Asking Too Many Questions

 

I think that directors should ask very few questions. The reason for this is that if they do, it has several potential effects on the direction session. First of all, there is a greater risk of directors high jacking the session and leading the discussion where they want it to go rather than holding the directee in the presence of God. Second, there is a risk of putting the directee on the defensive, making them feel like they are being interrogated. Third, it leads to bouncing from topic to topic too much. Our goal as directors should be to hold the directee onto a subject until we have mined it thoroughly with them. We want to go deep with one or two subjects during a session, not bounce around.

 

It is much better to ask a few questions, especially early on in the conversation that helps set the agenda of the session. After that point, most questions should be “holding questions” such as “How does that make you feel?” or “How does God seem to you right now?” Or better yet, no questions at all. Simply switch to reflective responses like “You felt peaceful.” Or even merely “I see”. Quite often merely make sounds like “Hmm” works very well. The directee knows that you are hearing them and empathizing with them without you directing the conversation in any way.

 

Once you have arrived at a topic that is a potential God moment, questions like “So tell me more about your other experience last week?” or “How do you think this relates to what you told me two sessions ago about your work situation?” takes the directee away from the moment and changes the subject.

 

Thinking about this some more, I realized that this could be illustrated by a graph. The following graph has time on the x-axis and subjects as the y-axis. The dotted line is an example of too much discussion going on in a session. The participants are jumping from subject to subject, spending little time with each one. This is an “un-centered” conversation. The solid line represents a session where the bulk of the time is spent on Subject 3, whatever that is. It is acceptable and expected that there may be a few explorations prior to identifying a potential God moment and also afterwards. But the bulk of the time is spent on the one subject. This is a “centered” conversation which has a better chance of going deeper to the point of hearing God’s voice.

 

 

 

Our job as directors is to slow the conversation down, getting our directees to focus on one subject and then to go deep to the point of hearing something from God. We can best accomplish this by avoiding asking too many questions which can be distracting, make the directee feel defensive, or make it easy for us to direct the discussion the way that we want to go.