an icebreaker or a game to be played. Feel free to create one yourself, but just in case your mind is blank I will also include an ice breaker here as well. For an icebreaker you will read out each of the following verses. Your group will then have to judge whether that verse is actually in the bible or not.

Verses to use:

1. "Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth, and it said to Balaam, 'What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?'" Numbers 22:28

2. "God helps those who help themselves." This is a popular proverb often attributed to Benjamin Franklin or Aesop's Fables, but it does not appear in scripture.

3. "If anyone loudly blesses their neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse." Proverbs 27:14 

4. "To thine own self be true." This is a famous line from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, spoken by the character Polonius.

5. "When God closes a door, He opens a window." This is a common inspirational saying (famously used in The Sound of Music) but has no biblical origin.

6. "My breath is offensive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family." Job 19:17

Now once you all get comfortable with each other you can move onto introducing the topic for this session. Now is the time to share any extra information you picked up from the teaching guide if any that you want to make sure everyone knows. Beyond that is just making sure everyone transitions well to the discussion. Make sure to give everyone time to settle down and make them aware that this is a transition to the discussion. Feel free to use the following blurb:

Alright, let’s all settle in for our discussion. We read through 1 Timothy 2:1-8 and 1 Corinthians 12-14 this past week and we are going to go through the questions now.

It’s not about saying a whole lot, it’s just about being intentional in that transition which sets a routine and a general rhythm to the sessions. They should expect to come in, socialize and fellowship some, then settle down for a discussion.

That discussion will have you, the facilitator, posing the question to the group and waiting for responses. If there is a long pause, feel free to start offering some information, especially some of that specific knowledge you got from the teacher’s guide. Your job as facilitator is as more of a moderator than a teacher, however. You should not be dominating the conversation, but just guiding it along. If your group goes down a rabbit hole, then first consider if it’s something beneficial. If you guys get off topic discussing what spiritual gift everyone has, that’s a good conversation to have. Now if you all get off topic talking about football, maybe nix that one. You have to be discerning about where the conversation goes and be ready to jump in if things get a little heated. It’s quite likely there will be people who have different opinions in your groups, that is perfectly okay and it’s okay to have a little discussion on things, but you need to keep ahead of it and be ready to intervene before that discussion becomes and argument. 

Again, this session will serve as a prototype for how the future sessions will go. Take some time here to explicitly lay out some ground rules for the discussion. This will vary by group, but some general ones I would suggest would be to 1.) hear everyone out, and 2.) What is said here stays here. These two very general rules enforce two very important things. The first suggests to the group that everyone has a voice. Beyond this I cannot give you any rules for your group because that’s something your group needs to figure out.

The first question you should ask everybody is what role everyone in that group wants to play and lay out the communal rules of your group. Does someone want to be the designated host? Do you want to be the only facilitator or do you want to rotate who’s leading? Is someone or someones responsible for bringing food or drinks? Now is the time to figure all this out before you get into scripture. 

Next comes scripture, take the time to sit down and read through 1 Timothy 2:1-8. If you have time then also read 1 Corinthians 12-14 but a longer passage like this is best just summed up. If you are going to sum it up, don’t do it yourself but ask your group to sum it up, and you’ll likely get some good and interesting feedback on the reading from just that. 

After the passages have been read/summed up, then proceed onto the discussion questions. I have listed with each question a little bit of extra info to help guide the discussion along as well as my intended answer to each question.

1. What makes someone a Christian?

   1. Someone who follows the core tenants of the faith

      1. The Trinity

      2. Some form of Baptism and Communion

      3. Jesus as Divine

      4. Scripture as Authoritative (and inerrant)

2. What is the role every Christian is supposed to play?

   1. It is the mission of every Christian to contribute to the body of Christ

      1. Like in what we read in Corinthians: if the Pastor is an Eye, he can’t be the only one nor is he the most important one either

   2. The commission for us to go forth and made disciples isn’t limited to our ministers

3. What role am I supposed to play in the church?

   1. This one is going to be highly specific to you and you alone!

4. What makes a church successful?

   1. A successful church is one in which almost all members are engaged in the ministry, not engaged in the sense of attending sunday service or bible study, but in the sense of actively making disciples. 

Once the discussion is over, there is just a bit of housekeeping to take care of. First and foremost you need to thank everyone for showing up! Beyond that remind them of when and where the next meeting is. With this also share what they will be reading this next week and that you’ll be sending out this information along with discussion questions as well in the next few days.

Congratulations, you are now finished with session 0! Next find session 1 and continue on your way.