But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. [14] We used to take sweet counsel together; within God’s house we walked in the throng. Psalm 55:13–14 (ESV)

 Hopefully, the rest of what I have written on small groups makes clear that it is not ideal for the leader to do most of the talking. Learning to have profitable conversations is like learning to ride a bike, and I have never seen anyone teach someone to ride a bike by spending more time on the bike than the person trying to learn. 

Many leaders are bothered by the sheer foolishness that comes from students’ mouths when they talk. As a result, leaders compensate for this by doing most of the talking. This is a mistake. The students’ foolishness is not a sign that they should not be allowed to talk. It is rather a sign that they need to learn how to do it. 

Let Them Learn the Value of Sweet Counsel

Psalm 55 is not a happy psalm. In this section, David is describing his pain at the betrayal by his friend. However, the acuteness of the pain is important because it shows how much their time together meant to David. David refers to “sweet counsel,” meaning intimate conversation as friends. Obviously, we do not wish for students to experience this kind of betrayal. We do, however, wish for them to have the kinds of relationships that make pain like David’s possible.

That students might learn the value and pleasure of “sweet counsel” is one of the hoped-for outcomes of small groups. We can consider social media and all virtual interaction for a moment. Are the technologies behind virtual connections capable of supporting the kind of interactions between people that could later be referred to as “sweet counsel”? I don’t think so. Intimate conversation between friends has always been at a premium in human experience. However, one unique characteristic of modern times is the glut of connections and interactions between people (and between people and machines). Yet for all the kinds of interactions that are available, “sweet counsel” is surely one of the least common. There is little so valuable as students learning to do what almost certainly can only be done when they are physically located in the same place. David says that they took sweet counsel together, and that they would walk together amidst the crowd of worshipers. As two people among thousands, they shared a connection and communion that marked them out from the rest of the faceless din. Among the hustle and bustle, they knew each other, and they stayed together. 

The experience described above is an ideal goal coming out of small groups. Obviously, it assumes a lot. It assumes that the students involved learn to trust one another. It also assumes that they listen to one another, and that they understand one another. This is almost surprisingly difficult and somewhat rare among students.

The Art of Navigating Silence

Small group leaders can tend to believe that something is going wrong if the conversation is not flowing. Silences can be awkward. Wrong answers can seem to beg for correction. But small group leaders do well not to correct every error or to fill every silence. 

There is an art to this, of course. Forty-five minutes of silence is obviously too much. But ten seconds may be too little. Small group leaders should seek to develop skill in reading where to insert themselves and where to remain outside of the conversation.

It is not enough to observe that the group is being silent. There are always reasons for how people act, whether they understand them or not. Small group leaders do not need to focus on getting the students to talk without understanding why they are not already talking. The goal of the group is not talking for the sake of talking but talking for the sake of understanding them and guiding the conversation from where they are to where Christ is.

If the group is silent, why is that so? A big part of the issue in silence is understanding where the silence comes from. There is always a reason for the silence. There may be multiple. There are several possibilities to consider. I will list a few possibilities below. 

Motives for Silence

First, it may be that the students do not know or trust each other. Students often come from very different backgrounds and experiences. This means that they share little or nothing in common. It is important for leaders to allow the students to develop a level of comfort with the other students. This takes some time. 

Second, it may be that they do not know or trust the small group leader. It may be that the students are waiting for direction from the leader for how to proceed in the conversation.  The students may not understand the question that was offered. The leader may have asked a question that was too vague, so that a whole range of answers could be possible, or that was too obvious, so that no one wanted to step up and say the obvious thing. It can also be that the question was too personal, so that the students are not willing to share certain details with one another. Whatever the silence, leaders should not jump too quickly to an assumption about why it is there. Always and in every case, leaders should be seeking to understand the students. This is one reason that simply talking to Phil silences is so ill advised. Silence must be allowed to sit and be evaluated before the leader relieves everyone by continuing to speak.

As a leader considers how to generate conversation among the students, it is helpful to consider the level of awkwardness among them. Awkwardness is difficult to describe and measure. Awkwardness describes a kind of discomfort and nervousness that people generally find distasteful. The cause of awkwardness is almost always a kind of irony in which one person perceives something that he would respond to differently compared to the other person. If the small group leader is not sure what to do, he can talk about the silence. Ask the students why they are silent. But know that they may be intimidated by the leader. Even if it is unintentional on the leader’s part, the silence could be due to him. In any case, the leader does not help the group by filling the silence with words. In that case, the leader is not building relationships in the small group but compensating for the lack of it. 

The best kind of silence in a small group is one in which all or the majority of the students are thinking hard about what to say. It is the kind of silence that is filled with thinking rather than attempting to read one another. It is a kind of silence in which students are actively processing what was said and eagerly developing ideas in response. It is the kind of silence that is called pregnant. 

Conclusion

In sum, leaders do well to understand as best they can the cause of the silence in the room. The solution to silence is much more likely to be found by tracing the cause to its solution rather than by filling the gap themselves. The goal of small groups can’t be to fill the time with pointless chatter or empty words. Silences can be useful and good. In any case, leaders should seek to understand silences before filling them. If students are going to learn to take sweet counsel together, they must be allowed to stumble along the way.