A Discussion Leaders' Perspective

John Gibbons and I led a group through these questions in March and April of 1998 at First Parish Church in Bedford, Massachusetts. We met once a week for an hour and a half, and covered two questions a session. It was a drop-in, no-commitment discussion group that developed a core membership of about a dozen people, with as many as 21 showing up for the second session. Discussions were both lively and warm; I was surprised by people's willingness to talk about themselves openly and deeply in a drop-in group that large.

The group was entirely made up of adults. I believe the youngest person was about 30. I believe that other types of groups (ongoing discussion or support groups, for example, or even teen or young adult groups) could also benefit from going through the questions.

I believe these questions provide a very low-overhead format for leading an adult religious education course of some depth. Other than having a comment or a reading to get discussion rolling, no preparation on the leaders' part is necessary. Typically John or I read the next question out loud, and then either said a few sentences to suggest a range of possible answers, or presented a reading related to the topic. Then we got out of the way until the discussion died down enough to go on to the next question. We made no attempt to push the group towards a consensus on any of the questions.

John and I led the discussions with a light hand. The group knew I had written the questions, so occasionally they asked me for clarification--but if the clarified question wasn't the one the group wanted to talk about, they ignored me and I let them ignore me.  John and I participated in the discussion, but did not intervene as discussion leaders unless an off-topic discussion had gotten repetitive and boring. The group was usually grateful to be led back to the topic.

I think the best advice I could give prospective discussion leaders is to listen intently. The group will take its lead from you. If you are curious, supportive, open in discussing your own experiences, and nurturing of the group members, they will tend to treat each other with the same kind of respect and trust. If you are argumentative and have an agenda to push, the group will reflect that back at you as well.

Having this discussion in a Unitarian-Universalist church worked well. In the UU tradition ministers are not assumed to be intellectual authorities, so the group did not look to John for the right answers. The UU tradition does not assign ultimate authority to any book, so the group did not fall into quoting scripture at each other. I am curious how this course would work in other religious traditions; let me know if you try it.

Feel free to use any of the materials related to this course on this web site. Don't worry about copyright issues unless you are charging sizable fees for the course. (We offered it for free, but I wouldn't object to someone charging a nominal fee covering room costs or photocopying. If you're trying to make money, we should talk.) I'd appreciate it if you would mention my name to your group and tell them about this web site.