Tips for Celebrating Birthdays

Remembering someone’s birthday shows them that you care. But, anytime you publicly recognize one person’s birthday in your Home Group, you run the risk of forgetting someone else’s. To avoid unnecessary hurt feelings, you might want to consider a more simple method to the madness.

Choose the 1st or 4th HG of the month to be your day to celebrate all birthdays for that month. Here are some suggestions to help you pull this off:

-Make it special, but keep it simple.
-Put a candle on any dessert that was brought to Home Group.
-Gather the birthday folks in the middle of your group, dim the lights and sing HappyBirthday loud and proud.
-Blow that candle out and end with a prayer of blessing on each of them.

Remember to have fun. Avoid embarrassing people and make it something that they look forward to each month. In this way you will show everyone in your group that they are special. And please save a piece of cake for me.

Keys to a Great Community Group Experience

A number of things contribute to making the Sunday morning Community Group experience great, and a great experience attracts new members and keeps current members coming back for more. Some of the things that make a difference relate to the physical and social experience, some to the learning experience. In a nutshell, if the people in your Community Group enjoy being together and enjoy the Bible study, they’ll be back; if they don’t they won’t—at least not for long.

The Community Group Check Up looks at four different areas related to the physical/social experience.

The physical environment. The room is clean and uncluttered, neither too hot nor too cold. The right amount of seating around tables makes it feel comfortably full. Coffee and a variety of fruits and foods are in plain sight for people to enjoy.

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The social environment. People are drawn into the lively Christian fellowship when they arrive. Timid people aren’t ignored but invited into ongoing conversations. Guest’s are greeted at the door, introduced to other members of the class, and never allowed to sit by themselves.

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The preliminaries. The opening welcome, announcements, prayer, sharing, and “community business,” while essential, remain “preliminaries” that don’t overshadow the study of God’s word nor make guests feel like outsiders.

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The learning environment. A gifted, well prepared teacher leads an engaging discussion around the content and questions in The Scrolls. The teacher contributes information along the way but doesn’t lecture. Everyone is given ample opportunity to participate.

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