Creating an atmosphere of trusted deep relationships where you can be encouraged, be sharpened, and allow to authentically listen and understand other people’s perspectives takes time. Add in some social time, maybe even sharing a meal together and there is more to consider. Now weigh the importance of spending some time in prayer and this can add up. You want it to be enough time, but you don’t want it to be too much time that it begins to be a burden to people.

So how long should a small group meeting last? Ideally, an hour and a half. This will allow an informal social time, prayer requests, announcements, reviewing the small group material and closing in prayer. Social time afterward should be optional, and any meal will require more time.

Let’s break down a typical small group agenda time and look at some of the components.

Social Time – 15 minutes

Social time officially starts at the time you’ve told everyone small group starts. So that means if the small group starts at 7:00 pm, then social time starts at 7:00 pm. If someone is late, that consequence is on them and they will have less social time because of it. It shouldn’t be a consequence to the whole small group if one person is late, so the social time starts later, and then the small group goes later or the material, sharing, or prayer time gets cut off.

This can sound kind of harsh, but it’s really the best way to handle it. Social time is usually complemented by a snack if the small group isn’t sharing a meal together. Someone that isn’t hosting the meeting should bring the snack. This makes others feel, and know, they are depended on for coming. Not just for the snack, but for their contribution to the small group.

If there is a meal at the small group you can have a smaller social time, as the sharing of the meal will be the social time. Don’t try to review small group material and questions during this time. Instead, use it to catch up with each other, tell stories, and get to know how unique each person is along with their hobbies, talents, and interests.

It seems like in today’s American culture that ‘what do you do for a living’ is the first question to be addressed. And although this is a hard topic to avoid, try to stick to other topics that allow you to see more of the unique individual, instead of their career and how they make a financial living. Don’t go out of your way to avoid the topic either, as many people tie their identity to their career and will feel offended if you don’t ask. Be open to the career topic, but then ask them what gets them excited, what do they enjoy spending their free time doing, what is something they are learning.

Try to provide everyone with expectations, ideally when reviewing the small group covenant, on how to handle it if they are late to the small group. I like to provide direction that if you’re late, come on in and join when you can. It happens to all of us from time to time. Come in quietly, say hi, and jump right into whatever we are doing. I then ask that they please don’t hijack the small group by unfolding a story of why they were late. This is selfish and it takes away from the purpose of the meeting. The only time the group should be interrupted by the person that is late, is if something happened that is burdening them and they need prayer.

Prayer Requests – 10 minutes

Asking people if there is anything they want prayer for is a great transition to social time. Social time can act as a stepping stone of comfort to get this to level when people are really revealing more of themselves and their needs.

When it comes to keeping a schedule, this is the area you’re going to need to be the most flexible with. A general rule I use is, “People are more important than the material.” Meaning that the whole reason we’re doing this small group is so that people grow in the faith and obedience to the Lord. An authentic prayer request is based on a personal burden and need. That becomes the new center piece of the small group time. Take the time you need. However much time you go over here will be subtracted from your material time.

It’s also a good capstone to prepare hearts for the material and sharing time. It allows us to be vulnerable and places our trust and hope in God. Praying helps change our spiritual posture into a position that is ready to see things His way and come with a heart that is ready to worship through what we share and how we encourage one another.

Sometimes you’ll get prayer requests that don’t seem significant, like ‘please pray for my neighbor’s uncles cat that is twenty-three years old and might not make it through the holidays’. How do you handle that? You pray for it. You bite your tongue and hand it over to the Lord. Prayer requests like this usually come from someone who is new or wants to feel included but doesn’t yet know the power of prayer or doesn’t yet feel comfortable exposing their own personal needs. This person needs to be loved on, feel safe in sharing and needs to know their thoughts and requests are important too. Hopefully, the soft response of praying for their needs that appears to be insignificant will blossom into a trusting relationship when that person feels authentically loved by you and God and can trust you with more personal and authentic prayer requests.

Announcements – 5 minutes

Riding the heels of prayer requests are announcements. Sometimes announcements can switch spots with prayer requests, but often it will be more quiet and attentive after prayer requests to cover announcements. Sometimes announcements can even be mixed in with prayer requests, depending on what you’re announcing. If you Jill is having a baby, you’ll want to mix that in so that you can pray for her.

This is your opportunity to share the upcoming schedule, pass around sign-ups for hosting or snacks, and mention anything important on the church calendar that people should know about. We’ve used this time in the past to:

• Let members know they can propose people to invite to the small group
• Upcoming church cleaning
• Asking for help that someone needs, like a ride to an appointment
• Announcing a men’s or women’s retreat coming up

Announcements usually don’t take long at all. They are direct information that doesn’t elicit many questions. This time will usually take about five minutes.

Material – 1 hour 15 minutes

This is the heart of the small group. This is when you get to focus on the material your group has agreed to review together. There are a few ways to transition into the material and this can be greatly dependent on what material you are reviewing together. Three commons way are:

• Open forum
• Asking someone to start (including yourself)
• Question-based

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of the material you might consider warming up with an Icebreaker question for everyone to answer.

Whether a book, the Bible or video, now is the time to transition to recapping what was assigned and leading in with:

• Asking anyone to share what they learned
• Asking someone specific to share
• Leading the conversation by sharing your own perspective
• Leading with a prepared question

Prayer – 15 minutes

Try to always close in prayer. Prayer is a critical part of faith and by demonstrating its importance and position in the small group will encourage people and continue to place the dependence of personal growth on Jesus.

There is a whole article on How to Pray in Small Group you can read.

In summary, you can either lead this closing prayer, ask someone specifically to close your time. Or you can invite everyone to participate in prayer by praying for the person next to you as you go around the room or having a popcorn prayer time.

Variables

This article is meant to be used as a general time guide, and not a rule. This is really the minimum time you want a small group meeting to last. Often people will want to stay longer. Somethings that can influence how long you decide your small group meeting lasts are:

• The number of people in the group
• The importance of prayer
• The material load

# of People

Obviously having more people requires more time for everyone to participate. One way to help with this is breaking down the small group into Tiny Groups (you can find that article here: ) Now the first half hour will be spent with social time, prayer requests, and announcements, then break out into Tiny Groups and complete the remainder of the small group with material and prayer.

Importance of Prayer

Sometimes people LOVE to pray. I’ve got nothing against it, but when I’m leading a small group and trying to keep everyone on schedule so that I’m respectful of their time I can find myself getting frustrated with people.

Personal Story:

Recently I found out that our prayer time during small group kept getting longer and longer. I would be watching my clock performing my own prayer that they would stop praying!  Then I’d catch myself, feel guilty and submit. I wrestled with the best way to allow people to pray more, while still be respectful of our time, and not sacrificing our small group material for an almost dedicated ‘prayer meeting’. I approached the group honestly during an announcement time and shared with them my struggle, and that my motivation was to love them and be respectful. They proposed the idea, that every once in a while, like every fourth small group, would be a ‘prayer time’! They were super excited. I honestly wasn’t wild about the idea, but our role is to serve, and I decided to give it a try. So far we’ve only had half the small group show up to these. It’s frustrating to me and makes me reconsider my decision. I’m going to move forward in faith and I continue to emphasize this is a small group meeting and I’d like people to come and attend, even if they don’t want to pray, just come and be silent and echo the prayers of those praying silently in their head. We’ll see how this goes.

Material Load

The material load is the amount of material you have to cover. Sometimes isn’t the length of the chapter you’re reviewing or the number of questions in the study guide. Without going into this too much I’ll conclude here by saying, “You don’t need to get through all the material.” It’s better to end the small group on time than end small group when you complete going through the material.

Summary

A small group meeting should last long enough to socially engage and warm up with each, talk about prayer requests and announcements, and cover the material at hand and end in prayer. This will take a minimum of an hour and a half. Keep the time and being respectful of everyone will take diligence by the small group leader. Some ways to help with this are giving people expectations on what to do when they’re late, and watching how much time people want for prayer. If you enough people have the time and want the meeting time longer, go for it by extending it to two hours. When you start getting beyond a two hour meeting time people will start to feel the burden of this commitment. If they are on the fence to go or not, a long meeting can sway them to make the decision not to come to the small group.

A great small group time that allows people to connect and contribute and still respects their time will leave them wanting more.