Church home groups can be a curious breed, and it's fair to say some work better than others. Most of us will have been part of a slightly dodgy one at some point, and here's a few signs that yours might be one of them...

Too much over-sharing

Tuesday night can quickly become therapy night if you're not careful. Of course small groups need to make space for people to share what's actually going on in their lives, and it's no good having the same "How are you?" "I'm fine" conversations over and over again, but too many needy people in one room never ends well. If you find you have to stock up on tissues before each week, it might be time to have a rethink.

Too much under-sharing

The opposite problem can just as often be an issue. When "any prayer requests?" is met with a deafening silence broken only by "Err...I've got a big meeting at work on Thursday," you know you're struggling.

Bad Bible teaching

We've all been there – someone has spent half an hour offering what they are convinced is a fantastic theological unpicking of Paul's advice to the Corinthians, only for most of the room to look on, utterly bemused, and fairly certain that what they've just heard is heresy. Then whoever's leading – afraid of suggesting that anyone might actually be wrong – awkwardly chimes in with, "Ah, yes. Fascinating perspective... Well, I'm sure that's one way to read it." Nope.

Too many socials

Every week you gather, and every week it's at the pub because the host fancied "getting out of the house." Of course, you can't pray or anything weird like that in public, so you stick to going over last night's episode of Homeland at alarming length. Before you leave, someone makes profuse promises to plan a thorough Bible study on Habakkuk before next week, but no one's holding their breath.

Weak conclusions

If you do manage to get a good discussion going, it more often than not trails off into, "Well.. .we should probably all just try a bit harder to be like Jesus, really." Mmm. Challenging.

Flaky members

It's 7.36pm and you're sitting alone, waiting for the inevitable stream of "terribly sorry"s and "I promise I'll be there next week!"s, including from the guy who you're yet to actually meet seven weeks in. In the end, it's just three people and couple of sad bowls of Kettle chips. Again.