TROUBLESHOOTING SMALL GROUPS

Are you leading a small group Bible study and encountering some difficulties, or do you want tips for troubleshooting the issues before they occur? 

Here are four common challenges you may encounter in small groups and how to overcome them!

1. Help! No one is talking.

When a group does not talk, it can feel awkward and uncomfortable. It’s easy to jump in and answer all the discussion questions yourself, but the point of a small group is to get everyone involved and engaged. Rest assured, there are things you can do to help. Here are some tips to get people talking: 

  • Before the group begins, open with an icebreaker that anyone can easily answer to help participants become comfortable with speaking.
  • Have group members read the questions. Including them in less stressful tasks, such as reading questions from a paper, can help encourage some engagement. 
  • Have participants take a moment to write their answers down and then share them out loud. You can even go around the circle and have each person answer since you have given them time to think and respond on paper first. Allowing time for participants to think and create an answer is less stressful than being put on the spot.
  • Call on people. Be mindful of who you are asking, and use a kind and encouraging tone when calling on them. 
  • As a facilitator, be patient. As group members become familiar with the small group dynamic and begin trusting one another, they will start to open up more.

2. Help! One person is dominating the group discussion.

We have all had that one person who answers all the questions in the group, allowing everyone else to sit back and feel like they do not have to participate as much or at all. Here are some tips to encourage more group participation:

  • Thank the person for sharing, then say that you would like someone new to answer first. 
  • If no one else is willing to talk, see the tips above, especially the writing tip, to help those needing more time to process the questions. 
  • Ask “What else?” after your go-to talker answers to encourage more participation. If someone responds that they had the same answer as someone else, ask them to put the response in their own words.
  • If someone is known for their long-winded explanations, you might say, “In less than a minute, please share what you learned about…” Having a time frame helps to keep your wordy people from oversharing.

3. Help! Everyone is off-topic.

Depending on your group’s age level or familiarity with one another, your members may get off-topic. Allowing some wiggle room for randomness is appropriate so that the group has fun and feels bonded. However, you must remain in charge and steer the group back on topic. Some of this will come with experience as you discern how long and far to allow a group off-topic. Here are some tips for navigating an off-topic group:

  • Kindly but firmly tell the group it’s time to return to the study. You might even say, “Let’s talk more about that later, but let’s go over the questions for now.”
  • If it is a younger group, you might tell them you will wait for them to finish and then stay quiet until they stop. Usually, they sense that they need to stop and do so quickly. 
  • If you can rearrange group members for the next meeting, consider separating some of the more talkative pairs. 
  • Address expectations at the beginning of the small group. Review these rules before the start of each meeting. 

4. Help! Friends are more interested in their own conversation.

Sometimes, you have friends in small groups who are more interested in catching up than in the group discussion. Depending on the age and familiarity you have with the people will determine how you address this situation. Best practices are to catch the issue before it becomes one; however, that is not always possible. Here are a few tips to help keep the distractions minimal: 

  • Engage the distracted participants by asking them to read the questions and passages for the group.
  • Call on the side-talkers to answer questions so that they feel a slight pressure to pay attention. 
  • Suggest they don’t sit together. Be careful how and when you say this. The goal is not to embarrass anyone. 
  • If you feel some friends sitting together will be an issue beforehand, talk to them privately about sitting apart or being mindful of their involvement. 
  • If your groups change weekly, strategically place talkative friends in different groups or with a strong leader. 
  • If the groups stay the same from week to week, have a private conversation with the talkative pair and acknowledge that you know it can be hard not to talk to your friends, but during the group, you want everyone to focus on the topic of discussion. 
  • Make a general statement that it is hard to hear the passage or what people are saying when there is whispering.