Top tips for leading a Foundation study group

Explain the ‘why’, from the moment you invite people to take the course, and keep reminding them of that all the way through.  Keep the ‘why’ rooted in the two great commandments (loving God, loving others), whilst also making it specific to your local context. 

Set out a timetable. People are more likely to start well and see it through if they know what they’re committing to. Put together a simple document with dates on it.  If you’re tech-savvy enough, share calendar links for key dates up front, so that people can get those in their calendars.  

Offer practical support. But it doesn’t all have to be you! There are tech wizards and tech-challenged people in every group. See if you can pair them up in a buddy system so everybody can get the best out of the material. It builds friendships and gives the more confident people plenty of opportunities to grow in patience!  If you have learners with particular accessibility needs, get in touch with the Crosslands team; we’d love to help you work out suitable adjustments to make the learning journey easier. 

Get the conversation started.  Keep the conversation going. At the end of each lesson there will often be a discussion thread question; a group moderator can also start a new discussion thread. But some of the gold in your group will be hidden in the heads of those who are not confident about contributing to discussion threads. So get people engaged by mentioning something you’ve really been struck by, and ask others to add their highlights.  Or ask a simple question that links what’s just been covered to your church setting, e.g ‘This section has reminded me that there’s so much more depth to explore here.  What sort of ideas or questions came to mind for you as you worked through it?’

Value the differences in your group. Churches are often pretty diverse communities, in terms of age, backgrounds, confidence and many other things. Find ways to show how everyone is valuable, and brings something worthwhile to the study group. For example in discussion threads or in your face to face sessions you could specifically invite comments from different kinds of people, e.g. ‘I’d love to hear views from those who didn’t grow up in the UK / from those who are older (or younger) than me’.  Trust and encourage people to contribute.  If they are believers studying God’s Word, then the Spirit is at work in them. Hearing from them can bring blessing to others in the group (and if they really do go off-piste, that’s a great opportunity for you to practice gently setting things straight…).

A little preparation goes a long way. You don’t have to hold all the course content in your head to be able to lead great in-person sessions for your group. But it really helps everyone if you go into those sessions familiar with what’s been covered in the unit, and with a few well-framed questions. Ask questions that focus on a few different ‘levels’ of learning. Here are some ideas:

• Ask what people enjoyed.
• Explore what they found especially challenging to understand – perhaps inviting them to try explaining a key idea to one another in their own words (if your group has a sense of humour, you could even try charades or pictionary!).
• Invite them to see and suggest the implications or applications of what they’ve been learning.
• Help them to see connections, first with what is being taught on a Sunday, and also between what they’re learning and all of life. Good theology is profoundly practical!
• Point people further – you may want to suggest a passage people could study or a book they could read.

Balance structure with flexibility. Having a clear schedule for completing the module is good for developing the discipline of study, but sometimes you may find that you need to change the pace, perhaps taking a bit longer than you originally planned. That’s OK. You have access for a whole year. Some courses take more time to digest in the beginning so maybe you can space out the in-person meetings more, or perhaps spend a whole meeting on a single unit when you had planned to cover three units in that meeting. With flexible material it is up to you how you want to proceed and get the most out of the course that will benefit everybody.

Celebrate completion! If you ask, we can create certificates for learners who complete a course.  Why not present them as part of a church service?  It gives people the sense of accomplishment, encourages participation and catching up from those who dropped out, you can use it to share short testimonies (which we would LOVE to hear as well!) and can use it to get everybody excited for the next course.