Connecting questions

I believe it was around 2015 when we started gathering with some friends and using the Discovery Bible Study method (or one variation anyway). This is a method of small group bible study designed to be simple enough for anyone to do and/or lead, as well as reproducible so it can grow with minimal training or expense. It really just boils down to two things: people, and the bible.

The way it works is, you start with a few basic "connecting" questions, then read and discuss a bible passage, and ideally end with prayer and some type of personal response. I like to break it down into three parts:

• CONNECT (with one another)
• DISCOVER (what the passage says about God/people/our relationship with God and people)
• RESPOND (what will I do as a result?)

Lately I've been working through the "Connect" questions. These are designed to get people sharing and as a way to assess for ourselves 'where we're at,' so to speak.

Here are three different sets I came up with the other day (all trying to get at the same thing):

1. What is something positive that happened this week?
2. What questions or concerns do you have?
3. Have you sensed God's activity in your life? 

1. What can we celebrate?
2. What concerns you?
3. What are you thinking/feeling/sensing?

1. What are you grateful for?
2. What concerns do you have?
3. What is God saying to you?

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Today I was doing some more digging. There are oodles of people and organizations using some iteration of a "Discovery Bible Study." Just a couple I came across had these nice pdf printouts: DBS uses the ABC format (Ask, Bible, Commit), and THIS SIMPLE GUIDE from contagiousdisciplemaking.com.

And... I think I like these "connect" questions:

1. What are you thankful for?
2. What is causing you stress?
3. Anything else??? (I would like to ask for "God sightings," or "How is God working in your life," or something... but maybe that should be part of the discovery process)

That should be a good way to get things started. And that's all we're really looking for anyway...

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I also read somewhere that you should suggest people offer 'sentence answers' rather than 'paragraph answers.' This makes sense, especially in a larger group. In our small gathering it's not much of an issue. In fact, ANY answer is sometimes hard to come up with. Although, we should probably always stress that "I don't know" is an acceptable answer as well.

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So, I don't know... This is what I was thinking about today. We'll see what happens. If anything...