Guest Article: Icebreakers for Christian Bible Groups

Christian Bible groups are important to help Christians fellowship and learn to live more fully in God's Word. As in any small group, discussion can fall flat if members feel awkward and shy and don't contribute their thoughts. For this reason, it's a good idea for group leaders to open a Bible study session with an icebreaker question. This open-ended question allows group members to feel like experts on a topic, share their thoughts, and leads naturally to a discussion of the Bible verses being studied during the group session.

It is important to make sure to choose an appropriate question. Here are five guidelines to follow when choosing ice breaker questions for your Christian Bible Group.

1. Make sure to connect the question to Scripture. Questions such as "how was your week?" are fine for socializing, but do not serve the purpose of helping members get in the right frame of mind to study the Word. Follow Jesus' example when crafting your questions; note how He often began a teaching by asking a question that would be of interest to His audience but which naturally led to the spiritual principles He was trying to convey. For example, before beginning a discussion about the Prodigal Son, you might ask members how their relationships with their parents or siblings are doing this week.

2. Require every member of the group to answer the question. Ice breakers are useless if only those who are already comfortable in the group answer them. This leads to a situation where only a few members of the group are contributing to conversation, which will make the other members of the group even less comfortable participating.

3. Ask open-ended questions. Ideally, the question should require each member to share something about his or her life. Do not ask questions that can be responded with a simple Yes or No, as these questions do not contribute to a fruitful discussion.

4. Ask questions that allow group members to feel like experts. The questions should be challenging, but not so difficult that group members feel ill-equipped to answer them. Again, look at Jesus' example. He often began His teachings with ideas that were familiar to His audience (see Matthew 6:25-28 for a beautiful example of this.)

5. Participate in answering as well as asking the icebreaker question. It is important to be an example to the members of your group by sharing honestly and openly. In addition, you should be humble enough to realize that you need to learn as well as to teach rather than separating yourself so that the rest of the group learns while you merely teach.

This guest article was contributed by Christine Howell who frequently writes about online degrees and college related topics for Online College Guru, a directory of accredited online degrees.

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