Group work challenges

On day two I was teaching how to work with a New Testament epistle. I chose Titus because:
a) it is short
b) it addresses church governance and conflict issues.

I wanted to teach my wonderful class how to find lists in Scripture. So on the flip chart we make a list of the qualities of the spiritual leader. There were 17 points and good discussion.

Everyone was keen on getting the list down in their books and those who were slower writers pulled their chairs to the front during break to catch up.

After break my plan was to have work at finding the lists in Scripture on their own.
I wanted to work on four lists (instructions to the older men and women and the younger men and women). These lists only had four or five points each, so I thought the exercise should take about 10 minutes max.

I wanted 8 small groups, so that 2 groups could work on the same list and then compare notes.

This was my instruction:
"I would like you to form 4 groups on this side of the room and 4 groups on this side of the room."
I waved my arms to indicate the two sides of the room, though this was really not necessary since the division was very obvious.
People looked really confused, there was some murmuring, but no movement.
Joseph (one of the leaders) took charge, stood up and asked me, "How would you like us to form the groups?"
"I don't really care," I said, "something like this." Then with my arm I drew circles over people's heads, each circle containing about 4 or 5 people each. The instruction seemed clear to me, so I turned away to look at my notes.

Suddenly utter chaos broke out behind me. Several people were yelling instructions, others were yelling questions, others were waving arms, and the rest looked confused. People were moving back and forth, some carrying chairs over their heads, others were being sent back and forth across the room.
One of the other leaders came to me with a very serious look on his face and said, "Pastor, we have a suggestion; maybe we can count off 1, 2, 3, 4 and then put people in the groups based on the number they call."
"It does not have to be that complicated," I said...but it was too late, half the people were counting off 1, 2, 3, 4, the other half kept scurrying around with chairs and books.

I just stood there wide-eyed, observing the chaos, Richard was just shaking his head.
At he end of the chaos there were 3 huge groups. That was no good.

I decided to simplify my instruction and work with only 4 groups, so I asked the largest group to split in half. Immediately the other two groups split in half as well, so now I had 6 groups. People are still shouting and chairs are rattling. At this point I just burst out laughing having no idea how to make 6 groups into 4.

Two more leaders came to me, Joseph and Lyson, asking if this was ok.
My answer: "It would be really good if we could have 4 groups." At this point I am thinking desperately how to change the assignment to create work for 6 groups.
15 minutes later, we have success - there are 4 groups. So much for my original timing estimate for this exercise.


I gave each group their assignment, wrote it out on the white board just to be sure.
Only 1 group seemed to be working, the other 3 seemed to have been developing a constitution first.
I was asked if I wanted to appoint a leader for each group and whether there should be a scribe in each group...sigh...decision making is not easy here.

The groups did a fine job and amazingly enough we completed Titus by the end of the day.
I am sure that tomorrow will present a new challenge.