If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably in the majority of Life Group leaders using the sermon discussion questions to lead your group study time. And even if you're not, our hope is that today's episode would benefit you and resource you to be confident in using our sermon discussion questions to facilitate group discussion. My name is Sam Smith, and I'm the Irvine Discipleship Director for Life Groups and the Men's Ministry, and in today's episode Scott sits down with John Thomas, also known as Lon John, the Irvine Lead Discipleship Pastor, and they discuss how to effectively navigate the sermon discussion questions to facilitate group discussion. It's what most Life Groups at Mariners use to study God's Word and interact with the weekend message.
Let's tune in to today's episode. Life Group leaders, this is Scott, and I'm here with JT, our Lead Discipleship Pastor, and we are going to go through the group discussion guide, sermon discussion guide. What we want to see happen is we want all the Life Group leaders to feel confident as they go through the sermon discussion guide, and what we did a shift in in our leader podcast is we are focusing more on topics that will be helpful for leaders, and we're not doing the sermon discussion guides every week. But what we wanted to do for this episode was help all of you go through the discussion, whatever questions you may have, but feel confident in doing that.
Yeah, that's awesome. So we'll walk through a little bit of a model of how to get the most out of them, and we know some of you have maybe been through this a while ago as a part of new leader training, maybe, but for many, this might be the first time being, you know, this model explains to you and how to get the most of it. So there is a little bit of there is not a little bit. There's a method to how the question questions are written and how to get the most out of it.
So understanding kind of the method will hopefully make you feel more confident leaving them out each week. So, Chitty, as a life group leader yourself, and I lead a life group as well, we use a certain discussion, the majority of the time. So how would you start your group meeting as you go through the discussion guide? I think just being aware, just to get an overview of the whole model, right?
So you'll see it each week on your discussion question guide, but it's basically four different buckets of questions, four different headers, lean in, look down, look out, and live it out. So lean in, that is your icebreaker, right? And quite often the icebreaker will tie in directly into the theme of the whole question. Sometimes it doesn't.
But what's the principle with the lean in question? It's really not like just a throw away, but it's supposed to be intentional. And the principle there is to get them thinking about the theme of the passage, even at the icebreaker, the lean in question, but also the principle of the more you get people talking right off the bat, the more likely they are to talk later on. When it's a little bit more, oh, this is cutting down into my life.
This is a challenge here for us in that. It's often it's lighthearted. We call it lean in for a reason so that you lean in. And you're like, oh, I want to hear what I'm looking for this day.
Oh, I have something I want to say and not lean out. You don't want people to shy away and think, oh, this is an unanswerable question. Or if I answer this question, it's really negative about somebody. It's a lean in question.
That's great. I was going to ask though, that part main point even before the lean in, is that something you read with your entire life group before the lean in breaking the ice? I don't typically. I don't typically.
I think that's more for me as a leader to be reminded of, OK, what did we talk about this weekend? What was the thing? What were the main takeaways? What am I looking for?
I don't typically, I mean, if it was a situation where a good amount of folks were there that weekend and you still do the discussion questions, but you can and should still, I would say, you could use that. Yeah. Let me just give you a little recap of what the message was. What you did use it.
Yeah. Sometimes I use it. Sometimes I just go straight into the ice. And I think it's helpful as the leader to understand, first of all, go to the weekend service.
Listen to the message. And if you, for some reason, miss it. You can always listen online, or YouTube or listen on the podcast, just so that you are familiar with the passage. So how about the second part?
So we first lean in and then we look down at God's Word. Yeah, look down. And that's intentional. Look down, meaning we're going to look at scripture.
And so just practical, it's really hard to look down if people don't have Bibles in front of you. And so of course, analog Bibles the best. Like I have an actual Bible there with you and others in your group have extra Bibles there for you. If you have to use it, use the electronic version, that's okay.
We have people who are prone to a distraction with that. But it's a look down in that. I'm looking directly at God's Word. And this is really important.
You'll think, what about you first? Sometimes leaders will read the passage and then I'm going to ask you the question. Actually, just a little leadership, the hack year, it's way easier if you frame the question first and then you read the passage. Because then you're getting people to think as they're reading the passage, they're looking for the things in that question.
So the one we have in front of us was from the final week of Read This Way of knowing that others will read you from 2 Corinthians 3, 1 through 3. This is about our lives being a living letter. And others are going to read us that we might be the only living Bible that people are going to encounter. And so the questions here are in here.
So what does Paul say to his readers in 2 Corinthians 3, 1 through 3, not written with anything but written with what? Or it could be, what does the passage say about us being living letters? What do you see in this passage? And so then you frame the question, then you read it.
Then you ask people to go around and say, great, where did you see that in the passage? What verse are you looking at? This is not a time where it's like story tale of, oh, this reminds me about this person or that person. It's like, no, we're engaging God's word.
And so usually in the look down, you'll have maybe three questions or so to help prompt that. And they're there to prompt you. They're not like turned by turned guides. Like the more and more you do this, you'll be able to write your own questions.
You really will. And maybe summarize the three questions that are here in one in one question. But the principle is we're looking down at God's word, we're engaging scripture. We're taking the question and finding where we see that in the passage.
Yeah. And one of the things I think that we hear from our life group leaders is I don't, I'm not a Bible study teacher. And our expectation is not that you are teaching, but you are facilitating this group discussion. Yeah.
And yet at the same time though, I think as a group leader, it really helps to dig into the word before you're meeting. We have those study Bibles, which are amazing and wonderful notes that give you context, to give you just more explanation on each of the verses. And so you can write those things down, but I think it's imperative that you don't need to be an expert or a teacher or it's not a teaching moment. Yeah, I love you calling it out.
You know, it's off the first thing on the preparation. Like run through these questions yourself. Gaze God's word yourself. Write things, circle things.
I love that you mentioned the CSV study Bibles that we had available to Patty a couple of weekends ago, at least at the time of this recording. That CSV study Bible, obviously, is so, so, so that is your best friend to study the passage in your preparation. And you go right. It's not you happen to teach and have all the answers.
Look down is about observation. Yeah. What do you see in the text? What's highlighted in the text?
Really good. Now let's look at that third part of looking out as we identify the relevance, the application of God's word, actually not the application, not the fourth section, but the relevance of God's word. Yeah. This is seen, so you just did an observation, you looked down.
Okay. What does it mean for us to be living letters? What does that look like in the scripture? Where do we see that?
Look out would be framed in this way. It's basically like, what does it look like when we see this at work in the world? What does it look like when we don't? So it's a bit of a compare and contrast of, hey, what does it look like when Christians live this really well?
What does it look like to be great examples? Where have you seen that in the life of others? Where have you seen that? Hey, what does it look like when we don't?
Like, what does that negative witness? And what are the implications of that? And this is very much like where you would invite a bit of like, story sharing and telling and where do you see this at work? This is challenging people to think about the implications of God's word, history applied in the world around us, where we see it and where we often don't see it.
So the questions here for this week are framed in that way. Think of your friends, your family members, coworkers who aren't Christians. What do they think about Christians? Why do they think this way about Christians?
So both the positive and the negative. So the lookout is getting to interact with the truth of the passage in the world where you see it at work, where you don't see it, and you think creatively in that way. Yeah. And then the last section, looking in, we get more personal.
Applying God's truth, his script or to our lives. So what does that look like? Yeah, that's it. And it's almost the same principle of looking out where you see it at play, where you don't see it, now it's looking in for you.
Where have you seen the encouragement of this in your own life? Where have you seen God use you to be a living letter for others? What does that look like? Were you challenged?
What are the barriers for you in doing that? The question here is, in what ways could your life get a clearer picture of who God is and what he is like? So that's the challenge, the application. And so we used to call these things way back in the day flow questions because they have a flow and the flow from the top of the funnel all the way down to the bottom of the funnel, it's an intentional journey to get you thinking through this question.
First creatively through an icebreaker, engaging God's word on the look down, looking at it, the world around you, and then it's in. Okay, now for me. What's the challenge? What's the application?
And then that's where you see a lot of God does some great work through our vulnerability. And you set the tone of that right as a leader and how you're going to speak. I think that is such a good encouragement, like modeling the way of vulnerability really pays the way for others to share. Is that session?
I don't know about your group, but sometimes it gets to be the most challenging for people to share openly because it's now speaking into how is God impacting my heart? How is he speaking to me? And so it takes some people time to process it and that's okay too. We can ask follow up questions and so forth.
But I think it's so important that we go deeper into how it is impacting us. I love that word that you just chose to do deeper. One thing's about here from leaders sometimes, very occasionally. Hey, I want deeper questions.
These sort of questions are deep enough. In one sense, I understand what you might mean by that. You want to impact more the historical context, the original language, the genre, look at the author, all of that stuff, the verb tenses and greek. I'm like, nerd out on that stuff all day.
I love that so much. And I love that we would have a heart to study God's word in that way. And I love this beautiful thing. But at the same time, the depth comes through the application.
The depth comes from the challenge and the obedience of following God's word and being open and vulnerable for where this is a real challenge in your life and where you need support in that. We can hide sometimes behind the longing for depth and we miss out that the longing in actual depth is in the practicing of it and the challenge of it. And so if you ever feel like that as a leader, if you feel like that from your group, some questions you can ask yourself, are we going deep enough here? Are we actually being vulnerable enough?
Are we staying above the service or how am I modeling that as a leader? Because that's where the growth really, really comes. Yeah, this is so good, JD. This actually is very similar to my devotional method.
Remember the acronym SOAP looking at sculpture, observation, application, and prayer. That's how I do a lot of my journaling is how I read God's word and a lot of this parallel is that. It's how a lot of people craff you and I mean it's the same kind of flow to the world. It's a crafting assortment.
People have different practices and mechanics for that but there is some truth in that. This is great, JD. Hey, thanks so much for helping our LACRIB leaders to lead with just confidence in the sermon discussion guides. And if you leaders have any questions, you can always reach out to your coaches, to our LACRIB staff team as well too.
But we really trust that as you engage with God's word, as you look at these discussion questions beforehand and as the spirit guides you that the Lord will give you just much courage and just wisdom as you lead your groups with these questions. Have a great day.