Online Small Groups— Nuggets of Wisdom from Bathurst

I was recently chatting about how to effectively engage youth in small groups over Zoom with my friend Ed Sowden, former Youthworks College student and current Youth Pastor at Bathurst Presbyterian Church.

As we chatted, Ed had a tonne of valuable insight. I thought it was too good not to share.

 Put small groups at the front end of your program rather than at the end.

When a youth ‘arrives’ at their online youth group meeting they answer an introductory poll question, and then the first thing that happens is that they are sent off into breakout rooms for their small group. This is a very deliberate move on Ed’s part because he believes that this is the time when the best discipleship is going to happen. When we start our online program in an ‘all-in’ way, this sets a tone that could potentially undermine effective discipleship by encouraging passive consumption. Ed says,

“Having 40+ people on screen a at the beginning can be chaos. This, by nature, needs to end up being centred around one person (i.e. a leader) speaking and everyone else passively watching.”

Ed’s point is that you can’t have effective interaction between 40 people all at once.

“We don’t want to start with passivity, it’s already way too easy to do it that way on zoom! So don’t derail yourself by having a time of passive chaos first up, do that later in the program. If you break out into smaller groups at the beginning when there’s a high level of energy as kids arrive, it’s easier for them to channel that energy into contributing to the group. That way it’ll be much less passive and therefore much more engaging.”

I think Ed raises a good point.

 Factor in ‘movement’

It is not ideal for young people to sit and consume content in a static way in small groups. It’s much more engaging when there is dynamic interaction. The way that Ed ensures this for his small groups is to factor in what he calls ‘movement’, by which he means regularly changing modes and using different ways to engage the youth.

He suggests that you could start simply by watching a short video and discussing it, then screen sharing / annotating a passage, then another interactive activity before sharing and praying for one another and finishing the small group time with a game before re-joining the large group. Being intentional and planning a handful of different ways to interact with each other and the Word, helps keep interest levels high.

 Leverage the tools at your disposal for discipleship

Like many youth leaders, one of the big ways that Ed and his team are seeking to engage in effective discipleship is by making use of the multitude of resources that are at their fingertips by virtue of the fact that they are ministering through an online medium. Making full use of the tools that Zoom has built into the program, such as the whiteboard function, annotation, polls, emoji reactions and the more recently developed immersive view is a good place to start. But Ed points out that simply using these functions is not enough— we must intentionally direct how they are being used.

One example of this is not only getting the youth to annotate the passage with highlights and underlines, but by putting an arrow with their name on it next to parts of the passage that they have a question about. Then as the leader works their way through the passage they can stop and interact with each question at the appropriate time.

Ed also pointed out that when you’re online for your group, you have the entire internet at your disposal. When someone asks a question, use it as an opportunity to teach your youth how to find the answers for themselves. Show them how to do a word search on Biblegateway.com, or to discern between the good and bad answers that Google gives to our questions. This moves away from a model where leaders are the expert with the answers. Instead, leaders are equipping youth to find the answer for themselves.

Vary your question types

Small groups are usually built around asking questions of each other and a passage of scripture. Ed helpfully points out that there are a multitude of different types of questions to use.

• Icebreaker questions— the sooner you can get someone speaking in the small group setting, the more likely it is that they will continue to contribute… and vice versa. Whether online or in person, a part of effective engagement is getting people to make an active contribution to the group as early as possible.

• Closed questions (a question with a yes / no answer)— are useful for kids who need an easy win to help them engage, but they need to be simple. If you give a kid who is struggling a hard to answer question, it’ll likely make them clam up for fear of getting it wrong.

• Directed open questions (a question with no wrong answer) — directing a question like “What would you say to….” or “how does this make you feel?” to specific people in the group helps to progress discussion and fosters involvement from more than those who already feel comfortable giving an answer. It’s a really useful way of pursuing active engagement from people who are less comfortable to talk because there’s no wrong answer.

• Incidental questions— some of the questions we’ll ask in small groups are set questions that ought to have been prepared earlier. But there are questions that an effective leader will add along the way which help to flesh out important topics and keep the youth engaged. It’s important that you have a good knowledge of the people in your group in order to do this effectively.

 Unmute everyone in the group

An interesting question that Ed and his leaders have been discussing as a team is the benefit of having all the youth in the small group unmuted. Ed’s inkling is that when all of the youth are muted by default, it actually works against us because it’s one more barrier a young person has to overcome in order to contribute to the group. Sure, there’ll be times when background noise might become distracting and you’ll have to mute someone momentarily, and that is fine! But in a medium where we’re already battling for effective engagement we need to remove as many barriers as possible, and if a young person can just open their mouth and speak without having to negotiate the unmuting process, this is one less thing working against us.

 Consider your energy levels

The last piece of gold to share from my conversation with Ed was to consider your own energy levels as the leader of the group. Ed says,

“Your group will benefit from you doubling your energy, because screens have a way of ‘sapping’ our energy, which means that we come across much flatter than we actually feel. So, the energy level has got to be doubled on our end to come across as somewhat normal to the youth.”

This might seem unattainable for many of us who by Friday night are tired after a long week. The advice Ed gives three tips:

1)  Take control of your diary and make sure you plan in some rest time before youth on Friday. Do something that will refresh you for the night to come. It might be some exercise, a nap, a swim— anything that will rejuvenate you and ensure you have sufficient energy for the youth.

2)  Be deliberate in what you eat before youth group— a good meal helps a lot to sustain us when we need energy.

3)  Remember the things that you LOVE about youth ministry. For Ed these are things like the significant impact we can have on a young person who is searching for meaning by pointing them to Jesus, or the fact that God’s Word is powerful, and He works by His Spirit in amazing ways as we proclaim it. Remembering these truths will help fill us with enthusiasm as we launch into another night of youth group online.

 At this stage it’s uncertain how long we will be running our groups online. But even when we’re back face to face, online small groups may prove to be a helpful way of engaging the digital natives we are seeking to minister to. These are some tips from what Ed has learnt as he leads the youth group at Bathurst Presbyterian over zoom, which will need to be tailored to fit your own context.

Which of these six bits of wisdom can you tailor and apply at youth church to help engage the young people in your online small group?

Ed sowden