With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! - Psalm 119:10 (ESV)
This article represents a shift in focus from general principles about small groups to the actual process of discussion with students. In this article, we cover the importance of defining a problem.
Good Discussions Require Good Questions
A first step to a profitable discussion is discerning a problem to solve. This problem may take any number of forms, but it will always be reducible to a question about living. It may be a question a student asks at the very beginning, or it may be a question asked by a small group leader. A series of declarative statements will not foment profitable discussion unless one or more of those statements prompts a question. Going round and round gets you nowhere.
Why is discerning a problem important for small group discussion? It is because any discussion of Scripture and theology needs to be connected in the students’ minds to how they understand the story of their life. If the discussion amounts to little more than a set of questions and principles abstracted from their understanding of what life is and how to live it, then the questions and principles will mostly be forgotten, with most of the potential benefit of the conversation remaining in the room they have left. When small group is over, the room is empty of the students but filled with unrealized potential.
Consider the implications of a verse like the one above. The psalmist connects the commandments to how he walks. He does not want to wander. The psalmist seeks God with his whole heart, pleading with God not to let him wander from God’s commandments. Consider what that implies with regard to how the psalmist thinks. He seeks God with his whole heart. It is not partial, it is the whole heart. All of what the psalmist has in terms of thoughts, desires, and plans are dedicated to God. There is no part of him that is disconnected from this goal. Because his heart is dedicated to this, his whole life is oriented toward this one goal. This does not mean that all he does in life is pray, sing, read, or offer sacrifices, and this is an important point.
Imagine the psalmist in a small group. How would this man, with this singular focus, think about the conversation? What would he do with the questions, the conversations, the theories, the perspectives, the doctrines? This verse indicates that he would be looking for connections between the discussion in small group and how he lives outside of it. This man is concerned with not wandering from God’s commandments. He is concerned with seeking God with his whole heart. He is concerned with taking the discussion and identifying how it can help him stay on the path that God has laid out for him in Scripture.
Active Involvement Versus Passive Participation
If you are a small group leader, think about how different the psalmist’s focus is from most students. It is not at all obvious that most students are thinking along similar lines to the psalmist. The psalmist is actively searching for implications for how he thinks, what he desires, and where he goes in life. Most students have, shall we say, lesser goals. Students tend to think about things other than how they can continue to seek after God. Their hearts are divided. They tend to be concerned about how to answer the questions the leader is asking, what other students are thinking, how they are coming across to other people in the room, or how to entertain themselves. Leaders are competing with multiple interests that are not necessarily aligned in small group.
If leaders are going to help students to discern a definable problem, they must go searching for them. Leaders are going to have to be curious about the students’ lives—what it is like to be them, what is important to them, what their struggles, hopes, and dreams are. Oftentimes, the students themselves are not very aware of themselves, so they cannot give straight answers to straight questions.
No Need to Force It
Searching for problems does not mean getting the students to talk only about the difficult issues in their lives. Leaders do not need to worry about getting students to open up about the hard things in their lives, their complaints, or their worries. It is enough to triangulate the sermon with their lives.
Each sermon a student hears should have some connection to their life—how they think, what they want, which choices they should make. A sermon takes the Word of God from Scripture and presents it to the listeners. The Word of God is not an abstraction. Scripture is not about ideas in themselves. Scripture is about life in God’s universe and how we live it. Leaders take the cry of the psalmist not to be allowed to wander from God’s commandments and seek to bring the Scripture to bear on how students live their lives.
Based on the above, discerning a definable problem does not mean only talking about negative things. It may mean talking about very positive things. Whatever the actual content of the discussion—contemplation, challenge, correction, whatever—the goal is for students to make a connection between their lives as they actually live them and the Scripture as they heard it preached. A sermon is never intended to go in one ear and out the other because the Word of God is a two-edged sword that cuts to the deepest parts of our being and exposes our darkest parts to the light. In small group discussions, then, the leader is only trying to talk about the students’ lives relative to the Scripture they just heard.
Conclusion
In summary, the actual process of talking with students involves listening to the students, asking them questions, and remembering that students have a running story in their minds that makes their lives fit together. Students that do not are inevitably struggling as they search for the threads of a story that makes their lives meaningful. Students that do have a story about themselves and the world that they are actively piecing together need the Word of God to influence and transform what they understand about how to live. This makes discerning definable problems in the students of immense help to leaders as they try to connect what Scripture says to how the students imagine their lives to themselves.