You’ve got your leadership team established, so now it’s time to pick a topic. There are two basic options: textual or thematic.
Textual means that you’re either studying a book of the Bible, like Galatians, or a passage of Scripture like the 10 commandments, or a character in the Bible like the life of Abraham.
Thematic means that you’re studying something less concretely rooted in a specific passage. For example, you’re studying what the Bible says about patience. Or you’re covering common objections to Christianity. This is fine to do, but you have be very deliberate about bringing the Bible into it each week and you have to be very aware of the danger of you imposing your own ideas onto the Bible rather than letting the Bible shape your ideas. It is less work than a textual study to do badly, but more work than a textual study to do well.
Remember, in the Leading A Chi Alpha Life Group google doc we’ve got a list of places you can find some life group materials that have already been created for you. If you’ve got an especially busy quarter feel free to receive the benefits of someone else’s heavy labor. These are also listed on our leadership resources page.
How do you pick a topic? You pray about it and then you also think about what is interesting to you. Don’t just pick something because you think it will be good to others. Pick something you yourself want to study, because your passion will influence the way you teach it. If you are excited, you will call forth excitement from your life group.
Once you have a topic pick a title for your life group. This is not super hard and you don’t need to overthink it. We just need something to call it on the website rather than Coed Group #3. Usually “Monday Night Galatians Study” or “Gal’s Life Group” is enough.