The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. - Proverbs 20:5 (ESV)
When it comes to leading a small group, there are few things so basic and important as understanding the students. It is easy to conclude that because we know what manner of life Scripture calls us to have in Christ, the students should be able to follow us there. We can assume that we only need to know the right path and point the students to it. It is up to them to get on the path and follow it. But this is deficient. If we fail to understand the students, or if we fail to demonstrate a desire to understand them, how will they know that we love them?
When you input a destination on a GPS, it is not enough to know where the destination is. The purpose of the GPS is to provide a route to your destination. But to do that, the GPS needs to know not only where you are going but where you are beginning. You must know where you are starting and where you are going to plot a path from your current location to your desired destination. This is where small group leaders come in. They are able to triangulate the students’ location and the path they should be on. In small groups, one of the main goals is for the students to learn by degrees how to do this for themselves, so they can then turn and help others in the same way.
The proverb quoted above tells us that it takes a person of understanding to draw the purpose of the heart to the surface. Students have purposes, motivations, goals, and desires deep in their hearts. They have fears, beliefs, hopes, perceptions, and perspectives that impact how they live. As small group leaders, it is easy enough to point to the destination—Christ—and criticize the students for not being there already, or at least for not being well on their way. It is much harder to understand precisely where they are in relation to him.
But why aren’t they on their way? What keeps them from following Christ? Who do they think he is? Why do they think they should follow him? Why don’t they want to follow him? What or whom do they love more than Christ? Where do they find hope instead of in Christ? Do they even believe Christ is who the Bible says he is? Do they know what the Bible says about Christ?
If we are going to help the students to live for God through Christ, it is essential to know how they are living now. Small group leaders do well to try to understand the current state of the students’ hearts as thoroughly as possible.
Remember that we are seeking to lay the groundwork for the students to have such close companions with whom they might say they take “sweet counsel together.” If we are going to do that, then we need to show them how sweet this counsel can be.
Youth are Children Entering Adulthood
By the time the students arrive in youth, they are not used to people being interested in them for their own sake. They are used to being addressed as children. They are used to being talked to or at more than being conversed with. They are used to receiving instructions from those in authority. And with their peers, they are used to playing together and sharing interests together. They are not used to discussing deep questions or examining each other’s lives or their own hearts. Ideally, all the students would have parents who are spiritually thriving and intensely interested in helping them to do the same. Even in the case of those students who do have parents like these, small group leaders can add invaluable reinforcement to the parents’ efforts.
But of course, we know many students do not come from homes filled with earnest conversation about spiritual things. Many do not have parents who seek to engage them where they are and help them to grow. That only makes the need all the more urgent. Small group leaders have an opportunity either to supplement what parents and/or others are already doing or to fill an important gap in their development.
Taking sweet counsel together is not natural. It does not just happen. There are too many good and important things in life which are taken for granted. But we know that plenty of people grow up being treated like children as children. Then, as they enter their teenage years, either no one meaningfully engages them or they are unwilling or unable to accept it. Before they know it, they are “adults”. They are supposed to know how things work. They are supposed to be developed. But they have not and are not. They have learned to go through the motions and more or less “make it,” whatever that means. On the outside, their life may look more or less in order, although it is common for there to be plenty out of order. But on the inside, they are much worse. The inner life of the mind has never been cultivated by themselves or anyone else, and it is a tragedy. This is a tragedy we are seeking to avert in small groups. We seek to teach the students to cultivate the life of the mind. To do that, leaders need to try to draw out the deep waters of their hearts.
Control is not the Goal
Perhaps a word about control is fitting at this point. There is often an unspoken, implicit assumption that small group leaders are supposed to have a certain kind of control over their group. And that is true to an extent. There cannot be complete anarchy. There needs to be a form to the group, a structure, and a modicum of decency for the group to meet. But we are not trying to produce automatons. We are not seeking greater control over their lives. The only control we need is over the group itself so that it can function. For the rest of their lives, we want to cultivate and develop things which are far outside of our control because they can only come from the students themselves: creativity, zeal, devotion, affection, curiosity, courage, thoughtfulness, meditativeness, prudence, insight, discernment, and more. On the whole, we are looking to spark a fire in many different places in their hearts to see what catches.
But many small group leaders can be intimidated by this idea. It may be for many reasons. One likely one is that we are easily made uncomfortable by seeking to cultivate in others what we are not cultivating in our own lives. And so we can limit our goals for the group to what amounts to little more than behavior modification. But there is a danger here. If all we are seeking to do is to gain control over their behavior while they are under our influence, will not others do the same? When they leave our ministry, will we have taught them to live for God through Christ, or merely to do as others say? If the latter, then their behavior, and with it their lives, will conform to whatever authorities or influences to which they find themselves exposed. We must lift our sights higher than behavior modification. We must look deeper. We must look to their hearts.