“Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…” Ephesians 4:15 (ESV)

It is common for disagreements to arise in small group discussions. This should not be surprising. Students are young and immature. And besides, fully-grown and developed adults disagree about many things. Therefore, it should not be surprising that students would also disagree. 

Disagreement is a potential product of different things. It can be that students have different opinions. Almost as often, it can be that students communicate in a way that does not make clear what they think, and so other students do not understand what the other is saying, and they would agree if they would. Still other times, students are not listening to each other and have no interest in doing so. And still other times, the student sharing an opinion or viewpoint is not attempting to share a thought for the purpose of discussion but only to make their voice heard, whether people agree or not. Given all these things, it is nearly inconceivable that groups would not fall into disagreement. It would be incredible, and almost certainly artificial, if they did not.

Fearing Disagreement

Small group leaders are sometimes threatened by the idea that their group might fall into disagreement. They fear disagreement. As a result, they look for ways to move as quickly as possible out of a state of disagreement to a place of agreement. There are several issues with this. 

First, the leader might force a false agreement. It does no good for students to be encouraged to agree with one another on the surface when they are only masking disagreement with a veneer of unity. It is better for what they really think to come out even if it causes disruption among the group. Authenticity is preferable to artificiality.

Second, the leader may be teaching the students that they do not need to think, only listen to their leaders. This does no good because, frankly, leaders are not always correct, and it does no good to give students the impression that they are. To communicate that students need only think what their leaders tell them is not a recipe for wisdom, discretion, and sound judgment. Leaders should rather help their students think than stymy it.

Third, students might come to believe that they should already be right in everything they think, so they give up trying. This does no good because leaders should encourage humility and a sense of the need for development among students. Students should not be led to think that they should already know everything, but rather that there is much they have to learn. 

Disagreement is healthy. While it is true that mature believers should generally expect to share much common ground in thinking with each other, students are not this way. Being young, inexperienced, and immature, their thinking is disordered. Many of their ideas are correct but are still out of place. And a right idea wrongly connected to other ideas leads to wrong conclusions. Students tend to jump to conclusions that do not follow from their premises. Students do not tend to observe Scripture and look to it for answers. Instead, they tend to expect that they already ought to know the answer to any question. Having to go and look up something does not register as a need for them and it is not a habit. They tend to trust their own internal sense of doctrinal direction, or they sense no need of a doctrinal direction at all.

Leveraging Disagreement

So, how can leaders leverage disagreement? They do so by leaning into it, so to speak, rather than leading away from it. By this, I mean that the leaders do not need to fear disagreement as something to be avoided and worked through as quickly as possible. That is an unhelpful way of thinking about it. Instead, leaders should think of disagreement among students as something to be understood by the students. Why do the students disagree? Is there one point of disagreement, or are there several? Is the disagreement on an important point, or is it relatively unimportant? Is it a disagreement about words, or is it a disagreement of substance? Do the students understand each other, or are they ignoring one another and talking past each other? On what authority do the students base their arguments? Is the reasoning they are using sound or unsound? 

It is not until the students understand the nature of their disagreement that they can begin to move toward a resolution. However, leaders need to expect that the process of understanding each other can take some time. In fact, students often discover that they do not understand their own points of view once they begin to be questioned. Disagreement, in other words, is a golden opportunity for students to learn the practical necessity of connecting what they think to what Scripture says. There are many things as important as that, but there are few things more important than that.

In this vein, a word about notions seems to be in order. Notions are ideas that have not been articulated in the mind or by the mouth. Notions are ideas that are formed and operative in the mind and yet still unarticulated. We all have many notions, but students are full of them. One of the reasons that students’ opinions are so often strange and brazenly incorrect, or even heretical, is because they are trying to match the right words to the notions they perceive in their minds. That is deceptively difficult. Small group leaders need to give students space to develop their notions into fully articulated ideas. They will say incorrect things on the way there. But we need to recognize that we are generally several steps ahead in the process. While they are moving from notions to articulation, we are seeking to compare ideas that are already fully articulated in our minds. This is one reason why small group leaders are often frustrated at the silence that often meets their questions. The students may not be speaking for a variety of reasons. But all are generally able to be overcome except the issue of their ignorance of how to articulate their notions into ideas. We can too easily set an implicit standard that everything they say must constitute a fully formed idea. But that is too high a standard and will lead them to conclude that, until they are ready to articulate fully-formed ideas, they should not speak at all. 

We need to invite disagreement, confusion, contradiction, and even heresy so that we might help them move in the right direction in their thinking. Indeed, heretical ideas need not be barely included but avidly desired. We know that they have them. Leaders do not want students to believe heretical things. Leaders want them to express out loud the heretical ideas they have. We should want them to express them so that we might have a chance of moving them in the direction of orthodox thinking. But we cannot know their mistakes and errors in thinking until or unless they express them to us. And therefore, far from being frustrated by their unclear or incorrect thinking, we should be glad that we have an opportunity to lead them from where they are to where Scripture would have them. 

Perhaps one of the most encouraging things that can be said along these lines is that leaders need not fear what might come out of the students’ mouths. We need not feel any sense of responsibility for what they think. The fact that a student responds to a question with unbiblical reasoning or even heretical thinking is not the leader’s fault. Our responsibility is in our reaction to what the student says. Have we listened well? Do we understand what they are saying? Can we trace a path with the group from where they are starting to where they need to end up? Do we know the truth enough to lead them away from the lies they currently believe?

Not all disagreements will be resolved. There are many points of doctrine, especially smaller ones, where well-meaning, faithful, deep-thinking Christians disagree. That kind of variety among Christianity at large may be reflected in a small group, and that is ok.

In conclusion, leaders need not fear disagreement. Instead, leaders can boldly face it, and even invite it, not for the purpose of stirring up conflict, but so that students might develop the ability to express the truth and unite around it. There are few functions of a small group that are more important than helping students to learn to navigate disagreement faithfully and lovingly. Leaders do not need to fear disagreement. Instead, they should leverage it.