Danny ChaiAbby’s started to count recently. On Friday, she recited for me: “One, two, five… all done.” The sad thing is, she regressed from that. It later became “one, two, all done”, then “one, all done”, then absurdly, just “all done.” That’s right, her counting system uses base 0.
Since I haven’t been leading a small group in a while and have no estimated return date, I thought I’d share some of my small group leading tips.
SN. If there was a single word that characterizes my behavior, I’d say it’s intentional. I’m obsessed with purpose, I always ask why about everything, and if I can’t find a suitable answer to that question, I have a hard time doing anything. I think it’s difficult for Jieun in many respects because I apply the same standards to her, and am always asking her why she does whatever it is she does, and she doesn’t always have a ready answer. Me, I can pretty much articulate why I do virtually anything I do. You’d be surprised how much of my behavior has intentioned reasoning behind it.
SSN. The weird thing is that despite this, I’m not a particularly driven person. I’m not sure how that happens, but I’m super intentional about small to medium level things, and not so driven about the big things.
Anyway, the way I led small groups was no different; I did a bunch of things and there were specific reasons for why I did all of them. It’s not organized or principled, it’s more like a bunch of tricks I figured out along the way. Kind of like with worship piano. I once “taught” a worship piano class in high school, and it was terrible, because there’s no system or method to how I play, just a bunch of tricks I’ve figured out. So I didn’t teach a class, I just taught a bunch of tricks. My experience with small groups are the same way. And here are my tricks. Not saying people should do it, just saying it worked for me.
- Meet Every Week. Everyone always talks about how busy everyone is, and we always seem to be conscious of everyone’s busyness. I’ve seen groups meet less frequently than once a week in an attempt to get more people to come. In my experience, this rarely works. You can’t get a feeling of continuity or community if you don’t meet every week – with biweekly meetings, when someone misses just one, they aren’t a part of the group for virtually a month. It’s impossible to build community that way. As far as the getting people to come, it’s weird, but people actually become more committed the higher the standards are. People are far more likely to stick with a group when it meets weekly than when it meets biweekly. I can’t fully explain why this happens, but it does.
- Always Eat Together. I’m strongly influenced here by a unit I had in my high school Social Justice class that looked at the theology of food. Anyway, I can’t totally explain this one either, I just know that there’s something really good about eating together.
- Eat Together. What I mean is, have everyone eat in the same room, not split up into different groups. You know, sometimes after people get their food some linger in one room while others go to another. I try to not let this happen as much as I am able. It’s a group dynamics thing. Eating together can be a great way to get into group time. But when the group is split up and comes together, dynamic-wise, you’re essentially starting over, and you have to build up the whole group dynamic again. Better to have the whole group eat together, so that when you start the discussion, you’re already in the group dynamic.
- Start the time with an icebreaker question. Here’s a challenge with small groups: you want everyone to feel ownership of the group and of the group time. The problem is, people have different personalities, and more outward personalities tend to dominate over inward ones. You don’t want to stifle outward ones, but you do want to encourage inward ones. Anyway, I always started with an icebreaker question where we went around and everyone answered. The point: to begin with a non-threatening question and have everyone respond so that people get used to the feeling of talking in the group context. I find that when people hear themselves talk to the group, it makes it incrementally easier for them to talk more later.
- Have 2 or 3 questions that everyone answers. Including the icebreaker. Same rationale as above – so that everyone gets used to participating and feels ownership. Thing is, there can’t be more than 2 or 3 questions where you go around, and you have to make sure to limit the scope. It’s simple math. Say you have 8 people in the group. If you ask a question where everyone takes 3 minutes to answer, that’s nearly half an hour spent answering just that one question. So you can’t go around too many times. Ideally you go around with an icebreaker question that takes each person 30-45 seconds to answer, and again at the end with something that involves a little more sharing.
- Use a handout. I read this in various small group things, but they say in the ideal meeting, the facilitator talks only a fraction of the time. Getting that to happen is really hard. One thing that helps is when you have questions printed out. That way you can drive things forward by just asking the next person to read the next question, and if people are feeling reserved, you can ask the person who just read a question to answer. Plus it helps peoples’ concentration when there’s a roadmap to the time, otherwise they don’t know what to focus on.
- Always have prayer/sharing. It’s more important than the study. This could be an entry unto itself, but in a nutshell, if you read what Scripture says should happen when people are together as a body, stuff like encouraging one another, praying for one another, serving one another, using your spiritual gifts to bless one another, this kind of stuff happens much more easily in a sharing context than a study context. If Christianity is about doing, not just thinking, this time is vital. And in my experience, good sharing times really bond a group, so they shouldn’t be skipped.
So those are some of my tricks. There are other ones, like, if someone asks a question you don’t know the answer to, you can turn the tables and ask, “what do *you* think?” But those are some big ones.