The Hungry

She is the reason you keep doing this. She reads ahead. She comes back with what she did about last week before you ask. When the group goes quiet she is the one already looking at the passage again.

Every facilitator wants a group of these, and a group of these is not what you have been given.

Two ways to mishandle her

The first is to cluster around her. She is rewarding to talk to, so the conversation gravitates her way, the discussion becomes a duet, and the other five learn to sit back. This happens without anyone deciding it, including you.

The second is to keep her. A hungry member becomes the backbone of your group — and it is very comfortable to leave her there, contributing to something you lead, for years.

She is not the reward for facilitating. She is the next facilitator.

What she is actually for

Everything in this method points at multiplication, and the person who is hungry and obeying is the one who could open a group in a room you will never enter. Handing her the chair is not a promotion to be earned over years. In this method it happens fast, and From Facilitator to Coach is the whole class about it.

Practically: give her the question card. Let her lead while you sit in the circle. Ask her who in her own life she would invite. The move you are making is from her being the best member of your group to her being the reason there is a second one.

Do not use her to measure yourself

One more thing, quietly. When a group has a hungry member, facilitators tend to point at her as evidence they are doing this well — and, in the seasons when nobody is hungry, to take that as evidence they are failing.

Both readings are the same mistake in different moods. She is not your result. She was drawn by the Father before she ever sat down in your room, and the man beside her who has not moved in eight months was not sent to grade you.

Recite this

The hungry one is not my reward. She is the next facilitator.

Try it this week

Name the hungriest person in your group. Hand them one concrete piece of the meeting this week — the questions, the opening, the follow-up — and sit where you can see the group instead of leading it.

I will hand ________________ the ________________ at our meeting on ________________.