3 Ways to Make Small Groups More Effective

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Awana Youth Ministries Director Jeremy Pettitt shares 3 tips to make your small group discussion questions more effective. Try these 3 ideas this week in your youth ministry small groups and let us know if you see a difference.

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Video Transcript

When I'm out traveling and talking to leaders one of the things that they often ask me is how do I make my small group questions and discussion more effective. Let me give you three things that I think can really help you.

The first thing is: never ask a question that can answered with one word. Make sure that if you ask a question, not only are you going to get a full sentence, or full paragraph even, but something that will hopefully draw a story out of them. When students start telling you their ideas and stories you've started to engage them in a deeper way. You want to dig down on those.

That brings me to my second point, which is: if you are going to dig down on a subject with them, make sure that your next follow up question really dives deeper off of what they just said. Make your follow up questions are responses to what your students have just told you, the stories they told you or the ideas they've just given. The second thing is dig deeper with them. Ask follow up questions that drive them deeper into the topic.

The last question, which should always be asked, and I teach this to my speech students that I teach at a university, is this - at the end of your small group conversation you should be able to ask your students this question: so what? What does this mean? What are we going to do with this? We've had a great conversation, now what do we act on? We are not just here to talk. We are here to learn and go and do something with it. So what? We learned all about this thing tonight, what are you going to do with it?

If you know those three things, if you take the time to ask good questions that don't end with one-word answers, if you respond with follow up questions that dig deeper, and if you finish your conversation with "so what? What do we do with this?" You'll have more effective small groups. You'll have better conversations and you'll have students talking about this long after your small group's ended.

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