If it is your practice to have some sort of midweek meeting or group, I want to encourage you to think about using them to revisit what you preached on Sunday. Of course, as you will have read me say on this blog before, you don't have to have midweek groups. There's nothing in the Bible about them. But I do think they have come to be a more helpful than not extra-biblical means of accomplishing some specifically biblical ends. It seems most churches agree and so home groups have been a fixture of most church's calendars for quite some time now. If you think they are useful at all, let me encourage you to use them for the purposes of revisiting your Sunday sermon. Here, in no particular order, is why I think that is good.
Sermons alone are not enough
Now, don't mishear me here. I think sermons are really important. I think they are specifically biblical means of accomplishing specific biblical ends. But I think we can have a tendency to totalise their efficacy as though sermons can do everything. Well, I am here to say I simply don't think it is so. Jesus didn't get his disciples to follow him round for three years to receive a diet solely consisting of 156 weekly sermons and no part of the New Testament - which would be a lot shorter if it were true - should lead you to think sermons alone are sufficient. Scripture seems to expect a range of means of learning in a variety of contexts. The Word will be central to growth, but that doesn't always take the form of sermons.
People won't hear and remember everything you say in a sermon
One of the reasons sermons are not enough on their own is because nobody will hear everything you say in your sermon. Even if somebody manages to do so, the chances of them remembering it all even a few hours later is pretty slim. This is not unique to sermons, but true for pretty much anything we listen to over time. Nobody remembers, word for word, any programme or podcast they listen to once for half an hour and never revisit. We tend to remember general thrusts, things that are emphasised, broad outlines and occasional snippets that landed with us for a variety of possible reasons. But if people won't hear everything you say in your sermon, and certainly won't remember everything in your sermon, it makes some sense to revisit what you said in your sermon. Midweek groups looking at the same passage provide a good opportunity to do that and to reinforce the key points of learning you want your people to take away.
People don't understand everything in every sermon
Sometimes, people will either mishear or misunderstand what we say. It's not that they didn't hear it, but they didn't understand it. I have had people come up to me after sermons to tell me that I said something where I was explicitly (or so I thought) saying the exact opposite! Sometimes that may be a lack of listening on their part, but I don't kid myself into believing it is never because I just haven't been as clear as I should be or as I think I have been. Other times, people hear the words I've used, they can tell me exactly what I did say, they just don't understand what I said. Again, that might be a listening problem or it might be a bad explanation problem. Regardless of whose fault it is, this is reality and it pays to address it. Revisiting our sermon in midweek groups gives us an opportunity to pick up on points of misunderstanding and address them. If people have heard us say the opposite of what we intended, or they have simply misunderstood what we said, it gives us a good opportunity to make sure they are not left with those faulty misunderstanding but we address them clearly and directly, explaining in a different way so that the point isn't lost on them.
We need some means of feedback
Because people don't always understand everything we say, or get entirely the wrong point, we need to know when it happens. The last thing we want to do is leave people under the impression God is commanding a thing or encouraging them to do something that is the very opposite of what he has said. But we'll only know it if there is some opportunity for people to feedback. Unless you welcome hecklers, I'm going to venture the middle of the sermon is probably not the place most of us would be comfortable for it to happen. We could do it immediately after the service - providing a space for people to ask questions - I think there is legs in that. Though my experience is that this is the time at which most preacher's skin is at its very thinnest and they are least likely to most helpfully address misunderstandings. So, it seems to me, a good place for this is our midweek group. The preacher has time to decompress, the listeners have time to think carefully about what they think they heard and frame their questions most helpfully, but we still get to hear that - in effect - our sermon has or has not landed as we intended.
We can't apply everything to everyone in every sermon
Inevitably, our sermons will lean toward exemplars in our application. We should, if we are preaching properly, be thinking about the particular people in front of us and the specific ways the passage might apply to them. But inevitably, we can't apply so individually to every person in the room that the message scratches where each person is itching every time. One of the advantages to revisiting the sermon in midweek groups is - having spent time in the sermon explaining the passage and applying it a bit - it gives us more space to apply the passage more pointedly to those who are there (and let them think through the implications of it for themselves). If we undertake a separate Bible study in the week - whilst there are distinct advantages to doing that too - we inevitably spend a lot of our time working through what the passage means which inveriably means less time available on what it specifically mean for us. Revisting the sermon from Sunday means the work of explanation has been done, a brief review of the meaning can take place, leaving much more time for pointed application in the group that might lead, not just to bible knowledge, but heart change (which is the goal after all, is it not?)
We can address the real questions people have rather than guessing
Often, the questions we address in our sermons - if we float any at all - are essentially a guess at what most people in the room might be asking about the passage or about the world to which it applies. The more time we spend with our people, the more chance we have of guessing correctly what their questions might be. But an even better way to find out what their questions are, both about the text itself and the wider world in which it applies, is just to ask them directly. When we revisit the sermon midweek, though the sermon might have answered a number of potential questions, and may even have helpfully offered an overview of what the passage means, we have an opportunity for people to say what they were asking about the text, and what they are going through to which it might specifically apply, so that we can specifically answer the things they are asking rather than guessing and hoping for the best.
I don't want to argue that midweek groups are the only means of accomplishing these things. I think there are a number of ways you might address them. But I do think they are an effective means that accomplishes all of these things at once. You might prefer other means. That's okay. You might think these things don't apply so much in your context. All well and good. But I think there is often a gap between our preaching and what our people hear and understand, what they remember and how far the preaching then actually changes them. In my view, home groups that revisit the Sunday preaching go quite some way to addressing that gap and aiming for the heart change amongst our people that we want to see.
