7 Tips for Great Small Group Discussion Questions

2 weeks ago 30

Good discussion questions are a key ingredient to fruitful, enjoyable small groups. They challenge people to think, they elicit varied responses, and they facilitate healthy and respectful group discussion. They serve to create an environment for God’s Spirit to bear good fruit through God’s people and God’s word.

But good discussion questions can also be hard to come by.

In my time facilitating various small groups and overseeing the small group ministry in a couple of churches, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with the art of crafting quality discussion questions. (Conversely, poor discussion questions have become something of a pet peeve of mine!)

In this article, I’ll share some tips I’ve learned on how to craft great small group questions.

How should we think about small groups?

But before I do so, it would be helpful to establish what we mean by “small groups”—as well as their purpose.

Churches use different terms for smaller groupings that meet outside of the Sunday morning gathering: community groups, missional communities, discipleship groups, life groups—the list goes on. For this article, I’m going to stick with “small groups” because it is fairly self-explanatory and broad enough to encapsulate the other terms.

While small groups can be set up with various purposes and formats, I’ll assume any formal discussion time in them has at least two goals:

To encourage and facilitate discussion among members, so that they can learn from, and minister to, one another.
To lead members to assess their own minds, hearts, and lives in light of a text or message.

In our church small groups, our custom is to base discussion on the most recent sermon. But the following pieces of advice assume small group discussion is at least based on some message or text, be that a sermon, a Bible passage, or a non-biblical book that the group reads through together.

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7 tips to improve small group questions

Without further delay, here are seven tips for crafting quality small group questions.

1. Locate authority in God’s Word, not the facilitator

A common difficulty in a small group ministry is finding capable facilitators—and then not burning them out! One of the most common ways facilitators burn out is when they are expected to be the teacher and authority (i.e., expert) in the group. Many haven’t been trained as pastors but are expected to have the biblical and theological knowledge of pastors.

To protect against this, it is important that the format of the group, and the types of questions provided, make clear where the authority ultimately lies: God’s Word, perhaps as expounded by the teaching or preaching of a church’s leaders (or pastors). The small group facilitator then can lead discussion, but isn’t expected to teach or be the final authority on the text or topic.

How do you do this?

One way is to base small group discussions on sermons (or other teachings provided by the church) and the biblical text itself. This allows the installed and gifted pastors and teachers of the church to do what they are called to do—lead the church through their teaching—and for the church to get the most benefit out of that teaching, by spending additional time meditating on it in small groups. Practically, it can even be helpful to quote sections from the sermon. This will allow everyone to be on the same page and help them respond to the same teaching.

A great resource for creating sermon-based questions is Logos’s Sermon Assistant in Sermon Builder. This tool allows you generate discussion question ideas based on your very own sermon.

If you go this route, it could be tempting to ask a question like, “Do you agree with what the pastor said?” Now, there could be a place for that, perhaps if there are non-Christians in the group who clearly would disagree with Christian teaching. But these types of questions put undue focus on the pastor, rather than the biblical text, or can encourage an unhealthy skepticism about the teaching of the church, putting the facilitator in a difficult position.

2. Help the group discover what the text says for themselves

The following pertains to those groups whose format is to discuss biblical passages (or sermons based on those passages): Even if the primary focus of your small groups is application, the more you can connect and ground that application in the authority of God’s unchanging Word, the better. It’s God’s Word, after all, that not only points us in the right direction, but also empowers us to walk in its way (Isa 55:10–11). You want them to ultimately sense the authority of God’s Word, so that whatever application comes has that as its firm grounding.

For our small groups, I typically include some “exegetical” (biblical interpretation) questions among the first few. The goal is to help the group work through the text, to see what it says for themselves. For example, I recently included the prompt: “Read Genesis 11:1–9. How does this passage seem to relate to Genesis 10? Do you see any clues linking these chapters together?”

It’s best if these questions aren’t too simple, but require the group to read the text a couple of times and wrestle with its details: How does the passage fit together? What’s its underlying logic? What implications can be drawn from it? Good exegetical questions help group members become good students of the text for themselves. They teach them to do things like ask good questions, look for logical flow, consider the meaning of important words, and take into consideration the larger context.

A great resource for developing questions is Logos’s Bible Study Builder. This tool allows you to input a Scripture passage and instantly receive all of your library’s discussions questions related to that text. You also can generate questions using Logos’s AI.

Finally, for those wishing to equip their small group leaders to handle the biblical text well, Trevin Wax’s Gospel-Centered Teaching (B&H, 2013) is a wonderful, concise resource to hand out liberally!

3. Avoid questions that spark unhelpful theological debates

That said, the purpose of your small groups (probably) isn’t to settle theological debates or exegetical controversies. Yet many a small group has attempted to settle the Calvinism vs. Arminianism debate once and for all!

Every small group leader has experience with the challenge of keeping group discussions from digressing into opinions or debates about a text or doctrine. At worst, these discussions are far removed from the text, undermine careful exegesis with bounding emotions, and potentially sow division between group members.

There is no way to guarantee such digression doesn’t happen, but don’t set it up to happen by the questions you ask. If your small group is centered on discussing a biblical text, I recommend focusing the bulk of the questions on what is abundantly clear in the text. This prevents discussion from drifting into areas where you find yourself adjudicating on various interpretations and opinions.

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4. Choose your rabbit trails wisely

But how should we respond when discussion does veer off course?

Rather than setting a policy to either always cut off discussion or always allow these rabbit trails, it’s probably best to assess on a case-by-case basis. For instance, consider:

Is this discussion going to be fruitful to most in the group or only one or two participants?
Is this the best context for such a discussion?
Is this a topic that keeps coming up—one member’s hobby horse—or a topic the group hasn’t discussed before?

The ability to tactfully redirect conversation in such situations is a valuable skill every group leader needs to develop. Here are some helpful ways I’ve seen this done:

“How about you and I talk about this after we’re done here?”
“I would love to look into that question for you. I’ll get back to you this week.”
“I know the pastors have studied this. I would suggest reaching out to them about it.”

5. Don’t make questions too hard—or too easy

When questions are too challenging, people can be left feeling inept or insecure. Discussion stalls. Fruitfulness wanes.

I find I tend to write questions that are too difficult after I’ve spent a lot of time in the text myself and begin to assume others are as familiar with it as I’ve become. I’ve reached conclusions and made connections after hours of study, and I expect group members to see these insights after just a quick read through or listen.

To guard against this, read through your questions multiple times and ask yourself, “What am I assuming is clear, which may not be?” It’s also a good idea to invite feedback from the small group facilitators on how the questions are being received.

On the other hand, if questions are too easy, people can start to feel like their leaders don’t expect them to engage deeply. Robust discussion is replaced by brief and obvious answers, or perhaps a confused silence in the face of elementary questions. Again, fruitfulness wanes.

Too-easy questions include those with a yes or no answer. These are almost always pointless in a group setting, since they don’t spark actual discussion. Be sure also to avoid questions with trite answers. For example, rather than asking, “What does God’s knowledge consist of?” (Answer: “Everything”) ask, “How does the fact that God knows everything make you feel?” or “What is comforting and/or fearful about God knowing everything?”

Ultimately, you know your people best and what level of difficulty they can handle. You want to challenge them to think, but don’t want them to feel like the questions are over their heads.

6. Include some boilerplate questions

Everyone benefits from some boilerplate, open-ended questions that can be recycled each meeting.

The group benefits by knowing something of what to expect, and how to prepare for discussion.
The group leader benefits by also knowing how to begin preparing, even before getting the specific questions for that week.
And whoever is writing the questions benefits by having a few questions already completed.

For our sermon-based small groups, we include three boilerplate questions each week:

In your own words, summarize the main point of the passage/message?
Did you find anything particularly convicting in the passage/message?
Did you find anything particularly encouraging in the passage/message?

Other helpful boilerplate questions I’ve used:

What can we learn about God from this passage?
What can we learn about ourselves or our world in this passage?
What promise do you find in this passage?
What commands do we find in this passage?

7. Move questions beyond personal opinions & feelings

I’m not saying there’s never a place for sharing personal opinions or feelings in a small group. “How does the truth of this text make you feel?” can be a perfectly fine and fruitful question? But questions like, “What does this text mean to you?” or “What do you feel this text means?” put too much weight on subjective impressions rather than objective interpretation—and they probably won’t lead to fruitful discussions, either. We want to see people become better students of the Bible, and these types of discussions will not help us achieve that goal.

Instead, provide questions that:

Walk through the biblical text, helping them uncover the objective, unchanging truth of God’s Word.
Help them apply that objective truth and its implications for their lives.

Our church recently preached through the account of the flood (Gen 6–9), and our smalls groups used these application questions:

How do you naturally respond to such descriptions of God’s judgment on sin and sinners?
Do you struggle to square this description of God with your own conception of him? If so, why do you think that is?

Notice that these types of questions still allow for a variety of responses, including expressions of personal feelings. They acknowledge that people may struggle with aspects of God’s character (as we see throughout Scripture; e.g., Ps 44:23). But they bring such things in relationship to the authority of God’s Word.