CHAPTER 9

THE ART OF FACILITATING

And Jesus turned and saw them following, and said to them, “What do you seek?” They said to Him, “Rabbi . . . where are You staying?” He said to them, “Come, and you will see.”

JOHN 1:38-39, NASB

One who learns through the process of honest questioning, objective thinking, and respectful challenging is more apt to know in the end what is really true. And he will also know “why” he believes it.

RANDALL ARTHUR

MY (MARY’S) FRIEND BILL loved leading his small group, which was made up of several couples from his church. Leading gave him opportunities to teach others what he was studying in his Sunday school Bible class, and he learned a lot by preparing for his regular presentation to the group. Meetings didn’t include much dynamic discussion or diversity of opinion. It wasn’t necessary with Bill in the room; he had almost any answer that people needed. The other group members didn’t always agree with Bill or get to talk much, but he made it so clear that he was the expert that they were afraid to speak up with a differing opinion.

Then one day Bill was sick with the flu, and his wife, Sally, volunteered to lead the group in his place. Sally didn’t consider herself a Bible expert, but she knew how to draw people out. She brought a discussion guide that asked good questions about the Bible passage. She made sure everyone got a chance to talk and share their perspective, even if it didn’t agree with hers or others’ in the group. By the end of the meeting, the group had experienced more laughter and lively discussion than on most evenings. Everyone asked whether Sally would mind leading more often. They couldn’t quite put their finger on how her leadership was different from Bill’s, but they knew they liked it and wanted more.

Flipped

A relatively recent phenomenon in education is called the flipped classroom. A traditional classroom approach involves listening to lectures and taking tests in the classroom, while problem solving and interacting with the concepts you are learning both occur at home. A flipped classroom is a reversed instructional model where students learn content at home, watching online video lectures about the subject, and then do “homework” in class, with teachers and students discussing questions and solving problems in their prime time together. Relational interaction between students and teachers significantly increases, and teacher interaction with students is more personalized. The role of the teacher is to guide or facilitate learning, rather than only to deliver content in a lecture.

Greg Green, the principal of Clintondale High School in Clinton Township, Michigan, a financially challenged school near Detroit, had seen his school’s failure rates—the percentage of students failing each class—compete for the highest in the country year after year. His staff thought the situation was hopeless, given no clear solution from the experts and inadequate funding available to address problems. Yet after only eighteen months of “flipping” classrooms at Clintondale, discipline problems decreased dramatically, the English failure rate decreased from 52 percent to 19 percent, the math failure rate decreased from 44 percent to 13 percent, and the science failure rate decreased from 41 percent to 19 percent.[66] A complete paradigm shift had been needed, and it worked at almost no new expense to the school! Thanks to Internet and video technology, students watched lectures outside of class and then worked closely with their teachers and fellow classmates at school to discuss and problem-solve.

With those impressive results in such a short period of time, educators all over the world began watching what was happening at Clintondale and wondering what it could mean for them. Those involved in the flipped-classroom movement say that it changes the teacher’s role from a “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side.”

I can’t help but wonder what relevance this might have to the church. Do any aspects of how the church functions need to be flipped? A fascinating article titled “Flipping the 40-Minute Sermon” appeared in the May 2013 issue of Christianity Today. Contributing writer Karen E. Yates points out that we are all so busy with jobs, parenting, and extracurricular activities that we hardly have time for each other, resulting in crowded loneliness. Christians come to church to connect with God and one another, and yet most Sunday church services rarely give them a chance to relate much.

Yates cites an expert and pioneer on interactive learning, Harvard Professor Eric Mazur, who believes that the greatest learning occurs when people engage in dialogue about a topic with their peers. Yates points out that evolving academic structures could have big implications for the church at large. Even though instructional teaching holds an important place in the church, she doesn’t think the forty-minute sermon given by the pastor is what makes the church the church. Rather, it’s the interaction of the congregation and the formation of community around the Word of God that are most important. She writes, “When we hear a lecture we receive information into our short-term memory, but to learn, we also need to assimilate the information we’ve received; meaning, we need to engage and apply the information.”[67] Should we incorporate more opportunities to interact with one another during the Sunday service to address our need for community and to help us better engage with what we’re learning?

Scottish theologian William Barclay pointed out that “it is only when truth is self-discovered that it is appropriated. When a man is simply told the truth it remains external to him and he can quite easily forget it. When he is led to discover the truth for himself, it becomes an integral part of him and he never forgets it.”[68]

The Unit of Transformation

If it is true that people learn best through facilitated discussion rather than a lecture format, then we must consider how we can implement more strategies where people can seek God in small-group communities led by facilitators rather than experts. As the church becomes more intentional about forming communities to interact with one another not only at church but also where people live, work, and play, the Art of Facilitating becomes an important practice to cultivate. We will need hundreds of thousands of initiators who can form safe places where ongoing spiritual conversations can flourish.

Peter Block, author of Community: The Structure of Belonging, calls a small group the ideal “unit of transformation.” While his book is written for a secular audience, its discoveries can be applied to any small-group community. He explains why it is worth investing in authentic transformative communities:

The small group is the structure that allows every voice to be heard. It is in groups of 3 to 12 that intimacy is created. This intimate conversation makes the process personal. It provides the structure where people overcome isolation and where the experience of belonging is created. . . .

In the small group discussion we discover that our own concerns are more universal than we imagined. This discovery that we are not alone, that others can at least understand what is on our mind, if not agree with us, is what creates the feeling of belonging. . . .

The power of the small group cannot be overemphasized. Something almost mystical, certainly mysterious, occurs when citizens sit in a small group, for they often become more authentic and personal with each other there than in other settings.[69]

Block identifies questions as the essential tools of engagement because questions create the space for something new to emerge. They promote freedom of expression. On the other hand, ready-made answers by an expert in the group can shut down the discussion and the future possibilities of what could be said. While good questions are important for dynamic discussion in one-on-one conversations, they are critical in small groups.

Guide on the Side

As we discussed in chapter 1, there are two general approaches to learning: the telling approach and the asking approach. In the telling approach, sometimes referred to as didactic or deductive learning, one individual acts as the expert, telling listeners what he or she has learned about a selected topic. In this approach, the listeners are passive receivers of information, and the teacher is the active giver of information.

In the asking or inductive approach, facilitators create an environment in which the participants can all be active discoverers. The facilitator is a guide, not a teacher or information dispenser. The definition of facilitate is “to make easier or less difficult” or “to help forward.” A facilitator’s role is to help someone learn. The focus is on the learner, not on the one with more knowledge.

Several years ago, I ran across a book by educator Maryellen Weimer called Learner-Centered Teaching, which provides a foundation for why facilitating is generally more effective than lecturing in the learning process. While reading the book, I came to the conclusion that Jesus was a learner-centered teacher. He seemed to meet people where they were in their understanding of God and their own personal spiritual journey, rather than expecting them to grasp advanced principles that he knew would be over their heads or that they were not ready to receive. For example, after Jesus’ resurrection, he came to some of the disciples as they were fishing on the Sea of Galilee. (See John 21:1-19.) He talked to Peter, who had just betrayed him, and through a simple repeated sentiment—“Feed my sheep”—showed Peter that he was forgiven and could still be counted as Jesus’ disciple. Jesus worked within Peter’s frame of reference rather than beginning with complicated teaching.

When we talk to people about God, do we, like Jesus, meet them where they are—in their brokenness and current understanding of faith? Or do we expect them to know what we know about God and the Bible?

Weimer’s premise is that traditional classrooms are teacher centered rather than learner centered. She points out that teachers do most of the work when learning is teacher-centric; therefore, they are learning more than the students. Could this also be true of those delivering sermons and Sunday school lessons and leading small groups? Those doing the teaching might be the biggest benefactors of this learning approach.

Acting as a facilitator to others’ learning challenges everyone to be more engaged in the process. In learner-centered teaching, students develop skills for how to think, rather than just absorbing the content. This approach encourages learners to reflect on what they are learning and how they are grasping it. Learners are challenged to accept responsibility for their own understanding by reflecting on, analyzing, and critiquing new content rather than passively accepting it.

Learner-centered teaching motivates learners by giving them some control. Weimer believes that teachers have been making too many decisions about what students should learn, how they learn it, the pace at which they learn, and the conditions under which they learn. Then they also determine whether students have learned. In contrast, Weimer sees people in a classroom (much like a church gathering or a small group) as communities of learners. People learn from and with each other.[70] Perhaps giving faith learners a chance to determine what they want to learn, how they’ll learn it, whom they’ll learn it with, and the pace at which they learn it could increase the likelihood of behavioral change and more gradual and consistent choices to follow Jesus.

Given all of this, why don’t we become learner centered in how we approach making new disciples? One reason is that facilitation, or guiding someone’s learning, is more difficult than teaching through content delivery because you do not control the process. And let’s face it: We all prefer to be in control. Facilitation is messy; it takes more time, and it requires patience. But in another way facilitation is easier for the ordinary Christian who does not have a seminary degree, teaching gift, or pastor credential because you don’t have to have all the answers! You are walking alongside someone as a fellow learner, learning together as an initiator of the process but certainly not as an expert. It gives you permission to say, “I don’t know the answer. What do the rest of you think? Let’s discover the answer together.”

A facilitator guides learners who are active in the process rather than supplying information to passive recipients. Encouraging active learning is important in matters of faith if we want to see disciples whose hearts are truly transformed rather than those who merely give nominal assent to Christian principles. Because our traditional approach to discipleship has been more teacher centered than learner centered, sadly, it has often been more about us than them. We focus on what we want to tell people rather than on what they want to know.

Jesus’ actions in first-century Israel reveal the timeless value of facilitation. Even Jesus’ public ministry required people to wrestle with the meaning of what he said; it’s easy to imagine people dialoguing about one of Jesus’ parables as they walked home after hearing his teaching. But Jesus’ primary focus was to facilitate learning and growth in a small group of twelve. Again and again, Jesus took his small band of followers aside and helped them think through what he had just said or done. He often asked them many more questions than he gave answers.

Consider the account in Matthew 16 when Jesus asked his disciples a simple but profound question: Who do people say the Son of Man is? (16:13). This was a chance for the disciples to share what others thought about Jesus after seeing him perform many miracles, teach about the Kingdom, and model a life that glorified God. Interestingly, Jesus started out with a lighter, less intense question by first asking who others thought he was. Then, when he heard the disciples’ answers, he asked who they thought he was (16:15). I am sure they had discussed this among themselves many times in the months leading up to this particular conversation, as Jesus was probably such a mystery to all of them. They were already asking this question themselves. As facilitators, do we know how to ask the questions that people are already asking—the questions that are on their minds and that beg for answers? How do we improve at this? I think the short answer is intentionality and practice.

With Jesus as our model, we can learn to become more intentional as we make new disciples through small groups in which we are guides (not teachers) to those seeking God. In the past few decades, small groups have become common in many churches. However, often they have been led in a way that does not result in vibrant discussions and growth for all of the participants. Some small-group leaders try to follow the approach of a preacher or a teacher, bearing the weight of studying and then dispensing the information they have discovered. Other leaders simply are present in the group, but have no idea how to spark a discussion and keep it going. Either way, the group does not flourish.

In the past fifteen years I’ve led a number of spiritual conversation groups, and I’ll share stories about them both in this chapter and in chapter 12. The first time I invited people to join a spiritual conversation group in my community, they were a little surprised when I told them that my job was to facilitate discussions about God and the Bible, not to tell them what to believe. I explained that, even though I was in my first year of seminary at the time, I had a lot of holes in my own theology and I was still learning what it meant to have a relationship with God. I said that I was willing to walk alongside them as they discovered what was true, because the search for God was important and we all were continually growing in our understanding of God.

I love how much I learned from the participants in the groups I cofacilitated, even from those who did not have an active and fully informed faith in God. For example, one day our small group was talking about why God would wait four thousand years to send a savior after Adam and Eve sinned. Once he knew a savior was needed, he could have sent his Son right away. My friend Kate, who was not yet a Christian, wisely observed that God waited because people had to realize their need for a savior over time and history before God would send one. They had to see time and time again that people couldn’t save themselves from their own sin. Kate’s comment was the single most profound contribution to our discussion that day, and it came from someone who had chosen, at least for that time period, not to believe in Jesus.

Bill Mowry, on staff with The Navigators, wrote an important practical book called The Ways of the Alongsider, providing ten simple ways we can make disciples like Jesus. He writes:

Jesus does the unthinkable. He invites us in our weakness and inexperience, to be his helpers in the Great Commission. He recruits ministry amateurs to come alongside friends to model behaviors such as how to love God, build friendships, read the Bible with others, tell stories, ask questions—and encourage application.[71]

Could it be so simple? Is God looking for ministry amateurs to walk alongside those who don’t yet know him personally? Can our friendship with God enable us to guide others to have a relationship with him?

Up to this point in the book we’ve been talking about using the building blocks of the first six Arts of Spiritual Conversations to develop one-on-one relationships with people who believe differently. Here we’re transitioning some of those same skills to a group environment. If you want to pursue your relationships with non-Christians in a small-group setting—and our experience shows that’s a highly effective approach—then you need to know how to be facilitators.

Individual interactions affect just one other person. When you facilitate a conversation group where people who believe differently can explore their questions about faith, you have the potential to multiply your efforts. Not only do you have ongoing, planned opportunities for spiritual conversations, you can also join forces with other followers of Jesus and open up the possibility for God to work among different combinations of people.

As mentioned earlier, a small-group community of two to twelve people, where the majority of the participants are not Christians, is a great place for people to figure out what they believe about God and the Bible. Whether you’re aiming for an organized weekly Q Place or you find yourself in a conversation about God with three moms at school or with friends at a bar after a sports event, facilitating well is important and will help determine whether the experience is positive or negative. It will also have an effect on whether people will want to continue having these highly sensitive discussions.

Beacons of Light: Core Values

Spiritual transformation in a small group requires more than just getting a group of believers or skeptics together and having conversations about God and the Bible. And it looks far different from a lecture scaled down to a small-group monologue. Several key foundational elements will help a small group of people with diverse beliefs thrive, including clarity on the core values that undergird the formation of the group, the way the group starts out and functions, and the guiding principles for choosing the topics to discuss. We’ll look at some of these elements here and then in more detail in chapter 12, “Starting a Q Place,” where we’ll walk you through the key issues involved in beginning a spiritual conversation group.

Core values are an important building block for facilitating a small group. The following four core values establish the foundational DNA of a spiritual conversation group that will enable people who are curious about God to get on a journey of discovery. For easy memory recall, all of these values begin with the letter s:

The introduction of Encounters with Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions, by well-known author and pastor Tim Keller, contains a story about a spiritual crisis he had when he was in college. At the time, Keller was questioning his faith even though he had grown up in a Christian home. He describes how he ended up in a Bible study where the leader didn’t take the role of teacher or instructor but instead would facilitate the entire group’s reading and interpretation of the chosen Bible text. Keller’s description of this small-group experience beautifully illustrates all four of these core values and the resulting impact the group had on his future faith.

Keller explains his small-group community’s values and “ground rules”: You didn’t have to believe the Bible was true; you just had to believe it was worth serious study because of its historical roots and widespread use. No single interpretation was to be the final conclusion, but all participants were given a chance to share their thoughts about the text.

We sought to mine the riches of the material as a community, assuming together we would see far more than any individual could.

Before I was even sure where I stood in my own faith, I was asked to lead a group and was provided with a set of Bible studies entitled Conversations with Jesus Christ from the Gospel of John by Marilyn Kunz and Catherine Schell. It covered thirteen passages in the book of John where Jesus had conversations with individuals. Those studies helped my group uncover layers of meaning and insight that astonished us all. Moving through these accounts of Jesus’ life, I began to sense more than ever before that the Bible was not an ordinary book. Yes, it carried the strange beauty of literature from the remote past; but there was something else. It was through these studies of encounters with Jesus that I began to sense an inexplicable life and power in the text. These conversations from centuries ago were uncannily relevant and incisive to me—right now. I began to search the Scriptures not just for intellectual stimulation but in order to find God.[72]

The authors of the discussion guide he used, Marilyn Kunz and Catherine Schell, were the founders of Neighborhood Bible Studies, which is now Q Place.

Keller’s description is strong evidence of the impact that the inductive process can have on doubters and skeptics when these core values are on display. Participants were discovering for themselves what the Bible said. The group was a safe place where every participant was valued and leadership was shared. God’s Spirit was guiding them as they studied the Scriptures and the life of Jesus with an understanding that the Bible was valuable. As participants like Keller continued to sense these values lived out in the group, they engaged more fully, took risks, and experienced God’s work in their lives. These core values become beacons of light when you initiate this process with people who are seeking to know God.

Facilitating as a Team

While we practice most of the 9 Arts individually, Facilitating is best done with other followers of Jesus. When I (Mary) started my first small group for spiritually curious people in 2002, I invited two Christian friends, Kristin and Judy, to help me facilitate it. I think I knew that I would never want to do something like this alone in the very secular community where I resided, as leading a spiritual conversation group was totally new to me. While I was more entrepreneurial than most, I needed the wisdom of a few other people to start a community where the majority were not Christians. And although Jesus sent his disciples out two by two when he was giving them their first taste of spreading his message (see Matthew 10:1-42 and Luke 10:1-23), my instincts at the time were that three might be a stronger team in order to create a sustainable community to talk about God with people who believed differently.

Later I learned how good it was to start a group like this with two other facilitators. Together the three of us created a Christ-centered community that remained at the core in our group, even when the group went from three to twelve and included participants who had a variety of beliefs about God.

The demands of facilitating can be overwhelming, especially when the majority of group participants have diverse beliefs. Solo facilitation casts the facilitator as a small-group superhero who has X-ray vision into group dynamics, heroic power to invite people to the group, and the ability to leap over discussion-ending comments in a single bound. But who facilitates the group when the leader is out of town or sick or is backed into a corner on a theological point that is way over his or her head? What happens when the leader starts to burn out or has to work late? How can the leader invite people into the group beyond his or her social circle?

There’s no such thing as a perfect group facilitator—everyone has strengths and weaknesses. A facilitator may be great at inviting people to the group yet struggle to lead discussions. He or she may have great empathy yet shy away from addressing deep issues for fear of group conflict. A facilitator may be great at asking questions yet be weak at waiting to hear answers. And whatever their gift mix is, all facilitators have good days and bad days, moments when they lead well and moments when they don’t.

A team of facilitators can support each other both inside and outside the small-group setting. When the group discussion bogs down, one of them may offer a new question or point the group back to its guidelines. Outside the group, facilitators can debrief, offering each other specific affirmation and constructive suggestions for future group sessions. The co-leadership approach allows each facilitator to use his or her strengths and look to others to compensate for weaknesses. As a result, each of them will feel more at home in the facilitating role and better valued for what he or she brings to the group.

A team of facilitators can share encouragement, prayer, ideas, support, and wisdom, living out the idea that we can do more together than we could apart.

Effective group facilitators strive to provide an environment that is conducive to exploration and discovery, where people who believe differently can explore, discover, and share with transparency while the Spirit of God works through Scripture. As they create this environment for others, they need it also for themselves.

As the adage goes, “You can’t give away what you don’t have.” If a facilitator isn’t being discipled in a loving community, he or she is ill equipped to disciple others in a loving community. A group of three or four facilitators live out the idea of peer-discipleship, of iron sharpening iron (see Proverbs 27:17).

Jesus modeled this community-within-a-community approach. While investing in all twelve disciples, he gave extra attention to three of his closest followers: Peter, James, and John. Jesus exclusively invited them into specific highs and lows of his ministry—the resurrection of a little girl (Mark 5:37-42), the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-13), and his night of prayer at Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-34). Surely Peter, James, and John talked together about these experiences. That processing-in-community perfectly captures the essence of a group of three—meeting together to work through our responses to Jesus and partnering together in the Kingdom work Jesus gives us to do. Facilitator meetings outside of small-group meetings offer a rich discipleship environment.

Jesus Chose to Invest in Twelve

We are living in times when the Western world has increasingly rejected institutional Christianity. An invitation to explore God and the Bible with a few others is a great first step for people who are unlikely to step through the doors of a church. It’s also a rich, holistic approach for Jesus followers of all levels of maturity.

Jesus is our model for creating God-honoring, life-changing community. When he began his earthly ministry, he could have spent all of his time preaching to thousands. This might seem like the most efficient method of gathering followers. Instead, Jesus invited twelve ordinary Jewish men into a community to learn and grow together as they followed him. Rather than mass-producing disciples, Jesus chose to invest deeply in a handful of people, thereby developing committed followers.

We’ve identified four simple stages that are essential in starting a small group for spiritually curious people—stages that mirror what Jesus did in building his group of disciples.

Jesus is our model for facilitating spiritual conversations and starting small groups. He prepared well by praying about whom to invite; he extended compelling invitations; he encouraged those he invited to check it out; and those who accepted his invitation grew in their understanding of God. Jesus knew the Kingdom of God was all about relationships with each other and with him. We can follow his pattern for starting small groups today.

When you start a small group for ongoing spiritual conversations with people who believe differently, it is important to know where your group is going and how to get there, always being attentive to the Holy Spirit’s guidance and the group participants’ freedom along the way. Twenty-first-century small-group guru Bill Donahue notes:

Small groups were an integral part of the early church structure. They were small enough to allow individual members to minister to one another, use their spiritual gifts, and be discipled in the teachings of Christ. In addition, they were vibrant and life-giving communities where evangelism could take place as unchurched people watched a loving and compassionate community in action.[73]

Facilitating these small-group communities well is an honor and a privilege for all followers of Jesus.

Discover

  1. What are the major benefits of facilitating a discussion rather than coming across as an expert or teacher? What are the challenges?
  2. Why do you think facilitating a spiritual conversation group with a team of two to four Christians is more effective than facilitating alone?

Practice

  1. Try facilitating a group discussion with two to five people you already know on a topic where there is a diversity of opinion. Your goal is to get everyone talking and respectfully engaged. What did you learn?
  2. Ask some of your friends how they learn best: through listening or discussion. Did you notice a difference in response from your Christians friends and those who believe differently? Why do you think that is the case?