YLV Bible Study

For the one who opens the door

This movement rests on one person who opens a home. When that person burns out, the gathering ends. So this page is for you.

Let go of the idea that the house must be tidy

This is where most people stop. They will clean the house, prepare something to serve, and invite people once it looks right. That day does not come.

The people coming are not coming to look at your house. Scripture is read perfectly well with dishes piled in the sink. A flawlessly prepared home actually makes the guest uncomfortable — because they feel they would have to do the same. For this to spread, people have to think “I could do that too.”

The less food the better

Tea and water are enough. If you want more than that, have each person bring one thing. A host who lays a table every week will not last two months. When the food grows, the centre of the gathering moves to the food, and the time for opening the Bible shrinks.

When there are children

Do not work at sending the children to another room. A little noise is fine. Children grow up watching adults open the Bible. That scene is itself the teaching.

During the reading let a child read a verse too. If they are small, they can repeat after an adult. In a house with children it is better to finish short. There is no fixed length — set it to that house.

When something awkward happens

Where people gather it certainly will. One person talks too long, someone is hurt, and some weeks the room feels heavy.

• Someone who talks long — do not correct it in the meeting; ask them privately. “I would like to hear from the others too.”
• A contentious subject — do not try to settle it there. “Let us talk about this separately” is what keeps the gathering.
• Someone who stops coming — do not press for a reason; a week later just ask how they are. Put pressure on and they never come back.

How not to burn out

If you become the centre of the gathering you will certainly burn out. So hand things over from the start.

• Reading goes round. Do not read every week yourself.
• Have the opening prayer go round too. From the third week ask someone else.
• Once a month, meet at another house. That house then becomes the seed of the next gathering.
• Past eight people, split. The goal is not to grow but to spread.

Whom to bring into the house

Opening a door is making room for someone. Scripture has already said whom that door should open toward.

Isaiah 58 is a chapter rebuking the fast God does not receive. After saying that going hungry and lying in ashes is of no use, He says what fast He does choose.

“That you bring the afflicted poor who are cast out into the house” — the door you open on a Friday evening is that door. Only the bread we have to share is the Word. As you would give bread to the hungry, seat those starving for the Word at the table and feed them.

You need not agonise over whom to invite. The list is usually already in front of you.

• The neighbour who lives alone
• Someone in the first year after losing a spouse
• Someone long ill who has not been able to get out
• Someone who left a church and has not belonged anywhere since
• Someone new to this country who does not yet know anyone

What these people need is not a programme. It is the fact that there is a place for them at a table. The agape of Yeshua is not carried by lectures but by places at a table. Calling someone by name, setting a bowl in front of them, having them read one verse — that is the whole of what love does here.

Look at the direction of the promise. It is not the one received who is lifted out of darkness but the one who received them. You who open the door brighten first.

Call that day a delight

At the end of the same chapter Isaiah speaks of the Shabbat. Bringing in the poor and keeping the holy day stand side by side in one chapter.

In Scripture the day begins when the sun sets. So Friday evening is the hour the Shabbat opens. That is why we set a table at that hour. It is not a gathering scraped together with what is left of a finished week, but a door opened in the first hour of a holy day.

And that day, He said, is to be called a delight. Not a day to endure. A door opened out of duty does not last. A door opened out of gladness spreads.

Spreading is the goal

Better one table becoming three than one table growing to thirty. Thirty people become a lecture again, and once it is a lecture, no one opens their own home. Keep it small and it spreads.