A 10 Year Learning Curve
When I first sat in a support group setting I had no idea what I was getting into. It was 2014 and although this setting was very familiar to John, my husband, and co-founder of this ministry, it was not at all familiar to me.
I had been involved in small group settings, discipleship groups and 1-2-1 work. This was not the same.
As I sat as a participant, in a recovery ministry setting, I wondered what on earth I could share as one after another people opened up about the struggles of the week with their respective issues. I shared some issue that I had struggled with and realised that my path was not so very different. I became one of the group, not just an onlooker.
The leader listened, showing compassion
The people listened to me, I no longer felt isolated in my struggle.
There was no judgement.
I was a trained teacher, a missionary, a biblical counsellor. Listening was a part of these relationships but I always felt as if I had to teach, give advice, even fix…(I still had much to learn in these areas).
This was new territory for me. It did not feel comfortable.
I remember meeting a pastor in the early days of this ministry. His words were, “I would so rather present a sermon or do a 1-2-1 with someone. Support group ministry terrifies me. “
I pondered these words for a while and even asked him what it was that “terrified” him. He was concerned that he would be overwhelmed with the number of stories, not knowing what to reply and being out of control.
I understood this first hand.
When John and I ran a support group we would begin with a segment of relevant teaching/story about addiction/life-controlling issues with the whole group; men and women. We began with 45 minutes of this teaching segment and later learned to shorten these segments to 15 minutes or so. (People with life-controlling issues often have limited capacity to work with many teaching/application points. The sharing time in the support groups became more and more a central focus).
This was helpful, it contained Scripture and gave us, and the group, a starting place. I soon learned that after we broke into single sex mixed issue groups it was very helpful to know exactly how I was going to start facilitating. The first thing was welcome, and the group needed to know who was in the group, especially a newcomer.
One of my early mistakes was missing out this first welcome for a newcomer, this meant she could not relax, she needed to have some idea of who was in the group. In no uncertain terms she made this clear to me after the group.
I grew to understand that everyone needed to share a little, even if it was just a name, a place and sometimes go as far as to say why they walked through the door. It takes much courage to do this. Small missteps in this area can mean someone does not come back.
I would then have a couple more group questions up my sleeve, including some icebreakers. Icebreakers such as; name one thing you are grateful for this week, or on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being not so good, where are you this week with your addictive issues? This would get the group sharing one at a time. I would then have an insight question; what stuck out to you from the teaching today, what was helpful to you? Then we would have another round of individual sharing. This would sometimes get mixed with people’s present struggles with their issues. If I had time, I would ask the group if they would like to pray (easy with a predominantly Christian group).
Crosstalk was still a problem. This is when someone speaks out of turn and gives advice to someone who has already shared, speaking directly to another person and not the group, questioning or interrupting the person speaking
I soon learned that sharing ground rules at every session was important to help the problem of cross talking and someone oversharing. Until I had firmly grasped this, I often felt as if I was losing the group. Once I had shared the ground rules, all I had to do was to remind the group of the respective ground rules. (These ground rules are found in the resources section on our website).
Once the structure was in place...
Once the structure was in place in my mind, and I let go of needing to control the group or fix issues that i heard, I began to truly relax and enjoy the group. Especially beginning to see people flourish as they came out of isolation, realising they were not alone in their struggle. This led to seeing God’s work in people’s lives, and those wonderful moments of realisation that God does care; He sees, and wants to show each one the path to true freedom. Christ Jesus. To be able to explore and experience the reality of the following verses alongside others is truly humbling.
Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 7: 24-25
Share each other’s burdens and in this way obey the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2
Sally Childress
Co-founder and women's facilitator Free! Recovery