Six Steps to Starting Your Haverim Bible Study Group

Thoughts from our Men’s Haverim group that’s been meeting every workday since April 1, 2020 – Updated October 1, 2020

When the pandemic started to shut things down in March and it became clear that we would need to fellowship via Zoom a lot, I also realized with my somewhat introverted character and demanding job that I was in danger of retreating into my “coronavirus quarantine” and of losing contact with brothers that I need in my life. I needed to find a way to build relationships with brothers in my region, the Tidewater region of the Hampton Roads Church. I needed to build a group of friends, a “haverim” (that’s what the word means) to share scriptures and pray together.

I already had notes and an outline from a study I’ve been doing on Psalm 119, which happens to have 22 8-verse stanzas, and April this year had 22 work days (Monday to Friday for me). I sent out a message to the leaders in the region and offered to meet every weekday from 8 to 8:30 am via Zoom to share my notes, discuss the stanza, and have a brief time of prayer.

One of my closest friends and brothers in the HRC congregation, Reggie, was the first to sign on, and from the start was clearly devoted to making the group work. Others joined in when they could, including the leader of the Bible Talk I was part of at the time, Albert, then also another brother I’ve known since before moving here, Ricky. Along the way, Carl joined and became a regular, then a few months in, Albert invited Gordon to join us, and he quickly became a regular contributor to the group.

While at times some of the guys have missed a morning here and there, mostly for work issues, the group has been together through our study of Psalm 119, then a study of other Psalms, then the parables and prayers of Jesus and now the book of Hebrews. After each series we’ve talked about whether everyone wants to continue, and there’s been a strong commitment to keeping the group going. What may have started as a somewhat randomly put together group of men interested in a daily morning devotional time has become a group of friends sharing both the scriptures and their lives together – we’ve become a “haverim”.

Others are now asking how to join our morning group. We’re in the middle of our Hebrews study and the group isn’t currently open to new members. However, I’m planning to have sessions in October that will allow more men to join us to see what we do, and to help others start their own haverim groups. We’ve learned a few things along the way about starting a group: six steps to starting a haverim.

Build Your Tribe

Having a haverim means building a group of friends, your “tribe”. If you already have a group, maybe your Bible Talk group or a leader’s group, then you’ve already built a tribe and can use the ideas below to focus on studying the Word together. I’ve also posted an article for those starting with a tribe: see “Adding a Haverim Study Group to Your Existing Bible Talk“. The thoughts below are focused on starting a new haverim group.

If you’re just starting out, ask your friends if any are interested in a discussion group for digging into the scriptures, and aim for about 10 members for your group. In Jewish tradition, a group of ten men is referred to as a “minyan“, the minimum number of adult males required for certain religious activities, for example public prayer. My group has been consistently six men, which has been an ideal group for sessions that meet for a half-hour every weekday. I’d recommend limiting the group just men or just women. However, couples or mixed groups of singles could also work, and would be better in some cases for focusing on areas of interest to those groups.

For your haverim, ideally the group will be between 5 and 7, but having 10 means that if some can’t make it for a particular session, you’ll still have enough to make it work. More than 10 people will make it difficult for all to participate in the discussions and prayer. Also, expect some to drop out over time, since schedules change and some may not be able to make the time you set. On that point, you may need to consider the time before inviting the potential group members.

Set a Time

If you have a group, or have interest from enough people you’ve invited, you’ll need to find a time and set a cadence that works for the group. When I started my group, I already had in mind to set it for every weekday from 8 to 8:30 am, mainly because that’s before my work day begins, typically at 9 am. Some of the men in my group actually start work before then, and take a break from 8 to 8:30 to join the group from their office, a conference room or their home (in some cases from the backyard, and once I led the group from outside a coffee shop when I didn’t have electricity that morning!).

If starting with an existing small group, consider your current schedule. If you’re currently meeting once a week or every other week, you should consider moving to at least twice a week. Three times a week is even better. Why? The more frequently your group meets together, the more continuity you’ll have and you’ll better stay up-to-date on what’s going on in each other’s lives. If the group only plans for once a week, it may only end up meeting only 2 to 3 times a month, which clearly isn’t enough to build a friendship. Remember, “haverim” means “group of friends”, and we should want to be with our friends to encourage them as often as possible, daily if we can!

Next decide how much time you need for each session. There are at least two factors to consider: time of day/week and size of the group. Our haverim meets every weekday from 8 to 8:30, which is a time early enough in the day to not interfere with work for our members. The group has been consistently 5 or 6 men, so a half hour works. With a larger group, it would be better to allow 15 minutes per section, so plan on 45 minutes total for groups larger than 7. Don’t round that up to an hour or plan on larger numbers for the group: with more time, you’ll fill it up and possibly lose focus, and with more members, you’ll find that not everyone can actively participate every time. More guidance on how each session should be run is below (the Timetable step).

Once you’ve decided on the time and frequency of the sessions, you can get a commitment from the group members and set up how you’ll meet together. Before COVID, this would have meant arranging to meet together at someone’s house or at a park or restaurant. One of the few blessings of the current pandemic is that groups can meet via Zoom and other conferencing services, taking away some of the issues with potential problems with location or lateness. In some ways, my current haverim group would not have been possible if we didn’t use Zoom: we would not likely have found a place that would work well for all in the group, and as mentioned above, some have had to find creative ways to join while traveling to or at their workplace.

Choose a Topic

When I started my haverim group, I already had a topic in mind from some previous studies I had done in Psalm 119, which fit well into the timing and cadence I wanted for the group, weekdays for a month. We’ve also studied other psalms, parables, prayers and now the book of Hebrews. These series have fallen into three basic types of topics.

First is a directed study. For our study of Psalm 119, one person (me) prepared and shared notes followed by discussion and prayer. This is a great way to begin a group: a leader who prepares and shares the lesson for a series of sessions. However, it takes commitment and requires some preparation.

Second is a series of sessions that can each stand alone. After we completed our directed Psalm 119 studies, we continued with studies of various psalms. This led to us allowing different group members to lead the discussion. Other series we did like this were of the parables and the prayers of Jesus in the gospels. This allowed for new members to join any time, and for regular members to miss on occasion without feeling out of touch at the next session. It also relieves the burden on the leader because others can prepare to lead any of the sessions.

Third is a study of a book of the Bible. We’re currently working our way through the book of Hebrews, with the help of a short commentary book “Hebrews: Living by Faith” by John Oakes and Robert Carillo. This approach works well once the group is established, but also can be a good way to start a group if you’ll be meeting only once or twice a week. If your congregation is following an expository preaching approach to Sunday and/or midweek lessons, you can base your group’s topic on the currently delivered message. In the Tidewater region of the HRC, we’ve encouraged our small groups (Bible talks, discipleship groups, etc.) to do this and are providing a set of questions each week based on that week’s Sunday lesson. We’re basing Sunday sermon’s on the book of Hebrews, with a similar outline to what my men’s haverim is using. The set of questions is available to view here.

If you decide to provide lessons based on a topic, follow a general topic theme or use your congregation’s worship lessons as your series, you’ll benefit from developing a clear outline and schedule.

Provide Good Tools

For an effective haverim and study of a topic, it’s important to provide the group with an outline and schedule. These tools will make clear the focus of the next discussion, the person assigned to lead it and other details including the date, time and link to Zoom or other online meeting platform.

The simplest outline is for a haverim focused on a Sunday preaching series. If your ministry staff has developed a schedule for an expository preaching of a book, you can use that, or just follow the lessons as they are delivered.

If you’re not following an expository preaching schedule, it helps to develop a list of the passages you’ll discuss for the outline. Keep the passages small enough for a focused discussion. Generally the headings added in most translations (for example, the NIV or ESV) introduce sections on one theme or thought from the Biblical book, but in some cases these are very long. For example, we’ve reached Hebrews 11 in our haverim, and the 40 verses in that chapter (and the first three of chapter 12) are under one heading, “Faith in Action”. We’ve broken these into 4 sections, varying in size but generally no larger than 10 to 15 verses.

If you don’t use a book of the Bible but instead choose passages for a theme or topic, be sure to list them out for the group. Keep the series limited so that it can be completed in two months to ten weeks ideally. Longer series make it difficult to stay focused, harder for new members to join and difficult for current members if they decide to transition out. See the last step below for more on that.

If you’re interested in outlines for the parables, prayers of Jesus or Hebrews, please contact me. Our outline for the study of Hebrews is here, with the schedule and related chapter in the commentary book. I’ve omitted a column that shows who is leading each session, but your outline should include that information. I’ll be posting links for other outlines here soon.

Set Your Timetable

The goal of a haverim Bible study group is to focus on a passage of scripture, discuss it and offer prayers. There are three main sections to each time together: read, talk and pray – read the scripture passage, have a time of discussion to talk about it then finish with prayer. For some topics, the scripture reading can include different members reading from different translations. For others, a session leader can read the scripture and provide a summary of the passage or a key thought. The discussion part of the session should include sharing by the other members. Finally, the prayer will need someone to lead it off and someone to finish, or a group member can be designated to offer a closing prayer if the session goes long. For the prayer part, however, it’s best to have as many in the group pray as possible so that we grow in our knowledge of each other’s needs and build our relationships.

It helps to set a few ground rules in the following areas:

• Who will lead the session? For directed lesson series, one leader will present the scripture and thoughts about it. For others, the group should follow a schedule so that it’s clear who’s responsible for sharing thoughts during the first part of the session. The session leader can start with different members reading different translations, or just share a thought, but should conclude the reading / summary part of the session in about a third of the time dedicated for the session.
• How does the discussion work? After the scripture reading and a summary, the next third of the total session should allow members to add thoughts or insights they’ve found from the passage. If possible, everyone in the group should be given the opportunity to share, but enough time should be left for all to pray at the end. In our group, the session leader is responsible for stopping the session if it’s running long.
• What do we do for the prayer part? Always end the session in prayer. While the first part, read, focuses on better understanding the scripture, the last part, pray, focuses on better relating to one another. It builds on the things we discussed in the second part, talk. In our haverim, the leader of the session is the one who closes out the prayer time for the session, keeping an eye on the time to make sure we don’t run too long since we’re limited to a half hour. If your group plans for an hour session with 15 minutes for read and 15 minutes for talk, prayer can run longer and you can include some fellowship time at the beginning and end of the session.

Allow For Transitions

As mentioned above, series of topics should be limited to two months to ten weeks ideally. Why?

First, it’s difficult to maintain a focus on one topic for long periods of time. Groups will need a break from time to time to reset their thinking and get excited about moving to something new.

Second, some may want to join or leave, and the longer you’ve spent on a topic, the harder that type of transition will be. New members take time to get acclimated to the group, and the current members will need time to get to know the new person. Also, current members will get less engaged if they lose interest in the middle of the series and may start to miss sessions because they can’t keep up.

The exception is for groups that follow a weekly expository preaching series, but even there it’s good to take a break from the series from time to time, or add a session to focus only on prayer or having a time of relationship building – a games night or even meeting together for a meal, with appropriate social distancing in these times.

Final Thoughts

A haverim study group can help a “group of friends” to grow in their knowledge of God’s Word and in their relationships with each other. Our group often speaks of these benefits, and with the need to meet virtually amid the challenges of COVID-19 the group provides a way for us to “not give up meeting together” and to practice the one another passages.

Keep in mind, it takes effort and time to start the group, and will take time for the group to grow. Our haverim started on April 1st this year and took at least a few months to develop the format and ground rules that we follow today. Plan on a few series with transitions where you can make changes as needed.

If you persevere, your haverim will grow into a true “group of friends”. Please contact me if you need help, have questions or want to share how your group is going!