You’ve decided to lead a small group. You have the material picked out and reviewed. Your house is clean and people are on their way over to kick off small group! It’s all very exciting the idea of new relationships and growing in your faith, and reviewing what God is doing in people’s lives. But as the leader, there should be one heavy question on your mind;

What is my role as a small group leader? Your role leading a small group is to serve the members of the group in such a way that it supports and encourages people to grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ.

How can you lead like that?

Pray before you speak

James 1:10 “Be quick to listen and slow to speak”

1 Thessalonians 5:17 “pray continually”

We have a natural tendency to want to talk and share information and stories about ourselves. That’s normal. Being a leader means serving, and that translates to filtering what you say so that it’s not prideful or self gratify. When you speak it should have a purpose. Having a great purpose to speak includes:

• Encouraging someone
• Sharing something that brings the topic back on topic
• Asking provoking questions that spur conversation
• Authentically sharing about what you read, what it means, and what it means to you
• Confessing something, or being transparent about something you want to change about yourself.
• Praying
• Asking specific people what they thought, to provide them with an opportunity to share.
• Keeping people accountable. Bringing up a topic or question about something someone asked to be reminded or asked about.

Instead of mentally going through a checklist of what you can talk about and what you can’t, I recommend just praying about. God’s word says “pray without ceasing” – 1 Thessalonians 5:17. It might take ten to twenty seconds to ask the Lord, “Dear Jesus, should I share this out loud in front of the group? Will this help?” Don’t draw attention to yourself while praying, just pray silently with your eyes open. Sometimes people might notice you taking extra time to speak. People respect others that take time to consider what they are about to say. James 1:19 says, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak.” Not only will you be respecting others but you will be honoring the Lord in the way you are slow to speak, pray, and lead.

Be Respectful: Keep to the schedule

One of the best ways to love someone is to respect them. By respecting the clock and what time frame people have committed to you are telling them that you love and respect them. Often this will be uncomfortable as you’ll have to interrupt a great conversation or someone’s story. If it’s uncomfortable, that’s even better, because it proves you’re willing to respect them even when it’s hard and uncomfortable to do.

The flip side is you should also be respectful of those you have to cut off or interrupt to be respectful of the time. This can be done by watching the clock and providing the person, or people, speaking they have a  couple minutes to more to share than you’ll have to wrap up the small group.

Being respectful fo the clock and ending your official small group time, doesn’t mean everyone has to leave or conversation has to end. It just means people are free to leave if they want to.

Be a great listener

There are a lot of great resources on how to be a great listener. Most of them include:

• Look at the speaker while they are talking
• Provide audible, or visual feedback you are understanding
• Nodding, or lightly saying, “Oh sure”, “right”, and “yes”.
• Repeat back, or summarize the speaker’s point
• “So if I understand you correctly, you’re saying this text made you remember the way your mom treated you growing up in a way you never really considered before, is that right?”
• Note something specific they said, and ask a follow-up question about it
• “John, I appreciate you sharing about your struggle to borrow your car to your coworker. I’d struggle with that too. I was encouraged by what you shared, thank  you.”
• Reference something someone said while sharing a point or question later on.
• “Earlier Jill was sharing about how she missed her appointment to help her neighbor, and that really reminds me this scripture in chapter 5 here….”

One of the worse things you can while listening is expecting to share a story like the one the speaker is telling. This prevents you from fully listening to what the person is saying because you start thinking about your own story and all the details and how you want to share it. And in addition, it minimized the speaker’s story by one-upping theirs with your story. It communicates that you have a better story and often takes the spotlight away from them and places it on you.

As a leader, you want to shine the spotlight on others, or on Christ. If speaking about yourself shines a light on God’s glory, please share it. If it shines a light on your personal pride, abilities, talents, or accomplishments, save it for later to tell yourself in front of the mirror.

Ask open-ended questions

Open-ended questions should allow the speaker to provide an answer you do NOT know. If you do already know the answer, that probably means it’s a closed-ended question. Closed-ended questions make the small group feel like teaching and preaching time, not a fellowship time. Questions that only require a single word answer are also often times closed-ended questions. These are ‘fill in the blank’ style questions. An example of a closed-ended question might be, “Who was Jesus’ father?”

Open-ended questions will often do one of two things:

1. Require people to think or consider something deeper
2. Allow people to share something they have thought about and are passionate about.

Ask people’s perspective on God’s words

This is very similar to asking open-ended questions because you are asking a question that you don’t know the answer to and it gives freedom to the responder to answer however they like. The key difference here is you’re asking about God’s word specifically.

This can often be uncomfortable because you’re putting people in a position they might not know how to answer it. By asking them their perspective it takes away the pressure of there being a right answer. It also points to text as a reference point for their answer. If your heart is right when asking, don’t hesitate. Give them the time to answer, don’t interrupt, take it away,  or answer it for them. The purpose of the small group is to grow in our love and understanding of God and to grow in fellowship so that we can encourage one another and keep each other accountable.

Application and Take Aways

Bring the topic home by asking what people will take away or how they will apply this study or lesson to their lives.

Reflect on the answers of the open-ended questions to pivot on how the people of the small group will apply what they’ve learned into their personal lives. How will they change, what will they do differently based on they took away from the study together?

Ultimately, we’re trying to grow in our faith and honor Jesus more with our lives. If we just learn and don’t apply, we’ve come so close but still failed. Help be that bridge and train people to take another step and put together a plan on how to apply Biblical lessons to their life so that we can be successful in our desire to grow in Christ. 

Jesus is the perfect example

When in doubt about your role as a small group leader, look to Jesus. Read the Bible and see how Jesus lead others. Secondly, pray. The power of prayer can help you honor God on how you are serving Him by leading a small group. There will be many situations and circumstances that you will face as a small group leader that you’ve never read about. You will need to depend on Him and have a heart that is ready to serve. Jesus served, He listed, and he pointed people to God and scripture.