1.Someone volunteers to read the passage out loud and pronounces some of the words wrong.
2.The reader is corrected by that one person who is very confident he knows how to pronounce all the words (though he does not volunteer to read.)
3.The small group leader asks the first discussion.
4.The group is suddenly quiet enough to hear the ambient noises in the room. Everyone desperately hopes someone else will speak first.
5.The small group leader moves on to the second discussion question and then everyone wants to go back and discuss the first question.
6.Now that the discussion is started, someone brings up a very vaguely related theological question he's been thinking about for a while.
7.This initiates an intense one on one seminary debate between two group members. The group leader panics internally as 80% of the group starts to check out mentally.
8.Someone describes a chart he saw once - which would really help if, you know, everyone could see it and not just hear him describe it.
9.The group leader makes a haphazard attempt to wrap up this debate and explain how it connects to the original passage. (It only kind of does.)
10.By the grace of God, someone asks a pertinent heartfelt question about the passage read at the beginning of group.
11.Someone else responds with a nice summary of how he understands it and the group voices agreement but the original question isn't answered still.
12.A third person tags on to the second's person point about that other part of the Bible and makes a new point that is pretty astute but it still ultimately doesn't answer the original question.
13.Someone who arrived late then shares something that was already said in the first ten minutes of discussion, but it's actually quite useful because it harkens back to a moment when the group was discussing this week's passage.
14.In one sentence, someone so perfectly sums up all of the thoughts discussed that night.
15.The group leader thinks, "Wow I should have said that at the beginning. Let's pray and end this."
16.But before it can be ended, someone shares a 20 minute story that is unrelated to the rest of the discussion.
17.We pray and end, and we can't wait for next week because small groups may be hilariously messy, but we love this sloppy bunch of humans experiencing God's grace together.
