Model — and keep it short

Week one goes well, and that’s exactly the danger. You ask the questions smoothly, you know when to let something breathe and when to nudge it back to the passage, and the group leaves saying it was the best meeting they’ve had. It would be easy to think: keep doing exactly this.

Your first job is not to teach

In a new group, the pull to teach is strong — you know more, you could explain it better, and it would probably help. Resist it anyway. Your job in these first weeks is to model the format: how the questions work, how the group prays for each other, how everyone gets a turn. Keep it simple. Nothing extra, no lecture. Anchor every answer back in the text with one question — “Where do you see that in the passage?” — and make sure everyone answers, not just the confident ones. Whatever you model in week one is what the group will believe a group is.

Keep this phase short

Here is the trap: because you’re good at it, you’ll want to keep leading it. But the longer you model, the more the group learns that the group is you. Every week you stay in the center is a week the group practices depending on you instead of practicing the format for themselves. And people only reproduce what they have actually seen done and believe they could do themselves — both parts, together. A group that only ever watches you run a beautiful meeting learns the method, and also quietly learns “that’s not something I could do.”

Model at the floor, not the ceiling

So model plainly. Visibly ordinary, on purpose. Ask a question and then bite your tongue instead of filling the silence yourself. When you don’t know an answer, say so out loud: “I don’t know — where do you see it in the passage?” Let the silence sit even when it’s uncomfortable — especially then, because that silence is where someone else starts thinking instead of waiting on you to think for them.

This will feel like doing it worse than you could. It isn’t. A model only the gifted can copy is not a gift to the group; it’s a ceiling with your name on it.

Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me, put these into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. — Philippians 4:9 (OTB)

Paul didn’t ask people to admire what they’d seen in him. He asked them to do it.

Recite this

The longer you model, the more the group learns that the group is you.

Try it this week

In your next meeting, ask one question and count to ten in your head before anyone — including you — is allowed to answer it.

I will let the silence sit in ________________’s question on ________________, and see who steps into it.