Nika Spaulding joins Kay Daigle for this fun and helpful conversation as she discusses using questions like Jesus. Nika did her doctoral research on this topic and it has changed her perspective of how to disciple others.
Whether you disciple your own child, mentor another woman or teach the Bible, this conversation will provide a lot to think about and some practical ideas for implementing questions.
Recommended resources
Jesus is the Question: the 307 Questions Jesus Asked and the 3 He Answered by Martin CopenhaverWhat do you Seek? The Questions of Jesus as Challenge and Promise by Michael J. Buckley, SJThe Questions of Jesus: Challenging Ourselves to Discover Life’s Great Answers by John DearRe-Imagining Discipleship: A Theological Perspective BOW podcast with Nika SpauldingYou can watch this episode on video.
Timestamps:
00:32 This topic is for everyone!
02:19 How did you get interested in this topic?
03:39 Making disciples
06:28 What kinds of questions are we talking about?
12:00 Questions in Jesus’ day
22:17 What did your research look like?
26:42 How can we learn to ask questions like Jesus?
Transcript
Kay >> I’m Kay Daigle of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. Welcome to this podcast recording. Our special guest today is Nika Spaulding.
Kay >> Welcome again, Nika.
Kay >> Nika is a frequent guest on our podcast and our videos, and we’re just always so happy when you’re able to join us. I’m particularly excited about this conversation today because you’re going to be talking about asking questions like Jesus. And that just sounds so interesting to me. And as I was thinking about it, I thought there are a lot of people who could probably benefit from this.
I mean, the first people I thought of were like Bible teachers or people who write curriculum or people discipling other people. Or maybe even parents or counselors. I mean that the more I thought about it, the longer the list got. I just kept thinking of almost everybody. And in any kind of capacity there are times that they want to teach other people and maybe they need to use more questions.
Nika >> Yeah, I think you’re exactly right. I mean, I started out studying this as a way to help, like, church leaders. And then the more I started studying, the more I thought that this is helpful to me as an aunt and as a parent and as really anyone who wants to love others. Well, I think we have to grow in this skill.
And so, yeah, I think the list is very long. But it might be everyone. It could be everyone.
Kay >> I’m kind of thinking that it is. I just hadn’t gotten that far in my mind. I think I would have eventually gotten there because I just kept adding in small group leaders and, you know, just all sorts of people. So I think that’s good.
Well, tell me just briefly how you got interested in this topic.
Nika >> Yeah, I think it was almost by happenstance. So I’m finishing my doctoral program and of course, you have to write a thesis at the end of your time there. And in the beginning I thought I would do stuff on you know, rhetoric in the ancient world, how we understand Bible reading in the ancient world, I thought about like all these, like, really niche things that I was like super nerdy right up my alley.
I wrote a bunch of papers on literacy in the ancient world, like, all these things. And then I realized, you know, wow, that’s neat. And it’s really fascinating. I more and more thought, I want to create something that can help the church. I wanted to create a tool that does exactly what we were just saying, a tool that can help others.
And really the impetus for it was a young woman that I’ve been discipling for probably 15 years came to me and said, “Hey, how do I disciple others?” And, you know, I kind of looked at it like, “Well, what’s, you know, what’s the other person going through? And why do they ask you to disciple them?” And she was like, “I don’t really know that.”
I was like, “Well, I’d start there.”
And that got me thinking, what is the basis of all of our discipleship? What can we learn about discipleship from Jesus? And is there a tool I can create?
So that’s what got me started asking that question, “How did Jesus disciple?” And then as I started it more, I realized asking questions is a huge part of this that I think is often overlooked.
Kay >> What are some other things you noticed about the way that Jesus discipled besides the questions?
Nika >> Yeah. And what you just asked is the critical question. You get to the end of Jesus’ time in the book of Matthew, and he gathers all his disciples. He’s already died. He’s risen from the dead. And he says to them, “Go and make disciples.”
And then he goes on and says, “Baptizing and teaching.” And so when people talk about making disciples, what they say is, Oh, it’s baptizing and teaching.
And I’m like, “Are you sure? Or are those things you do while making disciples?”
And that is the argument that I make and the argument plenty of people make. And so making disciples in the book of Matthew is following what Jesus did with his disciples. So one of the things that you can do is just look at every time the word discipleship is used in the gospel, Matthew or you can just watch what Jesus did.
And so when you look at Jesus in the Gospels, of course, the first thing we think of is his big teaching blocks, especially in Matthew, right? He’s got five big teaching blocks. We think of the parables, we think of Jesus. He’s incredible. Like the Sermon on the Mount. We think of these things. So that’s a big part of it.
The other part of it, and anybody who’s ever led knows this, some things are taught and some things are caught. As a parent, especially a teacher, you tell your kids some things, but then they pick up on things because they watch how you do it and they see how you do it. And so modeling is another thing that we see Jesus do.
You know, he walks with them for a while—all of his disciples. And then he goes, “Okay, now go out and do it. Like go out and do what you saw me do.” So modeling is a part of it.
Another thing, he uses really great examples from his culture. So one of the things, if you’re going to disciple people, I think you have to be a good cultural exegete.
You kind of have to know—so this matters, especially in cross-generational ministries. You know, there’s a whole new vocab that Gen Alpha uses that I’m constantly having to be like, “Now, what does Skibidi Ohio mean? Is that good? Is that bad?” You know, I swear they just have a whole new vocabulary.
But if I want to love my nieces and nephew, I’ll have to learn what “big back” means and all of that.
Sometimes discipleship is rebuking, sometimes it’s calling out. But the one thread that I kept coming back to was Jesus asks a lot of questions, a lot. And when I was looking up how to disciple I was looking at all these resources. So a few of them—in fact, almost none of them explicitly say, “Hey, part of discipleship is asking really good, open ended, penetrating questions.”
And that is a lot of what we see Jesus doing. I think people understand we have to teach. I think they understand we have to model. I think they understand, you know, we should baptize. But asking really good questions is missing. And I think, Kay, maybe people like you and me are the culprits because we think our job is to communicate, like if you had the right knowledge, then you would do the right things.
And while that is true, like any discipleship program should have a component of teaching, if it doesn’t also have really insightful penetrating questions, I think you’re robbing your people of a more full, more Christlike approach to discipleship.
Kay >> So are you talking about questions that are written down in a Bible study? Are you talking about oral questions when you’re together with a group like you’re the teacher, but you’re not going to just talk the whole time?
Nika >> Yeah. Both Yeah, that’s exactly right. So sometimes we see Jesus teaching in front of a crowd. You know, I love when they try to trap him like. Jesus asks over 300 questions. He is asked about 180 and he answers like three. So one of my favorite things that Jesus does is he answers a question with a question, you know?
So they go, “Jesus what is the greatest command?” And he says to them, “You tell me.”
And then they say, “Hey love the God and love your neighbor.” Yeah. And Jesus goes, “Yeah.” And then he goes, “Who is my neighbor?” So Jesus tells them a parable, and then he puts it back on them. “You tell me.”
So I think part of the teaching component is asking, really insightful questions that force people in the teaching time to reflect, to say, okay.
And then the other piece of it is I think we have to (in our curriculum) ask more than fill-in-the-blank questions. And curriculums have come a long way. I am not saying don’t do that.
I think curriculum writers have done a terrific job, but sometimes those questions only have to do with the content of the teaching. So for example, how could you apply this in your life?
But maybe there’s a bigger question before the question, like “Why don’t you do this? Or who do you say that Jesus is?” or “Do you want to get well?”
There are these big open-ended questions that I think we also need to create opportunities in our ministry to ask. And in part of what we can do that is if we create curiosity cultures, is what I call them, creating cultures where question-asking is expected and people can also ask questions of leaders. Because what happens is we don’t ask questions and leaders can shut down questions from their students.
And I think sometimes it’s because either we don’t know and we don’t want to admit we don’t know, or sometimes we just think, you know, there’s sort of like a one to many like I am the teacher, you are the student. And so the communication only goes from me to you.
And with Jesus, you see this very integrative, interactive back and forth kind of ministry that I think if we are thoughtful and creative, even in the megachurches, I think they could figure out a way to put more of this into their into their teaching style.
Kay >> I totally agree. I totally agree with you on that. I think that would be the best way to disciple people, for sure. I’ve always believed that you have to have conversations. One reason I’ve always believed in having small groups as part of it, not just as somebody who’s lecturing about the Bible. You can learn a lot of information, but it doesn’t necessarily go to your heart and it doesn’t make you think nearly as much. You just kind of write down the answers. And so you’re just believing these answers that the person has said, and you’ve never thought through it for yourself, which isn’t the best way to learn period anything.
Nika >> Yeah, exactly. Chemistry, geometry, history, theology. I mean, there’s this study that came up in my dissertation where children ask thousands of questions throughout like a week. I mean, there’s so many. And then as they grow older, they actually ask fewer questions. And so some people say, well, maybe that’s because they now know more information and they know how to find it.
But what they found was children who asked fewer questions in schools are actually less engaged. And so there’s a strong correlation to classrooms that enable question-asking and make it a part of the curriculum. Students are more engaged and they learn more. And part of that is because we don’t reward questions.
Because if you’ve ever been around a toddler, they ask a lot of questions like “What is this?” “Why is this that other than that?” You know, and it’s like but they’re making sense of the world. And I think part of our responsibility is to not quite that is to say, “What a great question!” “Why do you think the sky is blue? What do you think?” That is part of what I’m driving toward in anything that we learn.
Question-asking should be a bigger part of what we’re doing.
Kay >> Yeah. Right now, I’m sort of leading a small group of women. We’re doing this mostly on our own and online. We’re going to read through the Bible in two years. And most of these haven’t read through the Bible before. And so at the end of a week, every single week, at the end of the week, I send out a question, “What did you see this week in your reading?” “What are you wrestling with here?”
And they say such great things, but sometimes they ask questions. Sometimes it’s not what I learned, it’s like, “But what about this?” “What about?” in the things that they’ve never thought of before. And I’m really just loving the fact that they’re doing that.
Nika >> That’s so good. And honestly, who reads through a chapter of the Bible and doesn’t have a question? I mean, the Bible itself is one of those if you don’t have questions at the end of it, I don’t know that you’re actually paying attention. I mean, I’m rereading it for the umpteenth time and going, “Huh? I wonder what that means?”
Or today I was discussing a passage in verse Kings 13. I still don’t know what it means. I still can’t make sense of it. I’ve been talking about it for three weeks. So I think that’s a normative part. And in fact, I know it is because part of the discussion around my thesis is “What? Why does Jesus do this?”
“Why does he have so many questions? Is this something that’s just a part of his culture, or is this something a part of that?” There are things in Jesus culture that I would not say, “Hey, we should integrate that into ours.” So the question becomes, is this one of those things that we should integrate, or is this just really unique to Jesus?
And it wasn’t unique to Jesus. It is something that was a part of his Greco-Roman culture, a part of his Jewish upbringing, and a part of just being the Son of God. One of the lines in my thesis is I think he gets question-asking from his dad. If you read the whole Bible, it’s full of questions.
And so this was a big part of my research is realizing no, actually, I think healthy dialog in any culture includes question-asking.
Kay >> Yeah, I think that’s true. And so in his culture, they did that because the Greco-Roman culture was that way. And that spread into the Jewish culture or were they already doing it?
Nika >> Yeah, yeah. It’s such a good question. Yes and no. So when you think of any time you’re writing about something in the First Century, especially if it’s taking place in Israel, the question becomes well, did they get that from their neighbors or is that something?
And often the answer is some mix, right? Like when we look at like the early churches did, they look like the synagogue. Yes. Did they look like civic society? Yes. And so Jesus question-asking is a little bit like that.
So if you think about when you think of question-asking, you think of the ancient Greco-Roman world, Socrates dominates the landscape, right? We named a whole method after him, the Socratic method, which is actually when you think about the actual Socratic method. What you do is ask so many questions until the person you’re asking them of, realizes they’re wrong.
So I was like, thank God third grade teachers don’t actually use the Socratic method because I think kids would go home and cry. But Socrates and Plato really believed that by asking questions, you could pull information out of a person. They believed that there was innate knowledge. Aristotle actually, interestingly enough, breaks with them and is “No, people need knowledge.”
So I’m like, I’m a little Aristotelian in that. But question-asking was a big part of the Greco-Roman world. So when Jesus is ministering in his town, people would have an understanding that this is a good way to learn. Like they would come to expect this. And so although Jesus ministry focuses a lot on Jewish folks who are going to be shaped more by their Jewish upbringing, he’s constantly interacting with Greek or like, you know, Matthew 8. He talks to this Roman centurion who would clearly know that a back and forth is a way of communication.
And so, you know, the Romans centurion is like, “Hey, I have this young man, whether it’s servant or child with me that needs to be healed.” And Jesus is like, “What does that have to do with me?” And it’s an invitation to—are you going to answer him or are you going to be angry and walk away?
And the Romans centurion goes, “I’m a man in charge of people. If I say the word, it’s done. You say the word and it’s done.” And Jesus goes, “Wow, pretty good.” And so, you know, you see this almost invitation through the question-asking. So one way we see Jesus’ question-asking being formed is in the culture he’s in. He’s in a world where everybody’s religious, nobody’s not religious.
So how would his ideas make their way in the First Century in Greco-Roman context? And the answer is using rhetoric that they would see as effective.
So that’s part of what we see is it’s very effective. Especially Paul later picks up these things and writes in ways that Paul is a clear rhetorician. I mean, Paul is a brilliant man and he understands if I’m going to get the Corinthians convinced that there’s one God and it’s not all these pagan gods, I’m going to have to meet them where they’re at.
And so you see, Paul does the same thing with this question-asking as well. So that’s one piece of it. But at the end of the day, Jesus was Jewish. And we believe that he grew up in the synagogue. And the way that Josephus and Philo talk about the synagogue is they say it’s a disputative practice.
In other words, there was arguing; there was question-asking; and there was, you know, this back and forth that was expected in this religious setting. And it’s so interesting, the Gospel of Luke (because I don’t know about you, but I always wonder what Jesus was like growing up like.) I would have loved to have met like eight-year-old Jesus. Like, was he, you know, was he well-behaved? Was he not well-behaved? Was he facetious? Like, I have all these questions and the gospel writers like especially Mark, has no interest in Jesus’ childhood. He’s like, “Yeah, he was born and anyways.” And then he gets to his adulthood. Matthew does the genealogy, but then really picks up his adulthood.
John does his own thing. You know, John’s like, “Let’s just talk about heaven and all that.”
But Luke has this really interesting story from Jesus’ childhood. He’s 12-years-old, and he goes up to Passover. And his parents think he’s in the caravan, and then they realize a day later he’s not in the caravan. So they’re panicked and they find him in the temple asking questions. And so we see his Jewish upbringing is also one of those things that there’s an expectation that you’re going to wrestle with the text; you’re not going to just receive; you’re going to have this conversation piece.
And so I think those two strands are why I think Jesus was so effective among the people.
But I think he learned how to ask good questions from his Heavenly Father. Because when your women, as you guys walk through the Bible over the next two years, (this idea popped in my head because it’s something I did this last year) mark every question of God because there’s a lot.
And actually you’d probably mark up your Bible a little too much, especially when you get to Job. So the Old Testament is full of God asking questions in the same way that Jesus does. And so when I say like Jesus is effective in his day because he’s talking to a Greco-Roman and a Jewish culture that understands what he’s doing, but I think he learns how to do it because like one of the first things we hear God say is, “Where are you?”
And he’s in the garden with Adam and Eve. And, you know, when an omniscient, all knowing God asks, “Where are you?” it’s not because he doesn’t know. He’s inviting Adam and Eve to return because they have hidden out because of their sin after they’ve eaten the apple. So questions can invite questions, can rebuke, questions can you know, he asks Sarah and Abraham later, “Is there anything too difficult for God?” So it’s a rhetorical question meant to intensify, “Hey, I can do it. I can give you a child in your old age.”
And so the questions of Jesus, when you look at them and then you lay them against the Old Testament, you realize there’s a long tradition of the God of the universe asking humanity questions as a way to invite us in.
Sometimes I think we live in a culture where questions are seen as pushing us away. I have to defend questions all the time. I will ask. I’m like, “Huh? I’m curious, why did you do that?” And they get defensive. The people I ask and I go, “No, I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m just literally asking like, why? Why did you do what you did?”
And I’ve realized because I’m a naturally curious person. I put people on edge because we’re not used to questions in that way. And I think we’re missing something by not realizing this is how God speaks to us as a way of encouragement, as a way of rebuke, as a way of invitation.
And so these are the sources where we learn about the effectiveness of Jesus’s questions.
Kay >> Well, and it’s interesting, because I would think that some people might wonder. I’m so glad you explained that God’s inviting people into this, because I think people would wonder, “Well, doesn’t God know everything? Why in the world would he be asking people questions?”
Nika >> Yeah. Yeah. I liken it to I joke. I say when I come home and there’s a pizza box on the ground and the crust has been eaten and my dog’s got her tail between her legs. And I say, “Corrie, did you do this.” And I joke—I’m like, that’s like God asking, where are you? I’m like, I know. She knows. I know. I’m inviting her to come and repent. And, you know, it’s like where God’s going, “Look, I know where you’re at. You know I know where you’re at. Do you want to come near me?”
And rather than saying, “Get over here,” which is how I think we expect God to talk to us, but instead there’s this really sweetness of this invitation from God.
And, you know, one of the stories I tell in my thesis is God’s talking to Cain and God’s speech is really powerful. He can create with his speech and he can break cedars. We talk about the ability of God’s words to like he out of his mouth he created the world. So if God wanted to, he could be like, “Do your daily Bible study,” and you would not be able to fight that. I mean, his words are powerful enough. You would be bound by that.
So instead, God uses his language for invitation, for a gentle rebuke for all of these things. And so what’s really amazing is the speech of God is so powerful. And yet he allows for questions and stories and riddles to be a part of how he communicates with us because he wants us to make a meaningful choice. “Cain, sin is crouching at your door. You can resist it. You don’t have to.” And he could just say like, “Cain, get your head out your rear and knock it off.”
Right? He could demand things of Cain. And instead he goes, “Cain, what are you doing? Would you not be acceptable if you did the right thing, Cain?”
And you know, so there’s a tenderness to God’s questions. When you watch Jesus in the New Testament, you also see sometimes a tenderness. My favorite questions of Jesus are when he restores Peter. Peter has denied Jesus three times, and I think about that scene. You can imagine Peter has felt awful since the night of the crucifixion. He, you know, he’s out fishing again and he’s having no luck.
And then he comes in and he’s like, “Do you love me?” And he doesn’t ask him once. He doesn’t ask him twice. He asks all three times so that he can restore this relationship. And after the third time, Peter’s like, “Jesus, you know that. Like, you already know that I do.” And then Jesus goes, “Okay, then feed my sheep.” Right? And it’s one of the most tender, beautiful moments in all of Scripture. And it’s question-asking. It’s like literal I mean.
So one of the things when you’re studying narrative, the first words of a person reveal a lot. This is what the author wants to do. Oftentimes authors wink at us the first time we hear somebody speak. It teaches us something about the person. And in the gospel of John, the first and last words of Jesus are a question, and so it’s just a really incredible thing that I think the gospel writers understood what he was doing.
I think as modern folks who have been impacted by Aristotle, who thinks declarative sentences are more powerful than questions, maybe we should go back to our roots and say, hey, questions have a lot of power, too, and we should use more of them.
Kay >> Yeah. So tell me about the research that you did. If we’re going to learn how to use questions like Jesus, we need to know what you learned about that. And we can do it.
Nika >> So this was so fun. I just basically ethically experimented on a group of people. And so I said to myself, Okay, I am a teacher. If here’s the thing, this whole project probably shines the biggest hypocrisy light on me possible because I would always prefer to teach. I would just like to be like, “I have knowledge.”
I would like to give it to you that it is so much easier as a teacher than Q&A. So this was a good restraining exercise for me. So what I did was I said, “Okay, I can’t quite recreate the questions of Jesus. I can’t just walk up on a situation. I’m not the Son of God. I can’t just weave it in and out of ministry. But what if I removed everything else from my normal way of teaching and just measured the impact of question-asking?”
So what I did is I took 20 people and I did not teach, Kay. It was like the most self-control I’ve ever experienced, and I would rather teach.
Kay >> I’m so proud of you, Nika.
Nika >> Thank you. Yeah. So I said, “Look, here’s the deal. You have to pick a partner. The partner has to be somebody you love and brings you joy.” And I did that because I was trying to stack the deck. I wanted to see if we could get a positive result so it couldn’t be a stranger because these questions are super vulnerable that I wrote.
And then I wrote 45 questions, 15 that have to do with who is God. Fifteen have to do with who am I. And 15 have to do with who are others.
And if you haven’t listened to our discipleship podcast here on Beyond Ordinary Women, go listen to that. You’ll understand why I did it under those subcategories. And then I gave the people just the 45 questions.
I said, “Okay, all you’re going to do is ask and answer these open ended, vulnerable questions. I’m not going to teach you anything. So and you have 60 days to do it.”
And then the way you measure things—you know, Kay, from all of your dissertation work. I gave them a survey and it’s a scale from strongly disagree all the way to strongly agree. And they would have to respond to statements like “I know that God loves me” or “I love God” or “God likes me” or “I know how to love my neighbor well” or “I know what my spiritual gifts are and I know how to use them.”
So they just had to answer, do I agree with this or strongly agree or disagree? So they take the survey. I take their surveys and I lock them up. I don’t even look at them. I give them the 45 questions, and that’s all they got. No teaching. It’s like the most self-control. And then 60 days later they come back and they take the survey again.
And again, all they’ve done in the interim is ask and answer open-ended questions. That’s it. And I wanted to see did their understanding of God’s love improve? Did their understanding of themselves as the image of God improve? Did their understanding of their love of neighbor improve? And across the board, every single person (except for one who was noncompliant and didn’t actually do the exercise), every single person improved at least one point on all of this.
So every single person improved a little bit on knowing God loves them, their love of God, their knowledge of self, their knowledge of it. I couldn’t believe it. I was so tickled because when I did this, I was like, this could fail. And then if it fails, then I’m like, great. Now back to the drawing board.
And so what I learned from that is questions have the ability to impact us in positive ways of knowing who God is, who we are, and who others are. Just questions. Just questions. No teaching element because it forces us to slow down, ask yourself these hard questions. And I think part of what I learned is we live busy lives.
We take in a lot of information, and it’s rare that we slow down and we ask ourselves hard questions. And we do so in the context of someone who loves us. And I share and you share and suddenly we realize, gosh, you know what? As I’m saying this, I really do think God loves me or, oh, I don’t think God loves me, and I wonder where that’s coming from.
And so it was for me, it was exhilarating getting the data back because they didn’t see their old surveys. I mean, they took the new surveys blind. And it was incredible. When I finally tallied all the data, I thought, well, by golly, it worked. I felt like one of those eureka moments you know, like experiments of old.
And so that’s what I learned is questions are vitally important to our formation.
Kay >> I love that. I love that. I think that would have been great to be in your group as a little fly on the wall. I would have just loved listening to the conversations and seeing people change and people interact like that. I think that’s absolutely wonderful.
So how do we take this? What do we do with it?
Nika >> Yeah, so one, the most obvious thing is questions form people. So ask more questions. And this is hard. I mean, I truly mean this is hard to do. I think it requires almost like a reverse engineering. So if you are a leader, if you’re listening to this and you have the ability to shape your ministry thinking about maybe you’re using a curriculum that is really good, but doesn’t quite have these like life on life questions.
I would add a supplement, you know, I’d add a question a week. So that’s where I would say that. And then I would say if you have been asked by somebody to disciple them, I would say start with a lot of questions, you know, kind of diagnose where they’re at. What is it that caused them to reach out to you in the first place?
Is it they need help learning how to study their Bible, or do they need help not learning how to study? They study it. They don’t believe it, or they don’t you know—whatever the thing is—I would say the first and obvious thing is ask a lot of questions.
But the other piece of it that I noticed as I was doing the research is churches and schools.
And I don’t really want to harp on schools too much because I think teachers are undervalued. They should be the richest people in society, and they should be celebrated and have parades and all of that. So teachers, you have your work cut out for you with standardized tests and all of that. So I don’t want to pick on teachers. But it is true in school climates that we rely way too much on just information transference and we kill curiosity and we don’t intend to.
I don’t think we understand that but there are so many stories of people who have deconstructed from the Christian faith because they read things in the Bible that upset them, and they brought their questions, and they were rebuked for not having enough faith. Or they saw something wrong within the church culture. And they said, “Hey, I think this this isn’t good. Is this okay?”
Or they asked hard questions to the pastor, and the pastor rather than humbly saying, “You know, I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I don’t know.” There have been a lot of people have been wounded because curiosity has been stifled and at times even rebuked.
And so I think we have to create spaces within our religious spaces, especially in our homes and in our families, our schools, our Sunday schools, our pulpits, where curiosity is rewarded because oftentimes this is how God invites people in.
And so if this is how God invites people in, we cannot be people who then shove them out with the very same questions, stifling behavior. And so that’s one of the things is I think, creating space to when people go, “Hey, have you ever thought about . .” Like it’s a really simple thing, but “What a great question!”
Practicing “I don’t know. There are things I do not know.”
I don’t like saying I don’t know, though. So I get it. Like, I don’t like it when I don’t know something. But now, as I’ve been studying this, I found actually that I’m like almost excited by questions I don’t know the answer to. I am like starting to be changed by that because I’m going I can find out something new. What an exciting thing that I can go study this new thing!
So that’s what I would say is you want to create cultures where people know there’s no bad question. And how this plays out—I literally have a section where I talk about my nieces and nephew. They ask a lot of questions. I mean, they ask so many questions and I just answer them.
I mean, it’s like I’m at Wikipedia and they’ll FaceTime me to ask me things they could Google, and it makes me so happy.
And I literally hit submit on this thesis. I hit submit. I sent it in. I’m done. I’m enjoying life, and I kid you not, five minutes later, my nephew texted me and he’s nine years old or he’s ten. He just turned ten. And he goes, “When was Jesus born? Because I know it wasn’t on December 25th.” Okay, so what a great question. And so then I answered him to the best of my ability. And then I said to him, “Where did you get that? Like, who taught you that?” And he goes, “Oh, I’ve always known that.”
It just popped into my head. I’m like, “Oh, you’ve always known that Jesus wasn’t born on . . ., okay. But then, you know, we kind of texted about baseball and life. And then he goes, “When are you coming to town next?” And that little picture and being aunt is the greatest thing the world to me.
I am not trying to say I do this perfectly or well, but that is a picture of here’s a religious question. It’s met with an answer, and then he wants me to come home. That’s how it should be. There shouldn’t be when questions are asked, distances put up, but instead a nearness is created that my nephew should always feel safe to ask his aunt anything he wants.
And that is part of what we also have to do in our churches, in our spaces. So, like, I have no doubt you’ll do this with your women, but as the two years unfold, you know, my biggest questions about the Lord aren’t really things I see in life. Sometimes they’re things I read in the Bible. There are things in the Bible that if it doesn’t upset you, I am not sure you’re reading it the right way.
And I think it’s good and right to ask, Is that okay? Is that good? Is this what God’s best looks like? And I think that is a healthy thing. And so I anticipate you’re going to have lots of questions as they walk through the Bible.
Kay >> A lot. It should really be a lot of questions. Yeah. You know, growing up in the church, you’re just given a lot of answers, but if I had just read the Bible for myself and I hadn’t had all those people answering me, I would have had so many questions. I can’t even think what I would have done with it.
And the women that are reading the Bible with me right now are having questions, and I appreciate their questions probably more than their insights, although I have had some really, really good insights, too.
Nika >> Yeah, that’s amazing. And that’s how we all learn, right? So the thing that I can’t replicate is I am not Jesus. So one of the advantages Jesus has is he already knows what’s in their heart. He knows what they’re going to ask. Right? So there is a sense of I can’t read people’s minds and hearts,
I have to create a culture of vulnerability which is creating a curiosity culture, which is not rebuking people for their questions, you know, kind of creating a safe place where there really aren’t any bad questions.
You know, there might be you kind of go, oh, that’s a little odd. I mean, that’s an odd question to ask at this time, but it’s not a bad question. And I think that is part of also what allows honest exploration of the Lord and his scriptures is like is saying, “Hey, you should have questions and when you do, what a gift, because we all get to learn a bit, a little bit more and some questions don’t have answers.”
And so that’s the other part of it is, I would say, being comfortable with the “I don’t know”, being a little bit longer because there are some things that are mysteries too great for us. And in fact, we see this with one of my favorite moments in the Bible with questions is Job is suffering mightily, right? Job is you know, he it’s a very bizarre book.
There’s this like Divine Counsel. And in the Satan character is like, “Hey, God, Job only worships you because his life is good.” And God’s like, “You want to bet on it?” And it’s very bizarre. And he goes, “Just don’t kill him.” And so Job is afflicted with traumatic level of grief. I mean, Job’s life is horrifying.
In the beginning, Job is still praising God, but then we get this internal moment where you realize Job goes, “I, I want to die.” And that’s a natural response to the suffering that he’s endured.
So then Job’s friends who are not very friendly come and say, “Well, Job, what did you do wrong?” You know, like they’re telling him, “Just confess your sins and die,” that kind of thing, and they’re not helpful.
And so finally, Job has enough. And in a moment of real honesty, and humanity, he looks at God and he says, “I think you might be evil. You know, why did you do this to me? Why you?” There’s this big question of why and then God responds to Job’s question with 77 questions and you go, “What an interesting thing to do!”
And I don’t think pastorally we should do that. Like, I think pastors should probably respond to pain in a different way. But God essentially says to Job, “There are things beyond your understanding.” And the way that he communicates that to Job is through these questions. He invites Job to consider. “Job in your limited humanity. You may, even if I were to explain to you all the all of the machinations of the world, if everything, you wouldn’t understand because you’re not capable of it.”
And so there are these moments, too, where I think we have to be able to say there are some things there are why we may not have answers until the new heavens and the earth. And I think that’s also healthy is to allow people to sit with that. So that’s another thing. And then I would say if you’ve never just pulled out all the questions of Jesus. It’s a really good exercise.
There are several books. We’ll link to them in the resources. But Martin Copenhaver has a book called The Questions of Jesus, and they pull them out of their context. And you kind of read them. And as you read them, you go, “Well, there might be good questions for me to ask. Like “Who do I say that Jesus is? What is it? Do I want to be well?”
Well, you know, these are the questions that I think cut through bone marrow and get right to the heart of things. There’s this moment when the disciples of John are following John. And then John goes, “Oh, actually, that’s the Messiah right there.” So they start following Jesus and Jesus turns, looks, and he goes, “What is it that you seek?”
And can you imagine the God of the universe turning and looking at you with all of the knowledge? And he goes, “What is it you seek?” I’d be like “Well, if I’m being honest, probably power and fame. But now that you’re asking me, I suppose eternal life.” Like in that moment, I think that’s a really helpful question.
And so that’s another thing I would say is looking at the questions of Jesus whether in context or out is also a helpful exercise. And so that’s what I’d say. And then finally train your leaders to ask good questions, your leaders, the small group leaders. What you’re talking about is I think you and I have often been the one on the stage, and we understand the limitations of what we can accomplish.
You know, when we’re young, we think we can razzle dazzle. We think our teaching is going to open the clouds of heaven. And then over time, you realize it’s the coffee shop moment. It’s the one-on-one moments.
You know, the most humbling thing I tell people is when you as a teacher are teaching and somebody goes, “Oh, yeah, that sermon changed my life.” And they quote back to you, your words, but they’re not your words. You never said them. Like, clearly God was communicating something else to them in that moment. And you think, “I can’t even take credit for this. Like, you’re like, this is clearly the Lord has done something for you, you know? And I was there. I was a spectator, but I can’t claim any of it.”
So that’s all I say, is training your leaders to also be uncomfortable saying, “I don’t know”, training them to say, “Gosh, that’s a really good question,” and training them to maybe come with their own questions in addition to the curriculum. If I don’t want to step on toes, like I understand all studies have their own ways of doing things, but I think creating a culture where we look a lot more like Jesus and our discipleship is a win, though, and this is the part of his discipleship we tend to overlook.
And so if we can look more like Jesus, which means asking more questions, then I think people’s lives will be impacted even more.
Kay >> I love that and I totally agree with you. As far as the difference this could make in a lot of people’s lives, and that’s what we’re here about. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. So thank you Nika. Thank you for sharing what you’ve learned. How long have you been working on this now?
Nika >> I didn’t I don’t think I knew I was working on it for three years. But now that I’m done, I realize I really have seen the threads of this. It all kind of came together. So I would say really intensely for the last year, but it’s been like warming my heart to realize God has been putting all this stuff in front of me academically and then suddenly to see how they all converged into this.
So it’s been a probably a three year process that is finally on paper. And it’s fun. I think there could be a book out of this someday. I certainly think there’s a tool–the 45 questions. I’d like to turn into a deck of cards because I want to help the church form and I want people to be challenged by the love of God.
And that can be done through great teaching. And I’m certainly a fan of that. I do it all the time, but I also want people to have a chance to have a self-reflective moment. And so it’s been really sweet to see that the result of all of my study is less of my gifts and more of other people’s gifts.
And so that’s humbling in the best sort of way.
Kay >> Yeah. Well, thank you for all the time that you spent on this. I know you were going after a degree, but this is helpful to all of us.
Kay >> Thank you for doing that.
You can find other resources on our website BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. Nika already mentioned the fact that she and I had a conversation about discipleship. It was part of our Reimagining Discipleship series, and her topic was theological perspective that was it.
Nika >> That’s what it was. Yeah.
Kay >> And you talked about it then, so that would be a great thing for you to look for. But go to our website BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. Go to Resources at the top, the pulldown menu, and you can find a lot of other resources there as well. You can find other ways to help yourself as a teacher, as a small group leader, as a mentor.
There are all sorts of things, and we will put that the books that Nika just mentioned on a list and that will be in our Media Resources. All of our resources are there for you to help you. You can also contact us at any time if that would be helpful. Thank you again. Nika. You can search for Nika’s name to find all of the resources that she’s done with us, and all of the recordings that we have. So many of those would be helpful to you in one of those roles that we’ve talked about today.
So thank you, Nika. Thank you for sharing what you’ve done over the last few years. And helping us be better disciplers of other people.
Nika >> It’s my pleasure. I love Beyond Ordinary Women, so that’s always the highlight of my week when I get to be with you all.
Kay >> Well, we love you. That’s the reason we ask you so often. So until next time, we’ll see you all later.
