Can We Talk By Priscilla Shirer

Getting Started With Can We Talk By Priscilla Shirer

Can We Talk By Priscilla Shirer is a six-week Bible study designed for small groups that tackles real-life conversations around tough topics. It was released by Group Publishing alongside a full curriculum that includes leader guides, participant workbooks, video segments, and discussion questions. The basic format calls for weekly group meetings where you watch video lessons and work through the material together. Most groups run these sessions for about an hour to an hour and a half. I ran this study with my church group last year. The setup is straightforward: you order the leader kit, which typically costs around forty to fifty dollars, and then each participant gets their own workbook plus DVD access. The study covers subjects like marriage, parenting, anxiety, money, and cultural pressure. Each week builds on the previous one, but honestly the weakest part is that it assumes people will actually do the pre-session reading at home. If your group skimps on that, the live discussion falls flat quickly.

How To Download And Run Can We Talk By Priscilla Shirer

You get the curriculum from Group Publishing directly or through authorized retailers like Amazon or Christianbook.com. There is a digital companion platform called Group Study Plus where you can access the video content online instead of relying solely on physical DVDs. I prefer streaming because loading DVDs in a cramped living room never works reliably. The online portal usually requires a code from inside the workbook to activate access. Here is the process I went through when running this with my group:

• Pick a consistent meeting night and commit to six consecutive weeks. I learned this the hard way when our third session got pushed to the following Thursday because of a community event and everyone lost their momentum.
• Order the leader guide early. It contains the video scripts, discussion prompts, and timing notes. Without it you are guessing during the actual meeting.
• Have each participant get their workbook before the first meeting. The study materials reference specific pages during the session, so people flipping ahead or behind kills the pace.
• Set up the video player before anyone arrives. Projector issues or buffering delays waste fifteen minutes of your limited time.
• Run through the opening icebreaker quickly. These studies include conversational warm-ups, but they tend to drag if you let them. I usually cut the icebreaker time in half and move into the video.

The discussion portion is where most leaders struggle. Priscilla Shirer writes these studies with a specific pacing in mind, and the questions are layered to get deeper as the conversation goes. If you spend the first twenty minutes just answering the surface-level questions, you will not have enough time for the actual meat of the study. I handle this by assigning someone to keep time and explicitly telling the group early on that we are aiming to get through all the main discussion points in each session. One edge case I ran into: three of our participants had never read the Bible before and felt completely lost during the Scripture passages. The study assumes a baseline familiarity with common Bible books and stories. My workaround was simple. I printed out a one-page reference sheet with key references and brief context notes, then handed it out during the first meeting. It did not solve everything, but it reduced the confusion enough that the group kept moving. There is also a free online preview available on the Group Publishing website if you want to sample the material before buying. It includes the first video segment and a few discussion questions. I used that preview with my team before committing to the full order, and it helped us gauge whether the study matched our group's personality and maturity level.

What You Should Know Before Starting

The study is theologically sound from an evangelical standpoint and stays focused on practical application rather than abstract doctrine. That is both its strength and its limitation. If your group is looking for deep doctrinal exploration, this is not it. The material is designed to be accessible to people who might be uncomfortable in traditional Bible study settings. Another thing nobody warns you about: the study works best when the group has some existing trust among members. The topics get personal fast, and if people barely know each other, they will stay surface-level regardless of how well you lead the discussion. I recommend a few informal social gatherings before diving into this curriculum if your group is new to each other. The participant workbook runs about one hundred twenty pages across six weeks, so each week requires roughly twenty pages of reading and writing. Budget an additional twenty to thirty minutes of personal study outside of the group meeting. People who skip the personal prep usually find themselves confused during the group session, since the discussion questions assume you have already reflected on the material individually.

If you decide this is not the right fit after a couple of weeks, you can return unopened leader kits to most retailers. The workbooks are consumable though, so if you have already distributed them and people have written in them, you are stuck with that cost. I learned that by accidentally ordering twelve workbooks when only eight people ended up participating regularly.