CC: Bible study in your home

[AnneBlessedx4]

Have you hosted a Bible study in your home?  Did you lead or take turns? I am particularly interested in group family Bible study ideas.  We want to have the children in with the parents. 

[PeachyDoodle]

I have not personally hosted one, but my parents had one in our home for years, and I have taught in several others' homes.

IME, it's difficult to get enough people willing to teach to do much taking turns. The burden usually eventually falls on one or two people. I think rotating duties among groups of families would be even more difficult because not everyone will be comfortable teaching such a wide range of ages. I think that is a big enough challenge in and of itself.

If I were going to attempt a Bible study for families, I'd set a defined routine for each meeting -- opening song, story, craft, game, snack, etc. Keep it the same from week to week so everyone knows what to expect. Perhaps ask each family to be responsible for one portion of the evening. Those who don't want to lead an activity could provide the food or take clean-up duty. 

TBH, I don't think I'd do this with whole families because the teaching would either need to be geared towards the children or the children expected to sit through a portion geared for adults (which means me trying to keep littles still and quiet instead of paying attention), and that's not my idea of a productive study. YMMV, of course.

[Rachel]

I’ve led but it’s been hosted in another home. 

When we have mixed age groups what seems to work is for the young kids to be involved in a portion and then go play in another part of the house or outside while the adults have time to chat. 

It also seems like only one or two people are willing to take the lead regularly. Sometimes people will fill in but not everyone is comfortable leading. 

Good luck!

[LuvToRead]

14 minutes ago, PeachyDoodle said:

I have not personally hosted one, but my parents had one in our home for years, and I have taught in several others' homes.

IME, it's difficult to get enough people willing to teach to do much taking turns. The burden usually eventually falls on one or two people. I think rotating duties among groups of families would be even more difficult because not everyone will be comfortable teaching such a wide range of ages. I think that is a big enough challenge in and of itself.

If I were going to attempt a Bible study for families, I'd set a defined routine for each meeting -- opening song, story, craft, game, snack, etc. Keep it the same from week to week so everyone knows what to expect. Perhaps ask each family to be responsible for one portion of the evening. Those who don't want to lead an activity could provide the food or take clean-up duty. 

TBH, I don't think I'd do this with whole families because the teaching would either need to be geared towards the children or the children expected to sit through a portion geared for adults (which means me trying to keep littles still and quiet instead of paying attention), and that's not my idea of a productive study. YMMV, of course.

 

5 minutes ago, Rachel said:

I’ve led but it’s been hosted in another home. 

When we have mixed age groups what seems to work is for the young kids to be involved in a portion and then go play in another part of the house or outside while the adults have time to chat. 

It also seems like only one or two people are willing to take the lead regularly. Sometimes people will fill in but not everyone is comfortable leading. 

Good luck!

This is my experience as well.  Some people are unwilling to lead, some people can't or don't feel qualified, and some will back out at the last minute.  I do think you are better off having 1 person take charge.

[school17777]

We used to participate in a family Bible study.  I think the elders took turns with teaching.  We took turns hosting.

 It was hard with all the kids of various ages.  So then we met altogether and would split the kids off after a song and/or short lesson/devotion - problem was they needed supervised and nobody looked forward to that.  I would rather just stay at home with my kids than go somewhere else to watch my kids plus a bunch more and I think most of the other ladies felt the same way!  We tried rotating with each family responsible for all the kids and also hiring help.  We ended up just having a men’s study and a ladies’ study so we could meet without figuring out what to do with all the kids. 

Edited September 6, 2018 by school17777

[JIN MOUSA]

When our church group meets, we have 8 families, which includes 14 kids under the age of 8. So our set-up has been targeted to handle SO. MANY. littles. We hire a couple of babysitters, to watch the kids in another room (lots of space, toys, and usually a show on). We have the kids who are kindergarten-age and up join us at the beginning for about 10 to 15 minutes. In that time we do a catechism question; we're using The New City catechism. We talk about the question and the verse. Then we pray. After that we send the kids back to the play room with the babysitters and the adults do more study or praying. 

As for leading, I've also found that it works best for one or two people to take the lead, but to definitely delegate. Find out where people in your group are gifted and see if there is some way for them to use that gift in your group. In the past we've also used studies from Right Now Media, and that helps lighten the teaching burden. 

[PrincessMommy]

yes, we hosted a woman's Bible study at my home many years ago.  It was not multi-generational though and I hosted (on rotation), but someone else was the "teacher".  And, not exactly the same, but we also hosted Home Group at our house for many years. My husband lead the discussion.   Usually, we discussed the previous week's sermon and read the Bible verses used. We provided babysitting but again, it wasn't a multi-generational meeting.

 

Good luck - I hope you find some good resources for your needs.

[Chris in VA]

Agreeing with everyone. I hosted and taught but used video resources. Not multi-generational. 

I could see doing a worship/sermon/devotional with families, instead of a true "bible study." 

[mom@shiloh]

Agreeing with everyone also.  We tried this for awhile, but it's very difficult to find materials to span multiple ages.  I'm doing Sword Studies with some of my kids right now.  That might work.  Everyone has assignments spread over five days and then we get together to talk about it.  I'm not sure how it would go with a larger group.  

Many of my friends are involved with Community Bible Study.  All ages meet at the same time and study the same thing, but they don't all meet together.  They might have materials that could work for you though.

 

[cintinative]

When we hosted small group the kids would leave during the study portion and play in the finished basement. We had a paid sitter. It did not work to have young children about when we were trying to have our Bible study. It was hard on the moms. As noted previously, it also doesn't really work to rotate the parent that watches the kids. The whole point of it is fellowship. So we each chipped in a couple bucks per kid and paid one or two sitters depending on the number of kids.  Rotating locations sounds fantastic but our reality was no one else wanted to host and/or the others didn't have the necessary space. ETA: we did rotate leaders for the study on occasion, but it was voluntary to lead discussion, so there were periods when only one person led the discussion for many months.

Edited September 6, 2018 by cintinative

[Rachel]

I answered earlier but wanted to add that the ages of kids, number of kids, and behavior of kids can make a big difference. 

We have been in home groups where our three kids were the only little kids and we could still have a decent discussion the majority of the time. We have had older elementary and up with the adults and had productive discussion. I have also been in all mom bible studies where one wild toddler was disrupting for everyone except that child’s mom.

 My experience over the last several years is that once you get more than about 4 or 5 kids (who aren’t all siblings) it is very difficult for the adults to have a meaningful study time. You can have discussions and fellowship, but deeper conversations don’t tend to happen when the kids are in the room.  I do think it is good for kids to see bible study and discussion modeled, so it could work depending on your goals. 

[AnneBlessedx4]

Thank you all!  We met last week, and it went well.  We will be adding more families, so that will make it more challenging.  ?  I appreciate everyone's input. We did have really good discussion.

[Lady Marmalade]

Many years ago we hosted a small group in our home.  We had six regular families (a few free rangers would pop in from time to time ) with a big age range of children.  Our group came about because the only time we could all meet regularly during the week was during a meal time, so it became a dinner group.  I planned and prepared the meal every week unless someone else volunteered, and usually everyone brought something to contribute so it wasn't ALL on me.

For study at first we tried to do all of us together, and we used a few lessons from The Way Back To Mayberry.  http://home.hiwaay.net/~thefanns/home.htm  It was such a fun study! We'd watch an episode of the Andy Griffith Show and discuss in a Bible context.  It is probably still my most favorite group study to date.  After that study we did a couple of other things, but it was determined that the kids would get more out of the time if they simply were allowed to play and just be kids together.  They ranged in age from 2 to 10 at the time, though we also had a teenager who would volunteer to check on the kids from time to time.  They played or watched a movie all together, unsupervised really, and we hardly ever had troubles with that.  We were all in the house together, so could hear if there was an issue and a parent needed to intervene.  

Our group lasted four years or so, and DH would generally lead the study.  In actuality, he was probably the "least" qualified to do so, but I think it kept the discussions from getting too deep and theological for the group en masse. 

After the study time, we ate our dinner together, and a few people tended to linger longer to help clean up and enjoy a few more moments of fellowship with some coffee.  It was a very sweet time in our life and we miss it.  It's crazy to look back now and think that every Sunday evening for four years we cleaned our house top to bottom, cooked for 20 people and hosted that study.  Now we have such a hard time finding the time to get together with anyone once a month, let along a regular weekly thing like that!

[Cindy in FL.]

We have hosted a church Bible Study in our home for 3 1/2 years. We have dinner (potluck, different theme each week) at 6:00, and the study starts at 7:00. The pastor almost always leads the study. It is for families, and is not oriented toward children, but is not so far over their heads as to be pointless (youngest kids we usually have are 5 yo). We have anywhere from 30-55 people.

The praise team usually practices after the study, kids play, and people don’t all clear out until after 11:00. It’s a great time!

Edited September 10, 2018 by Cindy in FL.

[Ann.without.an.e]

We have done this in different settings/times/groups.  Issues with kids was always our biggest obstacle.  We had sitters for the younger kids and when we had good sitters things were smooth, when we didn't and kids got into squabbles, trouble, were mean to each other, etc things started to fall apart a bit.  I would say that troubles with kids can tear a group down faster than anything else.  Especially if you have some really problematic kids that parents protect.  Just a heads up.