Two Exercises

Two good exercises for a small group, bible study, or discipleship meeting. Neither of them were originally my idea, but I've tweaked them substantially and found through experience that a lot of good can come out of going through them with people.

1. Three Lists

Take a whiteboard or a large piece of paper, and guide the audience to answering a question. The first question is, "What ideas or truths would a person have to believe in order to become saved or to be a Christian?" Keep their responses simple; don't let them get away with large, comprehensive statements like "You'd have to believe that Jesus Christ came down to sanctify us through the atonement He provided on the Cross." Your audience will or should probably come up with statements like "Jesus was a real, historical person." "Jesus was also fully God." "The Bible is a valid source of truth." "We can't make it to heaven through our own efforts." In summary, you're getting an understanding of what the gospel basis is in a short list of short statements.

Next, lead them through generating another list of ideas or truths. The second question is, "What are things that should be a part of every Christian's walk with God?" This list will probably include spiritual disciplines: prayer, quiet time, bible study, worship, fasting, accountability... and it might also include healthy practices like having a solid Christian community, evangelism, church, being filled with the Spirit, etc. The idea here is that you're having a discussion about those essential things about living the Christian life that, if any serious, earnest Christian were missing one, he or she would be missing out on God's best for them. Don't let people get by with blanket suggestions -- ask them why quiet times should really be on the list, and if a Christian doesn't get up every morning in a scheduled way, will he or she really be missing out on God's best? Is there a Scriptural basis for that? Is it essential or just helpful? Through answering this question, you'll be eliciting an image of what people think it means to follow God.

Then for the third and final list, ask people to clear their heads of the past two questions and discussions and to think intently on the third question: "How would a guy go about falling in love with a girl?" Be clear: you're not asking how you can get someone to fall in love with you, but how you would go about falling in love with someone. You might get a few answers: "You'd have to spend time with her." "You'd have to get to know her." But I think you'd come to the conclusion with your audience that although there are some solid, meaningful things you should do, it's not a watertight, comprehensive process.

Things you can take from this exercise: When I've done it with my disciple and with a small group, we chased it down all sorts of rabbit holes. One was that, in some ways, it's harder than people think to define exactly what a Christian is. People almost always come up with Romans 10:9, but don't usually feel that a Christian can just abide by those two statements and fundamentally understand the gospel. There's just so much divergence of doctrine. At some point, most people decide that Muslims are not Christians, and that Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses are somewhere on the periphery of Christianity, and that Baptists and Methodists are near the center, and it's based on some belief in a fundamental basis of truths, but what goes into that basis and why do we buy into it? The first question is an excellent launching pad for thinking that one out.

The second question I added because I thought it was a good thing to think about why we approach our relationship with God in particular ways, and whether those are good ways for us or good ways for everyone.

And I think the third question is a beautiful one because it reminds us that the center of following Jesus isn't so much what we believe, but a love relationship that can't be summed up on a list without losing some of its power and mystery. How would you go about falling in love with a girl? It'd probably be more than a list of disciplines and good ideas -- it would probably be a saga of mistakes and excitement and anticipation and understanding and communion and forgiveness and grace and intimacy and thrill. How much more so falling in love with Jesus!

So that was Three Lists.


2. The Starting Lineup

Pass out notecards to everyone in your group. Have them shut their Bibles and make them inaccessible. Ask them to take 5 minutes and write down on their notecard the top 5 or 10 go-to Scriptures they would use to explain the gospel to someone. Then discuss what people wrote and why.

The point here isn't that people won't always have Bibles on them or that they need to memorize every verse, although those are certainly ideas worth considering. The point here is to see how ready we are to take the gospel to the nations and to our friends. It was pretty telling that, the last time I did this exercise, several people wrote down "John 3:16" and then balked at coming up with other verses or passages.

In 2 Timothy, Paul charges his disciple to "preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching." I think we are all similarly commissioned, and I think we would be ill-prepared if we were to go out into our mission field, wherever it is, with just John 3:16 at our disposal.

Am I dogging the power and beauty of John 3:16? I am not. But I have the feeling that most of us aren't sharing the gospel with people to the extent or with the frequency that we would claim that followers of Christ should. There are only two reasons for our hesitancy: we don't know how, or we don't want to. The more equipped and awash and ready we are with the truth of Scripture, the more we can overcome both of those roadblocks.

And that was the Starting Lineup.