It’s good for people to talk openly in  your group when you ask discussion questions. The challenge is that not every person or every group is used to responding to a teacher’s questions – they’ve been conditioned to be receivers of information, not active participants in a dialog.

To help your group members talk more when they do respond to a discussion question, consider peppering the following phrases into your vocabulary. Used the right way, these phrases can help draw out people’s thoughts and ideas so that a conversation is created. If you want to move away from your group members’ short answers, say one of the following when a group members answers you with a short answer to a discussion question:

• “Please, tell us more about that.”
• “Would you explain what you mean?”
• “Go ahead and unpack that idea some more”
• “How do you see that connecting to this Bible study?”
• “You raise a great idea. What else comes to mind?”
• “Help us understand your train of thought.”
• “Talk some more about that.”