Ever run a Bible study? It's an interesting study in human psychology and at times it's unpredictable despite the best preparation beforehand. Sure you can spend a few hours gathering resources, reading articles, making handouts, studying the text ahead of time, etc. but it is difficult to sometimes judge how many people will actually show up.
Case in point: over the past few weeks about ten to fourteen people have shown up. This made it relatively easy to keep discussion going because with that many people you inevitably get a wide range of viewpoints. But when only three people showed up a couple weeks ago, I cringed. We are going through an eight-part DVD series, but those episodes only take up twenty-five to thirty minutes. The other hour and a half, well...
As usual, I prepared a substantial amount of discussion material to play off of the video segment. One of the ideas I had for that week, a brief trivia game, was meant for a group of about ten people. After some thought, I decided to go ahead with it anyway. I also went ahead with some articles I printed off. And do you know what happened? It still worked out.
Two of the guys also mentioned some reading material of their own (before I started the video). What they didn't know was that their discussion fit right in with the video segment even though they had no foreknowledge of what was in the segment. This isn't the first time this has happened, and it certainly won't be the last. Why? Because no matter how many people physically show up, if you're spending time in the Word, God always shows up.
Another example: I can't count the number of times we've sat around the room and when prayer time rolled around, we counted off into groups of three only to find the ones we were grouped with were the ideal people to pray with. It didn't matter how many people showed up, where they sat around they table, or whether we numbered off by threes, or fours.
So keep in mind if you ever lead a study, whether a crowd or a handful of people show up, God always shows up.
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