Historically, most UK churches ran a central prayer meeting at the church.
This often had a Bible talk at the centre of it (and sometimes, bizarrely, not much prayer). But what started in the 1960s as a radical experiment has now become a standard feature of the life of most evangelical churches: small groups gathering week by week in people’s homes, led by ordinary church members. They may be called Bible study groups, growth groups or a host of other titles.
What for?
But why have we found these groups to be so indispensable to church life? Let’s get back to basics: what is a home group actually for? When you ask a random selection of small group leaders (which I did!), you get a huge range of responses:
