Starting a WhatsApp Bible Study; Top Tips to Consider.

Keep in touch with the groups of people that matter the most, like your family or coworkers. With group chats, you can share messages, photos, and videos with up to 256 people at once. You can also name your group, mute or customize notifications, and more.

Why use WhatsApp?

WhatsApp helps people connect by sending messages and other forms of media. The fact that it’s free and in some countries uses almost no internet data makes it a tool of choice for many, especially younger people like students.

The app is widely used among professionals, family and friends. People spend a lot of time connected and chatting. So it’s a huge privilege to bring in discussions about God’s Word to a free place where we find people already ‘assembled’.

How many people?

The group size can be compared with the normal small groups of Bible study. The objective is to make the discussions possible and easy, with an opportunity given to everyone to participate. At a certain moment we had more and more people who wanted to join, and it became impossible to discuss so many questions and viewpoints.

A group of 5 to 8 people is practical. If other people are interested in joining the group, it’s better to encourage one of the experienced members to create another one and lead it.

Organization

When we started, we discussed the passage in the group, and one of us led the discussions. It was tough but interesting to reach a common conclusion about the meaning of the passage.

But having one person preparing the passage while others asked questions wasn’t the intended goal – we wanted deeper participation.  So we encouraged each person to study and reflect on the passage alone during the day. We then ‘WhatsApped’ from 9 to 10:30 in the evening to share discoveries, challenges and questions.

Obstacles

Sometimes people want to join but they are already studying another book of the Bible, so find it difficult to keep up with us. It’s good to have a daily programme that you present to people, explaining how the group works.

Another challenge is that some members don’t read and study the Bible on a daily basis, so instead of participating they simply read the discussions. The group members can agree on the regularity of the discussions, it is good to fix one, three or five days in the week to hold the discussions. On the other days other topics can be discussed. But you need to keep encouraging people to read the Word.

Facilitation

One of the great things is there is no need for a leader who does all the preparation, since everyone shares his or her discoveries. But there has to be someone who can facilitate the discussions, invite others in the discussions, encourage participation, etc. And the facilitator will have to monitor what is shared and intervene if there is a clearly wrong interpretation of the passage. In this way, it is like in any normal small group.

Conclusion

Although some conservative Christians look on new technologies with suspicion, the fact that we are studying the Bible provides a solid argument for using the app. It is easy for people to join groups – they don’t have to travel and they can join in when they have time.

And young people are certainly interested in using the app in this way. Here’s what they say:

‘The WhatsApp studies are important because they remind me every evening to free a moment for meditation and to share with others.’

‘I found a good setting where I can be challenged. Other people’s point of view help me to see and deal with certain facets of my life that I’d never have thought of while I was alone.’

‘When I knew that we would share, I was prompted to study the text for myself so that I was not just discussing others’ view points, but I could share what I learned.

So… why not start a WhatsApp group to connect with your friends and God’s Word today?!