Glad You Asked was run over three months with seven group members that represented seven different countries. The following is from the perspective of the group leaders.

1. What did running a group look like for you?

There were three of us who led and everyone led a session in turn with a co-leader who was responsible for the hospitality. Afterwards, we debriefed the evening by discussing what went well and what could be improved.

We found it very easy to lead. In fact, it didn’t really feel like leading – it was more an experience of facilitating discussion. This raised questions about whether we should offer our own thoughts on the questions and subject. For us, it depended on the number of Christians and seekers who turned up for the group. We found that if you only facilitated, you were only observing. It was good for our group to give our own point of view.

We found it interesting to see how the questions worked and discussion was created. The biggest challenge was when discussion went quiet and we need to get people going again.

2. How did you get started?

We had difficulty getting going because we didn’t have close relationships with those we wanted to invite. However, an advantage of using this among international students is that it’s easy to invite them because they’re so willing to have relationship.

We also had difficulty in advertising and communicating it. We positioned it as a discussion group by mentioning the questions we would talk about. Because we all live together, on the night we were meeting, we went around and knocked on doors, inviting people to join us. Some did, just to practice English, but ended up staying for the whole time.

3. What would you do differently next time?

In the group, there were many from completely secular backgrounds, mostly from Asia. Because of this, there was no concept or understanding of who Jesus was, even the basic facts that are in Western society. Because of that, we struggled when we got to the final four sessions on Jesus because they had no context for the material. We ended up with a straightforward bible study because we had to explain so much of the background. As a result, we went from a discussion group to a teaching session and couldn’t debate because the group members didn’t know enough about Jesus. Next time, we would consider making the last four sessions optional, depending on where the group was at in their thinking. Another idea would be to alternate one of the topical sessions (1-6) with a session on Jesus (7-10).

Upon reflection, we would allow for more social times. It would have facilitated better discussions during the group sessions. The time spent together makes you very close relationally and it’s good to build on that outside of organised Glad You Asked group time.

4. What are the unique challenges of using Glad You Asked with international students?

The biggest challenge one will face is the language barrier. As leaders, it requires that you be patient and take time to both anticipate what might be a struggle for people as well as think about how to paraphrase the material. After each video clip, we asked people if there was anything that they didn’t understand, giving them a chance to express their confusion without feeling embarrassed. As a result, the course will take longer than suggested. For nearly all the sessions, we split it over two weeks, determining where we were going to stop before the session got started.

The language barrier becomes an issue in discussion, as people feel afraid or embarrassed to speak about what they think. For us, we overcame this by having a structure to our discussion, either going around the circle giving people a chance to talk or else calling on people by name to make sure everyone had a chance.

5. What is your advice to someone thinking about running a Glad You Asked group?

Be a participant in Glad You Asked before you lead it. This will give you an idea of what it’s going to be like especially if you know that you are going to lead in the future. When you do lead, have an apprentice who needs some experience but can carry on leading on their own in the future.

Also, for us, it was good to have three different leaders who had strengths and weaknesses that complemented each other. It allowed us to share the load and responsibility of the group and meant the group could carry on even if one of us couldn’t make it.