YLV Bible Study

Guidance for Host Households

This ministry depends upon individuals who open their homes. When a host is exhausted, the gathering ends. This page is therefore addressed to hosts.

Preparation

Preparation is kept simple

The home need not be in perfect orderMany prospective hosts stop at this point, intending first to clean the house, prepare refreshments, and extend invitations once everything is in order. That day seldom arrives. Guests do not come to inspect the home. Scripture may be read perfectly well with dishes in the sink. A flawlessly prepared home in fact unsettles the guest, who feels obliged to reciprocate in kind. For the practice to spread, others must be able to conclude, “I could do that too.”

Simplicity in refreshmentsTea and water are sufficient. Where more is desired, each participant may bring one item. A host who provides a full meal each week seldom continues beyond two months. As the meal grows, it becomes the centre of the gathering, and the time given to the Bible diminishes.

The participation of childrenThere is no need to send children to another room; a measure of noise is acceptable. Children grow up observing adults opening the Bible. That observation is itself instruction. During the reading, a child may also read a verse; younger children may repeat after an adult. Where children are present, a shorter gathering is advisable. No length is prescribed; it is suited to each household.

Preventing host fatigue

Responsibilities are shared from the outset

A host who becomes the centre of the gathering will inevitably be exhausted. Responsibilities are therefore shared from the outset.

01The reading rotatesThe host does not read every week.

02The opening prayer also rotatesIt passes to another participant from the third week.

03Once a month, the gathering meets in another homeThat home then becomes the seed of a further gathering.

04Beyond eight participants, the gathering dividesThe aim is not growth in size but multiplication.

Bible Homes chart of the 14th of Aviv beside the YLV Bible text in English and Korean

The handling of conflict

Difficult situations

Wherever people gather, difficulties will arise: one participant speaks at length, another is offended, and on some weeks the atmosphere is heavy.

A participant who speaks at length — this is not corrected during the meeting but raised privately: “I would like to hear from the others too.”
A contentious subject — no attempt is made to resolve it at the table. “Let us talk about this separately” preserves the gathering.
A participant who ceases to attend — no explanation is pressed for; a simple inquiry after his or her welfare a week later is sufficient. Pressure ensures that the person does not return.

Whom to welcome into the home

הַכְנָסַת אוֹרְחִיםHAKHNASAT ORCHIM — bringing guests inside · literally «bringing in the stranger»

To open a door is to make room for another

Scripture has already indicated toward whom that door is to be opened. Isaiah 58 rebukes a fast that God does not accept. Having declared that hunger and lying in ashes avail nothing, He sets out the fast that He chooses.

Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to send the oppressed away free, and that you break every yoke?
Is it not to break your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the afflicted poor who are cast out into the house? When you see the naked, that you cover him, and that you not hide yourself from your own flesh (basar)?Isaiah 58:6–7 · Yeshua Literal Version

“That you bring the afflicted poor who are cast out into the house” — the door opened on a Friday evening is that door. The bread offered here, however, is the Word. As bread is given to the hungry, those who hunger for the Word are seated at the table and fed.

Bible Homes charts: the resurrection on the 16th of Aviv, and Peter and the rooster

Whom to invite

The list is usually already evident

The question of whom to invite need not be a cause of anxiety; the list is usually already evident.

A neighbour who lives alone
A person in the first year of bereavement after the loss of a spouse
A person with a long illness who has been unable to go out
A person who left a church and has belonged nowhere since
A person newly arrived in the country who does not yet know anyone

What such people need is not a programme but an assured place at a table. The agape of Yeshua is conveyed not by lectures but by places at a table. Addressing a person by name, setting a bowl before him or her, inviting the reading of one verse — in this setting, that is the whole of what love does.

and if you draw out your soul (nephesh) to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul (nephesh), then your light shall rise in the darkness, and your gloom shall be like the noonday.

Isaiah 58:10 · Yeshua Literal Version

The direction of the promise is noteworthy. It is not the one welcomed who is lifted out of darkness, but the one who welcomes. The host who opens the door is the first to be brightened.

Isaiah 58:13–14

Calling the day a delight

At the close of the same chapter, Isaiah turns to the Shabbat. The welcoming of the poor and the keeping of the holy day stand side by side within a single chapter.

If you turn back your foot from the Shabbat, from doing your pleasure on my holy day; and call the Shabbat a delight, the holy of YHWH honorable; and honor it, away from doing your own ways, from finding your own pleasure or speaking a word,

then you shall delight yourself in YHWH, and I will make you ride upon the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father; for the mouth of YHWH has spoken.

Isaiah 58:13–14 · Yeshua Literal Version

In Scripture the day begins at sunset; Friday evening is therefore the hour at which the Shabbat begins. For this reason the table is set at that hour. It is not a gathering assembled from what remains of a spent week, but a door opened in the first hour of a holy day.

That day, He declared, is to be called a delight — not a day to be endured. A door opened out of obligation does not endure; a door opened in gladness multiplies.

The direction of the gathering

Multiplication as the aim

It is preferable for one table to become three than for one table to grow to thirty. Thirty people revert to a lecture, and where there is a lecture, no participant opens his or her own home. Gatherings that remain small multiply.

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