Sooner or later, every small group needs a new host. The current one is moving out, the neighbour complained about the noise, a baby is on the way, the parents do not want strangers coming into the house.
At the meeting, the leader says that hosting a small group at home is a blessing, that God honours those who serve him, and asks whether anyone is interested.
Someone raises a hand. In the moment it seems simple. On the way home the questions arrive.
What exactly will I have to do? What if the leader does not come? What if I travel? What if the meeting falls on match night? What if my husband does not like the idea? And the mess the children make?
The leader spoke of the blessing. Nobody spoke of the role.
What she knows is what she sees every week, from the hour she arrives to the hour she leaves. The before and the after, she has never seen.
This article sets out the questions and the difficulties a small group host actually faces.
The host of a church small group receives the group at home and gets the space ready for the meeting. There are few tasks, and they are simple: almost everything is shared among the members.
What cannot be missing is the host. The host is the only person whose absence leaves the small group with no meeting.
Beyond that, the home and the week adjust to the night of the meeting. The most important task stays with the host: praying over every empty chair.
What does the small group host do before, during and after the meeting?
If you take part in a small group, the middle is nothing new. People arrive, they talk, they eat together, the meeting happens, and everyone goes home except the host.
The role starts before that and ends after everyone leaves.
Has the house ready some thirty minutes early, because someone always turns up ahead of time. Puts things back, sets out the chairs, checks the light is good, gets a simple snack ready. Ready does not mean spotless.
Welcomes people warmly and helps the visitor settle in. Keeps an eye on whatever gets in the way: the television on, the dog in the middle of the circle, the parakeet that sings during the prayer, loud music from a child’s bedroom.
Sometimes the mess is left to the host, and that cannot become the rule. In a well-run small group, everyone helps tidy up before leaving.
Written out in one go, the list looks long. In practice it is the routine of having visitors, with two differences: it comes back every week, and the people are almost always the same.
What changes at home for whoever hosts the group?
The routine will change. Taking part in a small group is one thing; having one in your home is another.
It is not enough for one person in the house to want it. Whoever lives there may not care for church, or for Christians, and it is in those people’s home that the meeting will happen every week, on the same day and at the same hour.
Everyone there has to agree. Without that, what was meant as a blessing turns into trouble.
A meeting held with someone shut in a bedroom, who will not come out even for a glass of water so as not to run into anyone, is not blessing that family.
Changing a family’s routine can be what decides whether someone hosts a small group at all.
Giving up a space in the house is the least of it. What changes is how predictable the house is.
One night a week the house takes in four things it does not have on the other six:
- People the family may not know.
- Worship and prayer out loud.
- Conversation that runs late.
- A bathroom used by everyone.
In a flat there is the neighbour downstairs, in a house the neighbour over the wall, and neither is from the church nor agreed to anything with anyone.
A student small group that meets at eleven at night, with worship, prayer and laughter, may well disturb them, and whoever complains has a point. Where there are building rules, they apply to a small group as they apply to any other gathering.
Where children are involved there are at least two situations, and they are not settled the same way.
If the host has children and the group has no meeting for them, their playing can disturb the meeting, or the meeting can disturb their routine.
If the group does have a time just for the children, they are everyone’s children, and they play in the house, and noise and mess will happen.
None of this is a reason to give up hosting a small group. It is the reason to settle things with the leader beforehand, because once it is accepted, a meeting is not called off out of mere convenience.
A small group is not postponed because visitors turned up, because there is a match on, or because the week was hard.
What changes in a small group host’s week?
For the host, one day of the week stops being free, and the other days arrange themselves around it.
The meeting happens one night a week. The host’s commitment to the people does not.
Whoever hosts the group has to be at home before everyone else. That can rearrange the whole day, not only the evening.
How big the adjustment is depends on each household. It might be the shopping that moves to another day, or the drive home from school that goes straight back with no stops.
It is not once. It is every week, on the same day.
Except that life happens between one meeting and the next.
There is what is already on the calendar: birthdays falling on the group’s night, the trip already booked. That is settled with the leader beforehand, so the meeting happens somewhere else.
And there is what gives no warning: an illness, an emergency at work. When that happens to the leader, the meeting does not stop, because someone else takes the teaching.
The host is the only person whose absence leaves the small group with no meeting.
So every surprise needs a plan B, agreed with the leader. Felt ill on Tuesday and the group meets on Wednesday? The leader needs to know on Tuesday.
What cannot happen is telling people half an hour beforehand that nobody will be able to come in.
What is the host’s most important role?
Keeping a routine of prayer. For the family, for every person who will sit in every available seat, for the small group leader and for the church’s leadership.
Whoever lends a space hands over the key and leaves. The host is still there after everyone goes home, and comes back to that place every day.
The most important thing a small group host does is not done on the night of the meeting.
The host prays over that house during the week. Asks that it be a place where lives change, and that no meeting leaves a chair empty.
A host who truly takes part changes the group. The barriers come down faster and the formality goes, because nobody behaves like a guest in the home of someone who is there with them.
What the host carries is not the running of the evening. It is the peace of the place, it is the presence of God. Everyone who arrives senses it before they can name it.
This text is published by the people who sell the product, so let me start with what it does not do: célula.in does not know whether your family agrees, and it does not pray for your house. That stays with you.
What it does is give the role a name. The host is recorded in the small group, beside the leader and the leader in training, and supervision shows who each leader names as the future host.
What do you need in order to host a small group?
Three things, and none of them is the house.
The first is sharing the faith. You do not have to be the most mature person in the group, but the home where the group meets is the home of someone who believes what the lessons teach.
Some churches ask for more, such as being a member or attending the services. That varies from church to church, and the person to ask is your own small group leader.
The second is that whoever lives with you is at peace with the meetings. They do not have to take part, but without their agreement there will be trouble.
Jesus said that “every city or household divided against itself will not stand” (Matthew 12.25, NIV).
The third is willingness. Knowing what is coming and wanting it anyway. Taking this on not as a “favour”, but as an offering to God. An offering of gratitude for all that he is.
From the simplest home to the grandest, what counts is that whoever arrives feels welcome.
The rest is not a requirement, it is an agreement. And agreements are made beforehand.
- The day and the hour, including when it ends.
- How much of the house stays open.
- Who brings the snack and who stays to help tidy up.
- The dates you already know will not work.
- The building rules, where there are any.
None of this is a demand you are making of the group. It is what keeps today’s goodwill from turning into resentment in three months.
If you raised your hand at the last meeting, you now know what you took on.
One night a week, your home stops being only your home. It becomes a place where people meet the presence of God and have their lives changed by the love of Christ.
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