Thank you for serving as a Home Group Leader at Harpeth Community Church.  We hope you will find this page helpful...it is updated often so be sure to check back frequently for new things!

What is Orality? It is "Bible storying", which means orally telling the stores of the bible based on chronological order, themes, needs of the audience and so on.  SOAP is an adaptive method. It’s simple, flexible and reproducible. S.O.A.P. stands for Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer.  The SOAP acrostic helps you to more easily remember the elements this method of home group study. You can even use this method alone in your own personal Bible study and quiet time.

The reason that Harpeth Community wants to implement this method into our Home Groups is because we realize that not all parts of the Bible lend themselves to be used as Orality. What I mean is that not all parts of the Bible can easily be told as a “story.” Orality will still be a method of Home Group facilitation that Harpeth Community uses, and SOAP is really not that different from it.

We believe that the SOAP method will also help us achieve the purpose of why we use Orality: interacting with God’s Word, asking good questions so that we as leaders can hear where our people are, and what mis-taken identities they might have in belief about God or themselves, and therefore how we can help them have proper beliefs and also love and lead them through hurts, bad habits and hang-ups as we help them grow in their Spiritual Maturity.

A typical "agenda" for a home group looks like this:

1. Welcome
2. Break the ice
3. Pray
4. Talk about purpose and guidelines-conversationally
5. Give the context for this week's story
6. Tell the story, rebuild the story, and “fact” check
7. Ask your discussion questions
8. End in prayer, celebration, prayer requests

If you have any detailed questions or need assistance of any kind with your group, please contact your coach directly.