One word: Fellowship

I’m in the middle of starting a new small group.  Having lead a few, participated and several, and overseen a  bunch, I’ve come to a few observations about the best ways to do them.

This post is part-reminder me, partially intended for any Fellowship Church Attenders, and partially intended for folks in other churches.

Today, I’m thinking about the challenge of walking the  fellowship-study tightrope very carefully.  On the one hand, spending too much time just hanging out turns the small group into a social club.  On the other hand, doing nothing but study turns it into a Sunday School class.

Early in a group’s life, this issue is even more complicated.  Folks may not know each other.  They aren’t likely to give real answers and ask real questions… But the beginning is the important time.  It’s the time’s precedents will get set.  It can be hard to get everybody back in a studying-sort of mode once people get used to the idea that things will be just be casual.

The best way I know how to navigate this challenge is by keeping two things in mind.

The first is to be explicit and open.  Explain that you might spend a little more time getting to know each other early in the group’s life. 

The second is to be quite intentional.  By being intentional I mean choosing carefully how people will share and how long you’ll spend doing it.

Let’s begin with the latter: how much time do I think a group ought to spend, out of the “study” time, getting to know each other? 

As a very rough guideline, I’d suggest that it’s first few weeks, a small group might spend even more than half of its time doing get-to-know you activities.  Within those first few weeks, the leader should aim to wittle this down.  Perhaps a month after the group begins about 25% of the ”study” time is spent on get-to-know you activities.  Within about 6 weeks, I would say most groups might engage in an ice breaker every week or two.

(I’m assuming that before or after study the group is hanging out and eating and that people are working on cultivating relationships outside of group time.)

As for the second part of being intentional: how do we get to know each other…

  I often hear small groups say that they are going to have a game night, go see a movie, or watch some sports thing as a way to get to know each other.

These are all fine things to do, especially as a way to cement bonds that are already existant or to reach out to others who might be spooked by the idea of a bible study.  But I’m skeptical that they do much in forming bonds in the first place.

It can be intimidating to be open and honest and make ourselves vulnerable to others.  There is some element of this that only occurs over time.  There are things that can speed this process up: however, a rousing game of scrabble isn’t really one of them.

Giving people opportunities to talk is a much more efficent way to get them to know each other.  (That’s almost so obvious it’s silly to write down.  But it’s so important it’s worth writing down.)  People should talk about their past, their present, and their future hopes and dreams.  People should talk about their spiritual lives and the aspects of their lives that seem disconnected from the spiritual.  They should talk about their relationships with people who are in the room and their relationships with people who are not in the room.

Giving people an oppurtunity to talk in a structured way can encourage quiet folks and make the people who are looking for a study feel a little less like they are spinning the wheels.    There are all kinds of ways that this can happen.  Here’s a few that I like:

A) Prepare a number of discussion question and place them in a hat.  (E.G. What’s the best thing about where you’re at right now, spiritually?  What’s the hardest thing?; What is an average day like for you at work?  At home?  Where was your life like 5 years ago?  What do you hope it will be like 5 years from now?)

People select from the hat and present the question to someone they’d like to hear the answer from.  This is a cool activity because it gives the answer-er an oppurtunity to speak but it also gives the question picker-outer an oppurtunity to say “I would like to know this about you.”

The best way to do this is to start with the hat of one end of the circle, and do all the picking and assigning of the questions first, ensuring that everybody gets a question and that everybody has a few minutes to process it.

Well-written questions give oppurtunities to go as deep as the person wants to go.  They aren’t shallow (what’s your favorite color?) and they don’t demand intense, private sharing (What’s the cruelest thing you ever did to somebody?)  I’ll maybe post more about this later, but well-written questions shouldn’t make assumptions about where people are at spiritually.  (E.G. beware of questions like “What’s your favorite part of being a Christian?” because this assumes that the person is a Christian.)

A second activity– actually, a modification of a drinking game.  Give people some advance notice to come up with a mental list of things about themselves that are unusual.  If people come in with a story that isn’t unique, then they have to try and come up with a story that is unique.

(Example: if somebody’s story is around flying a helicopter, if somebody else has flown a helicopter, the person would then come up with another story.)

There’s no real winner or loser: it’s just an oppurtunity for people to share stories about themselves.