Questions

Questions are incredibly powerful things. Knowing how to word a question or knowing what question to ask can give you incredible insight into a person's life, thoughts, passions and aspirations. Today, I asked a whole lot of questions. I was interviewing someone at work and asked questions. We had our first meeting as the new Spiritual Growth committee at church and I asked questions that gave me great perspective on where people were in their journeys right now.

A few weeks ago, I spent a couple of hours trying to perfectly construct a set of questions that I would present to the Spiritual Growth group. I wanted them to be very open-ended, inviting discussion, but not leading. I wanted them to be honest - with true meaning and designed to provide useful information. I wanted them to be neutral - with no right or wrong answer. Accomplishing all of that was harder than I thought it would be.

Well, I must have done well constructing these questions. I sent out seven questions in advance. I thought that tonight we'd get through all of the questions and move on to setting a couple of goals. We got through two of the questions. There was SO much feedback. SO many ideas shared and SO much rich discussion! We never got off-topic or sidetracked. And I came back with more notes about our responses than I imagined I could.

When I make a list of things I want to get through and have an agenda or plan, I'm a pretty big stickler to getting it all done. Tonight a little part of me feels like we didn't get much accomplished. After all, we didn't even make it half way through the list! On the other hand, though, the discussion and response was so rich and so telling that I feel like we accomplished a ton. I wouldn't want to have cut that conversation short.

I thought I was crazy for obsessing so long over asking the right questions. But I got what I wanted, so maybe the obsession was worth it....