Gather Around the Word

It was awkward at first. A good kind of awkward, but still. We felt the oddness of forced intimacy while the four of us sat at our local small-town coffee shop, carefully offering thoughts on the passage of Scripture we’d studied throughout the week and aggressively sipping our coffee when the gaps of silence got weird.

It was January and bitterly cold when this all began. Branching off our church’s one-on-one discipleship plan, the simple question that popped up in a text from a church member one day read like this: “Would you be interested in studying the Bible with us?” Cloistered at home with young children and desperate for adult interaction, I responded immediately. Absolutely, I would. We met the next week: a mom of grown children, a nurse, and the pastor’s wife (me).

I’ve tried and failed at Bible study groups in the past. Once, I even tried hosting a study online after a few failed attempts at opening my home resulted in weeks of sitting at my table with coffee, snacks, and zero attendees. I absolutely love studying the Word, but I’ve struggled to find the missing piece of the equation for gathering around it with others. How do I get a group together to study the Bible with me? I’ve been so discouraged by my failures to garner interest in a group study that I had pretty much given up on the idea of it ever coming to fruition.

But in January, that changed when an invitation to join two other women was handed to me without fanfare, without a big announcement in the church bulletin, and without a specified program.

Start Small

What I’ve learned over the past nine months is that there may not be an exact equation, but it works really well to start a Bible study one-on-one and to grow from there.

The text I received at the beginning of this year was an invitation to join with two other women who had recently completed our church’s discipleship training plan and were beginning a study together. My husband agreed to avoid lunch meetings on Thursdays and stay home with our toddler so I could leave the house and join these two women at the coffee shop.

We began by reading Jen Wilkin’s book, Women of the Word, in order to launch into a book of the Bible with all the same study tools in our arsenal. We began the book of James in the spring and reached out to another woman who was looking for someone to study with. We spent nearly four months in James and then moved on to Ruth using simple inductive study steps. At various times, we’ve had visitors join our group for a few weeks at a time, but mostly it’s the same four women who show up every week with pages of study notes and an eagerness to discuss the Scriptures we’ve been examining and meditating upon. It’s not a closed study group, by any means, but the smallness of it has been beneficial for growing in our relationships.

Show Up and Come Prepared

There’s something deeply encouraging about studying a passage of Scripture all week long knowing that there are others studying the same passage all week long. On the mornings I’m tempted to hit snooze, it’s the accountability built into a weekly meeting that gets me out of bed and to my Bible. I come prepared because I know they will come prepared. We all work hard to learn and understand the background and context, we study God’s character and look for how the Old Testament texts point us to the gospel and give us glimmers of Christ.

Certainly there’s grace for especially busy weeks or illness, but one of our main goals is consistency. We meet for exactly one hour (which coincides with two of our ladies’ lunch breaks from work), hold chit-chat until we’re done discussing the Bible passage, and always come with our work done. Keeping those three things at the top of our agenda means that Bible study remains our first goal. Keeping first things first really matters here: we always cover the weekly material, and no one has to clock in late to work after lunch. Knowing what to expect each week helps us maintain momentum. Prioritizing the study as a weekly non-negotiable part of our schedule has resulted in high attendance for nearly a year now.

Awkward at First, Family at Last

Those first weeks were a bit awkward. We didn’t start out super close in all our relationships. We attend the same church but when we began studying together, some of us were just acquaintances. We’re close now because we’ve spent months exploring the Bible together. I can think of no stronger thread than the Word of God to knit our hearts together.

It’s risky to open the Word together and voice what you’ve learned to a group of people. You’ll make interpretation errors, you’ll share the verses you don’t understand, you’ll confess your sin. You’ll do a lot of soul-baring and heart examination in front of others. You’ll feel exposed when the Scriptures shine light on your sin. But growth in godliness is cultivated well within the safety of the family of God. This is one of the reasons God gave us the Church! And from those awkward beginnings may come a real, family-of-God connection that spurs you on to love and good deeds.

Growth in godliness is cultivated well within the safety of the family of God. Share on X

A couple of weeks ago, I dragged myself into the coffee shop completely shattered by a tough morning and difficult news. Though I was supposed to lead our study that day, I collapsed into tears that I could not control. I was embarrassed of my tears in a public place. My friends were not. All three women immediately rose from their seats, gathered around me, gripped my hands, slung their arms around my neck, and prayed over me. They shared in my tears and took a piece of my burden from me. It was one of the sweetest expressions of God’s kindness to me that I have ever known.

This kind of family relationship wasn’t born of a program or a social gathering. It grew from one goal: let’s study the Bible together. There’s power in that one common goal. The Bible is not just any book. The inspired words of God have the power to change us, to make us like Christ, and to knit our hearts together with fellow believers.

If you aren’t gathering with other believers outside of corporate worship times to study the Scriptures together, do whatever it takes to rectify that. It might be awkward at first–or even for a while. It might require you to give up your lunch hour like half our group does. It might require you to make arrangements for childcare. It might require you to ask people you don’t know well to study the Bible with you.

It might be one of the most encouraging corners of your life.

Grow

I’ve been thinking through my past attempts at group studies and why they failed. One of my mistakes was starting on a big scale and forcing an intimacy that’s difficult to garner in a large group of people. If you’re looking to study the Bible with others, I would encourage you to start small while committing to pray that the organic pattern is reproduced throughout the church family, eventually reaching into the community to include others who might not know Christ. Have a very clear agenda and a specific ending time. Show up every single time. Do the work every single time.

My hope is that at some point, my Thursday study will be replicated and grown within my own church and community. That may mean our group diversifies and spiderwebs out from the original group eventually. I would love to see one group multiply into two, four, six. Outside of our corporate worship services, no other kind of gathering has encouraged me as much as studying the Bible in a small group setting.

No matter how difficult my week has been, how discouraged I am, how busy I am, Thursday afternoons steady my heart and remind me that growing in godliness with the body of Christ is worth any sacrifice I have to make to show up.