Experiencing God Leader Guide

Facilitating Experiencing God: What Actually Works When You're Running a Group

Running a small group for Experiencing God can feel like trying to herd cats who are also genuinely afraid of having fun. The course material itself is solid — it was designed by Chuck Smith back in the 1980s to help people learn how to hear from God through Scripture, and the leader guide lays out the structure pretty clearly. But the difference between a group that clicks and one that stalls out usually comes down to things the guide doesn't explicitly address. I spent about four years running these groups through my church, and I learned the hard way that the biggest failure point isn't the curriculum. It's scheduling. The standard format asks you to commit to six weekly sessions, each about two to two-and-a-half hours long. People say yes. Life happens. Two weeks in, three of your eight participants have dropped off because someone had surgery, another got transferred at work, and the third just ghosted entirely. You finish with five people and wonder why it felt so hollow. The workaround I settled on was cutting it to a four-week sprint format and doing a single longer session rather than spread-out weekly meetings. People could actually commit to four Saturdays. The content still lands, it just moves faster and people stay more engaged because there's less downtime between meetings.

Experiencing God Leader Guide: The Practical Mechanics

The leader guide is organized around seven questions that walk participants through a decision-making process based on 1 Samuel 3, where young Samuel learns to recognize God's voice. The seven questions are: Is there a biblical command to follow? Is there a biblical principle to apply? Does it agree with the character of God? Is there peace about it? Do wise counselors confirm it? Are circumstances open or closed? Is there a word of knowledge from another believer? Here's what the guide doesn't tell you upfront: the first session is where most groups die. That's the icebreaker and "getting to know you" session, and people treat it like a social hour. You need to set the tone immediately by making it clear this isn't a Bible study where someone reads and explains. Everyone participates. The whole format is discussion-based, not lecture-based. If you sit at the front and read from the guide for the first thirty minutes, you've already lost them. Put the guide down, go around the room, and actually ask the questions. Let silence do its job. The second session is where people encounter the actual exercise — the "Experiencing God" moment where they write down a situation they're facing and go through the seven-question process while the group prays. This is the make-or-break moment. I had one participant, a guy named Dale, who went through the entire exercise and came out the other side absolutely convinced God had given him a clear direction to take a new job. He was excited. Two weeks later he quit without the offer in writing, and it turned out the "peace" he'd felt was just relief at the idea of escaping a toxic workplace, not divine guidance. The guide doesn't really cover this edge case — where someone confuses emotional relief with spiritual confirmation. What I learned to do in situations like that is gently walk them back through question three and ask whether the decision actually aligns with the character of God as revealed in Scripture, not just whether it feels good. Most of the time that's enough to slow someone down without humiliating them.

Common Pitfalls That Will Derail Your Group

The biggest mistake leaders make is treating the seven questions like a rigid checklist instead of a diagnostic framework. They're not steps you methodically tick off like a flight pre-flight inspection. They're lenses. Sometimes question four — the peace question — carries more weight. Sometimes question five — wise counsel — is the one that actually matters. The guide implies this but doesn't stress it enough. I had a woman in my group who was paralyzed by the process because she couldn't find "peace" about a decision that was clearly biblical and had strong counsel confirming it. She was stuck on the emotional component when the rational and spiritual components were already aligned. We spent an entire session untangling that, and it taught me to watch for people who fixate on one question while ignoring the others. Another issue is the prayer portion. The leader guide asks the group to pray for the person going through the exercise, and that's where groups either become genuinely powerful or deeply awkward. I've seen groups where the prayer session turned into a performance — people loudly telling the participant what God was saying rather than actually praying. One guy in particular kept interjecting with "I think God is telling you..." and it completely derailed the exercise for everyone. The fix is straightforward: before the exercise begins, lay down a ground rule that during the prayer time, people pray for guidance rather than pronouncing guidance. It sounds minor but it changes the entire dynamic. There's also the problem of over-spiritualizing mundane decisions. Not every situation needs this process. I've watched people run the seven-question framework on decisions that were straightforward — like whether to repaint their kitchen — and come out exhausted and confused. The guide assumes you'll naturally filter for significant decisions, but participants often don't. Early on, I made it a point to explicitly say: this process is for decisions that matter, not for decisions that inconvenience you. That alone cut the noise significantly.

What the Guide Gets Wrong or Leaves Out

The Experiencing God Leader Guide is thorough on structure but light on facilitation technique. It tells you what to say almost word for word, which is helpful for new leaders but creates a different problem: you sound like you're reading a script, and people tune out. After running several groups, I stopped following the guide verbatim and used it as an outline instead. The questions are the same, but the delivery matters. When I started answering my own questions out loud as a demonstration — showing the group what genuine discernment looks like in practice — engagement jumped noticeably. People stopped treating it like a class and started treating it like something they were actually doing. Another gap is the follow-up. The course ends after six sessions, but the real work happens afterward. I found that scheduling a check-in session four to six weeks after the course ends — just a casual coffee meetup with anyone who went through the process — helped enormously. Several people in my groups made decisions during the course and then quietly failed to act on them. The follow-up conversation was usually the thing that pushed them over the edge. The guide doesn't mention this at all, and it's a significant omission.

When Experiencing God Leader Guide Doesn't Fit

This model works best with people who already have some Christian background and are comfortable with the idea of personal revelation. It struggles in two contexts: new believers who don't yet have a framework for distinguishing God's voice from their own thoughts, and highly analytical people who find the subjective nature of the exercise frustrating. I ran a group once with a mix of new converts and engineers from a local tech company, and the dynamics were messy. The engineers wanted the process to be more structured and evidence-based, while the new believers needed more foundational teaching about what God's voice actually sounds like. A single format couldn't serve both. In that situation, I split the group and ran two parallel versions — one that spent more time on the basics of hearing God and one that spent more time on the practical decision-making framework. It took more preparation but it worked. The guide also doesn't adequately address trauma. Someone who has experienced religious abuse or manipulative spiritual leadership may find the emphasis on "listening for God's voice" triggering or confusing. I encountered this with one participant who had grown up in a cult-like ministry where leaders claimed direct revelation. She couldn't distinguish between healthy discernment and the kind of spiritual manipulation she'd experienced. We spent most of the first two sessions just building trust and establishing boundaries around what this process was and wasn't. It slowed the group down but it was necessary. I wish the guide had a section on recognizing and handling this scenario. If you're looking to download the leader guide, it's available through Victor Books resources and various church supply outlets. It's not expensive — usually around fifteen to twenty dollars for the paperback version. Some churches also use digital copies distributed internally. The workbook that participants use is separate and costs a bit more if you're ordering in bulk for a group.

The core value of Experiencing God isn't in the Seven Questions themselves. It's in teaching people a habit of deliberation before action. That habit — pausing, seeking counsel, checking Scripture, examining your motives — is useful far beyond the context of this specific course. The framework is a tool, not a religion. Use it that way and your group will get more out of it than if you treat it like a ritual to be completed.