These Word-Share-Prayer (Read-Reflect-Respond-Request) are for use with small groups, committees, ministry teams, and boards.  The texts are deliberately a bit short so that committees and teams with limited time can still "be the people of God before doing the work of the people of God."  For small group meetings, a longer section of text may be used or just more time spent discussing each segment.

For committee meetings, we suggest you follow a 5-5-5 format - 5 minutes for individual Bible Study, 5 minutes to share one insight per person and 5 minutes to pray for one another.  If the group is larger than 10, you may find it easier to break into threes, at least for the sharing of prayer requests and prayers for one another.

1. Give every person 5 minutes to work on it in silence (we don't have people do them as "homework" since many will fail to do so).

2. Spend another 5 minutes or so asking people to briefly share one insight from their paper.  If the group is larger than 14, you can have them break into 4's to save time.

3. Ask for one-sentence prayer requests.  Spend more time on this if someone in the group is in real distress about something.  Otherwise, just a sentence or so per person as we want to lift one another up but haven't the time for more sharing... unless we are willing.  Committees are often willing to spend more time in this Bible study portion of the meeting simply because we will work to be more efficient in the rest of the meeting.

  Word-Share-Prayer For The Week Of: