Letters to the Seven Churches

Thank you for leading a small group study! Thirdmill produces teaching materials to help church leaders around the globe study and teach the Bible more deeply. Thirdmill’s Study at Home Series has been created to accommodate remote and/or in-person learning in small groups such as weekly Bible studies and Sunday school classes. In Jesus’ letters to the seven churches recorded in the book of Revelation, we find a series of diagnostic “tests” for our own hearts and lives. We also find his “prescription” of what we should do as a result of what those tests reveal and the results we can expect if we follow his advice. This six-week study will help believers evaluate their hearts and lives through Jesus’ letters to the seven churches. The accompanying 15-minute videos are compiled from Thirdmill’s series on the book of Revelation (chapters 2-3). If you would like a more in-depth study of Revelation, you can find it on our series page for The Book of Revelation. The ideal scenario is for each participant to read through the entire devotional before the group meeting and answer the questions. If this is not possible, the group may read it together, but then give time for participants to consider the personal reflection questions in silence. Also, depending on your context, you can watch the video together through a third-party virtual networking platform (like Zoom or Skype), or each person can watch the video on their own before discussing it together. The questions in bold are those specifically designed for group sharing. You may want to offer the chance for people to share insight from the other questions, if they desire, or you can share what you have learned, but please be sensitive to the personal nature of the material as you facilitate it in a group setting. You do not need to have each person share an answer for every question in the study. Our desire is that you and the members of your study group may be spiritually strengthened as a result of this series. In the book of Revelation, the author promises that this will be the case:

Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near (Revelation 1:3).