Tina felt forgotten in the large Bible study group. As one of the youngest participants in the group, she sensed that her voice was lost. Drowned out by older wiser women. She loved going through the scriptures and discovering new ways to understand God, but this Bible Study group just did not feel like a comfortable place to share. Sometimes she tried to speak up and voice her thoughts on a subject but felt scared.
“Am I too young to be any good for the other women in the group?”
There are far too many stories like Tina’s out there. We should be looking to help others in our small group, to be engaged with one another and not feel afraid. In this post we’ll look out how taking your small group online with StudyChurch can be the game-changer you’ve been looking for.
Take it online!
StudyChurch is an all-in-one online small group platform. We wanted leaders to have the ability to send out assignments or reminders, prepare lessons, share lessons, and host discussions. All of these features were built to help your members engage.
1 Send out Assignments and Reminders
Create assignments and send them out to your disciples via StudyChurch. When creating a To-Do you have the option to either link it to a chapter or merely give information like, “read through Psalm 1.” To help your members engage, make sure to send out frequent reminders and to-dos. You can also choose to schedule assignments that your members will need to finish by a certain time.
2 Send Lessons
Engage your group by sending out the lessons weekly. This can serve as a constant reminder to your members. With the study being updated and sent out constantly, group members will be able to engage like never before. You can create your weekly lessons in our easy to use Study Builder. This goes along with the to-dos. Once you have created a lesson you can notify your group members and assign it to them.
* Sidenote: If you have a curriculum that your group is already using you can choose to take some of the questions from there and input them into the study builder. Alternatively, you can write some of your own questions to deepen your study and discussion. Your group members will be able to see each other’s answers and comment on them.
3 Discussion Sessions
What better way to engage with your members than with a group discussion? With our discussion section, your members can contact each other during a meeting or throughout the week. We also have a way for members to notify each other with an @ function. This way if there is a discussion going on that not everyone is aware of, they can be notified of the conversation and can join in.
Meet them where they are at
Some group members simply don’t have the time to engage in a weekly meeting along with homework. These members may need something a little different. Try setting up a group to meet once a month. This allows members to have ample time to finish assignments and is not as big of a commitment as a weekly study.
You could also try doing more of a discussion group. With no pre-meeting work to do members will be able to come without feeling guilty for not finishing a lesson beforehand. For these groups, you may simply want to prepare questions or topics to help the discussion to roll on.
Engaging your small group can be difficult; however, with the proper tools and techniques, I know that your group will thrive!
What are some things that you have done to help your group engage? Comment below with your stories!
Leave a Reply