“You’re Going to Die,” and 22 Other Small Group Icebreakers

As we all know, the key to any successful small group is the willingness of its members to be emotionally, spiritually, and yes, even physically vulnerable with one another for 15 minutes every Saturday night. In our hectic worlds of work and family, it’s easy to be fake all the time, to put up a façade—even in front of brothers and sisters in Christ with whom you have nothing in common except a shared schedule of social unavailability. What we need is a way to smash through our barriers of prudence, to shatter our trust-issue force fields.

A well-designed icebreaker does just that: it disperses the smokescreen of societal politeness by tricking people into Doing Life Together. Here are just some examples of the kinds of questions you can ask to help your small group feel comfortable sharing deeply personal issues with people they have just met because they attend the other service:

1. If you could change one thing you dislike about yourself, why haven't you done it already?
2. If you hadn't married your spouse, who would you have married? Is their life better than yours?
3. What hidden sin would you not like to confess tonight?
4. How's tithing going?
5. How many things did the pastor get wrong during this week’s sermon?
6. Luther said to "sin boldly." What font type would you use to sin?
7. You're going to die.
8. Have you ever tried essential oils?
9. Have you ever tried Jamberries?
10. Did you know that you can now get exclusive essential-oil infused Jamberries?
11. My spouse and I are intimate once a week, at most. Is this normal?
12. Which presidential candidate would it be a sin to vote for?
13. What could you stop wasting money on every month in order to sponsor a child?
14. Did you really think we wouldn’t find out about you?
15. If you could go back in time and warn your old self about one sin, how would you avoid a temporal paradox?
16. Are you finally ready to tell us about your addiction?
17. If aliens aren’t real, how do you explain this?!
18. Which is harder: to share the gospel with a stranger, or to share your fries with your husband?
19. What sin is your chronic back pain a punishment for?
20. Could it be that you are still single because your standards are too high?
21. Your wife just forgot her head covering at home, right?
22. Here are pictures of people in last week’s service. Who wore it best?