Many years ago, during my time at Moore College, a group of families got together informally to form what would become 'The Breakfast Club'.

One Saturday morning a month, one of the six families would host the other five and cook breakfast for the group. The kids would play together, and the parents would spend time catching up and praying together.

Nearly ten years later, we're still doing it. We're now meeting every few months, and due to geographical challenges (including the fact that one of the families now lives in New Zealand!) our group has got smaller.

Now, we meet for dinner, and the much-older kids now play together and take turns destroying the host's house.

The reason I tell you this is that I suspect it might be a good format for bringing families together for a kind of bible study or home fellowship group.

The problem is that many of our parents find it hard to meet for mid-week evening groups. Usually, the dads meet together separately on a weeknight, and the mums meet together separately on a mid-week morning during school terms.

It's good for the dads and it's good for the mums, but the problem is that it's not the best for strengthening families. Ideally, the families would fellowship together with other families, so that when they are alone in their own nightly home family fellowship group, they would just continue the pattern they had observed.

So, here's how it could work. One family in the church invites six other families together for a meal once a month or perhaps twice a term. Maybe it might be Friday or Saturday night, or perhaps a Saturday brunch.

After everyone has eaten, the host calls together everyone (including the kids) to study the Bible and to pray. It would be modelled on the normal dinner-time family devotion that was taking place most nights for each family. Short, punchy, and age-appropriate.

Then, after that bit is finished, the kids leave to quietly play together or to watch a DVD (or to trash another kid's bedroom) whilst the parents move to phase two of the program. This involves each of the parents sharing about how their daily home Bible studies are going, followed by a discussion of how to improve in this and strengthen the ministry.

Then, it would end in prayer for them as parents, praying for strength and skill for the men to lead the daily devotions, as well as an opportunity to pray for specific issues facing those families.
It's pretty informal, and if it only ended up happening once a term, then that would still be of benefit.

It could also be the kind of thing that fringe families in the church could be invited to. Even newcomers might like to join to see the unique life of a Christian family in action"”warts and all!

To start it, we just need one family to invite five others. Then, down the track, one of those families could plant a new Breakfast Club group by inviting five other families, and so on.

Has anyone tried something like this before? How did it go? Any advice for those of us considering something like this?