An activity for a couples small group is one that fits a room where almost everybody came with the person they live with. The seven below follow three rules: each person speaks only about themselves, none of them compares one couple with another, and all of them work for whoever came on their own that night.
Each one comes with the time, the materials and the moment of the group where it works.
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Most marriages begin with a party, and a good part of those parties is full of people. People who travelled to be there, who cried when the bride came in, who promised to stay close.
This activity is about the friendship the people of a small group build outside the meeting, and it starts at the wedding party.
Start by asking the people. Say: “Think about who was at your wedding. Only numbers go in here: nobody tells a story, nobody says the name of anyone who drifted away and nobody explains why.”
Whoever had no party uses the people who knew and celebrated at the time. Whoever came on their own does their own count. And whoever would rather not say passes, with no explanation, and nobody asks.
Give each couple two minutes to whisper and come up with three numbers:
Then one couple at a time says the three numbers out loud, in order, and nothing but the numbers. 185, 12, 3. Do not comment on any of them; let the room hear one couple after another.
When the round is over, explain the first number. Say: “That is what a party is. There is the cousin your mother asked you to invite, the distant uncle, people who came because of your grandparents. Nobody lost those people, because they were never close.”
Then show what matters. Say: “What matters is the distance between the second number and the third. Those are people who were in and out of your house and today are not.”
Then ask a question for each person to answer in their head. Ask: “How many people from this group have been to your house on a day that was not the meeting?” Wait a little, in silence.
Then say: “The friends from the beginning drifted away little by little. And the people of this group, who could take that place, have not come in yet.”
Wrap-up
The people who were in and out of your house and stopped almost never stopped over a fight. They drifted, with a move to another city, a small child, work, tiredness.
Notice why they were friends: because they were in and out of your house, not because they saw each other at an event. It is the same with a small group. The meeting is good, the service is good, but the two of them alone do not make a friendship.
Friendship is made outside of here, with no agenda and no time to be over. Nobody is going to be friends with everybody in the group. But you can be a real friend to a few.
Passage
Jesus tells the disciples he no longer calls them servants, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. He calls them friends, and he explains why: he has told them everything he heard from the Father (John 15:15, NIV).
It was not serving the same Lord that made them friends. People who only serve together are companions in the work. A friend is someone who knows about your life.
Closing
Before you pray, say one thing: this is not an invitation for the group to schedule an outing with everybody together. A bond is born of one person asking another, a coffee, a game, a ride, and nobody has to invite the whole group.
Then you pray alone, out loud. Ask that real friendship is born out of this group, the kind that goes on after the meeting is over.
The challenge
During the week, each couple invites one person or one couple from the group to something outside the meeting. A coffee, a ride, a game. It does not have to be the whole group.
Why this activity works
What makes the activity work is the staircase of three numbers said in one go, by the same voice: 185, 12, 3. The step that matters is the last one, and it only shows up because the first two came before it.
It stops working if whoever leads asks who the people who drifted away were. The room starts talking about people who are not there, and the subject becomes lost friendship.
If you do not explain the first number, the room leaves thinking it lost 180 friends. Since everybody knows that is not true, the whole count loses its force.
How it goes
The way somebody tells you about a weekend shows how they talk about their own marriage. Some tell all of it with “I”. Some tell all of it with “we”.
This activity makes each person hear their own way of speaking, and nobody has to tell anything about the couple's life.
Make pairs: men with men, women with women. In each pair, one talks about the couple's last weekend and the other listens. The pair decides who talks.
If somebody is left over, make a three, with two listening. Whoever came on their own joins a pair like everybody else and tells their own weekend.
One thing matters: nobody complains about their spouse, and what is said in the pair does not come back to the group.
Take only the listeners to a corner and explain quietly: “Start with both hands closed. Every time the other person says ‘I’, raise a finger on your left hand. Every time they say ‘we’, a finger on your right. If a hand fills up, it stays open and stops counting. Do not interrupt and do not tell them.”
Back in the pairs, whoever is talking has one minute to tell how the last weekend went. Keep the time and call out when there are fifteen seconds left.
When the time is up, the listener shows both hands to the person who talked, and to them only. Then explain to everybody what each hand means.
Say as well that the count is not a grade for anybody's marriage. A hand full of “I” does not mean the spouse is feeling alone.
The count shows how each person talks about their own marriage, and it is by that way of talking that other people see the couple, as two people or as one flesh.
Wrap-up
One minute is not enough time to pick your words. You were the one who showed, without noticing, how you talk about your own home.
There is no right number, and the hand does not grade anybody's marriage. It only leaves a question to take home: when I talk about my life to other people, do I talk about me or about us?
Passage
In the Song of Songs, the friends ask the wife what makes her husband different from any other. She describes him from head to foot and ends with one word: friend. When he is the one talking about her, he uses the same word (Song of Songs 5:16 and 2:2, NIV).
The way each of them talked about the other, to other people, showed what the two of them were.
Closing
Each person finds their spouse and tells them one moment of the last weekend when the two of them were really together, starting with “we”. A real moment, not the one that sounds good.
If none comes to mind, do not make one up. That is an answer too, and it is yours, to take home.
When the conversations are over, say that nobody has to tell the group anything. What came up stays as something to think about, on how your days have been going.
You close by praying out loud for the couples in the room.
Why this activity works
It works because the person talking does not know what is being counted. If the count is explained to everybody beforehand, everybody starts watching their own mouth and the hands show nothing.
That is also why only half the room talks: in a second round, people who already know what is being counted change the way they speak.
How it goes
Start by asking the people. Say: “Try to remember what your house looked like when you left it today. Now picture someone you love, who lives far away and hardly ever comes by. They text you that they are arriving in ten minutes, for a quick visit.”
What anybody does at that moment is look around and see what can be done before opening the door. Wash the dishes in the sink, run a cloth over the floor, put something together to eat.
This activity is about what we find a way to hide when there is no time to fix it.
Before you start, one agreement only: the couple speaks together, and speaks about what “we” do, with no pointing at who does what and no criticism.
One couple at a time says two or three things they would have to do in those ten minutes: throw the clothes on the bed and shut the bedroom door, hide the dishes in the oven.
Let the room laugh, because it will: half of it says the same thing.
When the laughter settles, turn it around. Say: “Now it is not someone arriving at your house. It is the two of you arriving here.” And tell the scene:
Picture the car parking in front of this house in the middle of a conversation that was not going well. About the children, about money, about one of the two families, about whatever only the couple knows.
Before the engine is off, one of them says: we will finish this later. Somebody put a comma in the middle of it.
The two of them get out, rehearse the smile, put makeup over the crying face, and walk in here as if everything were fine.
On the way back, inside the car, the conversation picks up where it stopped. Maybe it became a fight at home. Maybe the problem has no answer to this day.
Whoever came on their own thinks of the day they walked in here after a bad conversation with someone at home.
Then ask, and the room answers: who here has arrived at a meeting like that? Nobody says what it was about, they only raise a hand.
Wrap-up
Somebody who texts that they are ten minutes away is not expecting perfection, and somebody who really knows you already knows what your house is like. Dishes in the sink? Fine. Floor not washed? Fine.
It is the same with a small group. This is a place for people with problems, with struggles, with hard weeks, and that includes whoever leads: there are weeks when the couple who leads also arrived here after an argument just like yours.
Nobody here has to put makeup over anything. Whoever leads does not expect everybody to be fine, and the group was not made for that.
Passage
God chose what the world calls foolish to shame the wise, and what the world calls weak to shame the strong (1 Corinthians 1:27-29, NIV). And the text says what for: so that no one may boast before him.
If God chose weak people on purpose, nobody has to arrive here pretending to be strong.
A small group is a place of treatment. What one person tells today becomes the testimony another one needed, and the prayer of whoever is whole carries whoever is not. And it is the Holy Spirit who does this: he makes our imperfections into what completes the group.
Closing
You pray out loud for whatever stayed in each couple's car, without knowing what it is, and the group follows in silence.
Then say it, and let it stand: here you can arrive with the house a mess.
The challenge
The next time you get to the group after a hard conversation, you do not have to say what it was about. One of you telling whoever leads is enough: we did not arrive well today.
Why this activity works
It is the laughter that opens the way for the question. If whoever leads turns serious too early, or says where the activity is going, the couples say what sounds good, and the room hears a tidy list.
And the question at the end asks for a raised hand, not an explanation. The hand admits the fact without giving away the subject, and that is why the whole room answers.
How it goes
“Hi, love. Good evening. How was your day?”
“Hi, sweetheart, I missed you. Today was fine, just another day.”
Some version of that exchange happens in almost every house. This activity opens one of those “fine” answers to see what was inside it.
Hand two sheets of paper and a pen to each person.
On the first sheet, each person writes three sentences they usually say before going to sleep. Nobody reads anything out loud and nobody comments.
Whoever came without their spouse writes them all the same, thinking of them. Whoever lives alone writes the sentences they usually say to someone at home or in the family at the end of the day.
When everybody is done, say what those sentences have in common: not one of them is a lie. Whoever says “I love you” means it, and whoever says “sleep well” really wants the other to sleep well.
It is just that, said so many times, they turned into a like on social media. It was sincere, it cost nothing and it meant almost nothing.
Now the second sheet. Each person picks one of the three sentences and writes it again, thinking about what the other one is going through this week.
Give an example. Say: “‘Good night, love, sleep well’ becomes ‘Love, I know your week at work has been heavy. I am here. Sleep well.’”
When everybody has written it, ask them to take the first sheet, crumple it and throw it in the bin. Everybody at the same time.
Wrap-up
Not one sentence on that crumpled sheet was a lie. What went in the bin was not your love, it was the autopilot.
The sentence on the second sheet costs more, and that is why it is worth something: to write it, you had to notice the other person before speaking.
Noticing the other person is the first thing routine takes out of a marriage. And we are slow to realise it is gone.
Closing
The second sheet goes in a pocket, and nobody shows it to anybody, not even to their spouse. It is to be said tonight, at home, not read here.
Now each person prays for their spouse, right there, beside them. It does not have to be out loud, and whoever wants to pray out loud does.
Say what to ask for. There are three things.
The first is for the romance between you, which routine puts out slowly and with no warning.
The second is for yourself, that the rush never turns the person you decided to spend the rest of your life with into one more appointment in the day.
And ask as well for tender eyes, so that you always catch in the other what the words do not say.
The challenge
For one week, choose the last sentence of the day. It does not have to be beautiful, it has to be chosen.
Why this activity works
What makes the activity work is the first sheet being written with no warning of what comes next. If the room knows it is going to rewrite, nobody writes the automatic sentence, everybody writes the beautiful one straight away, and there is no difference left between one sheet and the other.
That is also why nobody reads anything out loud. What is on the paper belongs to each couple, and the activity does not need the room to work: it needs the crumpling, which everybody does together.
Preparation
Write a title on each of the two extra sheets and put them in the middle of the room, side by side: one saying “I learned it from my parents”, the other “It started with us”.
Two piles of paper end up on the floor. The third one, the one the activity is named after, is not made of paper, and it only shows up at the end.
How it goes
Every family has its own way of doing things, and almost none of it was decided by the couple. It came along, from the people we watched doing it.
This activity is about what we learned with nobody teaching it, and about what we teach without noticing.
Before handing out the paper, say the rule: write the habit, with no saying whether it is right or wrong. “Sunday lunch at my parents' house” is a habit, and any sentence about a mother-in-law, a father-in-law or a brother-in-law is about a person, so that one does not count.
Each person writes three family habits, like taking your shoes off in the living room, putting perfume on after a shower, praying before a meal, simple everyday things.
Whoever came on their own does the same, with the habits of their own house.
Then they get up and put each sheet on the pile that habit came from.
When everybody is seated, count out loud how many sheets are in each pile. Read a few from each one. The room will laugh, and that is fine.
Now move to something heavier. Say there are things we also learned from our parents that do not fit a Christian life. Not because they failed or meant us harm, but because it was what they believed was right. And that is all right.
Give the examples out loud, saying “we” and never pointing at anybody in the room: lying to avoid explaining something embarrassing, talking about people behind their backs, shouting when you get worked up, treating badly someone who is only doing their job.
We cannot change our parents, but we can change what we do and take another look at how we behave.
And then get to the point. Say: what matters most is what our children are learning from our example. The kind of learning nobody has to teach.
Give one minute of silence for each person to think. Say: “We tell a child off for lying. And that child has watched us lie on the phone.”
Whoever has no children thinks of whoever watches their house from close by: nieces and nephews, godchildren, the children at church, a younger couple.
Wrap-up
The two piles on the floor are what can be seen. One arrived finished from each of your houses and the other one you are building together.
But the third pile, the one with nothing written on it, is the one that matters most. It is being made every day, while our children watch us, in the queue at the supermarket and at the dinner table.
The most precious teaching is the example we give this generation of children.
Passage
The text says to keep those words on your heart and to teach them to your children. And it says where: when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up (Deuteronomy 6:6-7, NIV).
None of those is a lesson. They are the hours when nobody is thinking they are teaching anything.
Closing
Each couple talks quietly. Each person names one thing of their own they want to change, theirs and not the other's. It does not have to be told to anybody.
Close with a prayer of thanks for everything they learned from their parents, because it was that baggage that brought them this far.
Give thanks as well for the grace of God, which led them to the love of Christ, and ask for the unity of the family, with the Holy Spirit as helper.
Why this activity works
It is the laughter at the start that makes the room comfortable enough to hear the question about the children. If you begin with the heavy part, the room closes, and what goes on the piles is whatever reads nicely.
How it goes
“How was your day?” “Fine.” It is the most repeated conversation in almost every house. This activity opens one of those “fine” answers to see what was inside it.
Before you start, three agreements, said out loud.
First: it has to be something hard from this week, in the part of your day the other one does not see. Work, the house, studying, looking for a job.
Second: it is something you have not told yet for lack of time, not because it is a secret. If the only one that comes to mind is too big to fit in a minute, pick another, and leave that one to talk about at home.
Third, and this is what holds the activity up: while one is talking, the other does not answer. Not to agree, not to explain themselves.
Each person talks with their spouse. Whoever came on their own pairs up with another person who came alone, or with you.
All the couples talk at the same time, and you are the one calling each change out loud. There are three rounds:
Then swap, and the other one starts at round one. It is ten minutes in total, with two couples or with twenty.
Before each round, repeat the agreement: while one talks, the other does not answer.
When everybody is done, ask the people for one thing only: raise your hand if you heard something about the other one today that you did not know. Nobody says what it was.
Then ask whether anybody wants to share something they found important. Whoever wants to, does; whoever does not, does not; and whoever does talks about what they felt, never about what their spouse told them.
Wrap-up
The reflex of someone who loves you is to fix it. They hear the problem and answer straight away with what they would do, because they want it off your lap as fast as possible.
Fixing it is good, but it was not what was missing. What was missing was somebody asking how it went, and waiting for the answer.
“Fine” is the word we use when the day was too long to tell, and nobody asked in a way that was worth answering.
Passage
Carry each other's burdens (Galatians 6:2, NIV). It is just that nobody carries what they do not know is there.
Before it is strength, carrying somebody's burden is finding out about it.
Closing
The couples pray at the same time, quietly, each one for the situation they heard, by the other's name. Whoever is in a pair does the same.
What the other one told does not leave those two chairs.
The challenge
During the week, when “how was your day?” comes up, do not take “fine” the first time. Ask one more question, and wait for the answer.
Why this activity works
What makes the activity work is the question in place of the opinion. Giving an opinion is the shortest way and it is what already happens at home every day. The question is what nobody asks, and it is what opens the third round.
Taking turns is what keeps the argument out. While the other talks, the listener wants to explain themselves halfway through, and the conversation turns into the same row as always.
Preparation
Put one chair at each end of the room, with a clear aisle between them. One is the beginning, the dating days. The other is today.
How it goes
Almost every couple has something they used to do and stopped doing, without ever deciding to stop.
This activity is not about when that happened, it is about where you want to go.
Before you start, two agreements. It can be something small and good. And whoever would rather just watch, watches, and nobody asks.
Whoever came on their own can do it with something they used to do with a friend or with family.
Each couple talks for about three minutes to remember one or two things they used to do and stopped doing without ever deciding it. Walking at night after dinner. Kissing in the rain. Texting in the middle of the day for no reason.
Simple things, that made the day better.
When the time is up, ask everybody to stand in the middle of the room, between the two chairs.
Then ask the question. Ask: “Where do you want to go? To the chair of the beginning, which means taking that back up, or to the chair of today, which means going on as you are?”
Give each couple one minute to decide together, whispering. The couple walks together, to the same side.
Count to three, and everybody walks at the same time, not one couple at a time.
Once each couple is standing where they chose, say what matters, and it is not the chair. What matters is that there was a conversation and there was a choice.
That thing had stopped with nobody deciding it. Today it did not.
Wrap-up
Nobody in that room decided to stop. It stopped on its own, in a stretch when life asked for everything at once, and that is why there is no point looking for someone to blame.
Today was different: you talked and you chose. Whoever chose to take it back up already knows that, at home, they will have to choose it again. And whoever chose to go on as they are also chose, and that is already more than letting it happen.
Closing
Each couple prays right there, standing, where they chose to be, and quietly. Whoever is on their own prays with whoever is beside them.
You close out loud, asking for each couple in that room, and nobody has to say which chair they went to or why.
The challenge
Whoever chose to take it back up does it once before the next meeting. Nobody is going to ask.
Why this activity works
What makes the activity work is the choice being made with the body. Saying “we should start doing that again” costs nothing, and crossing a room in front of everybody costs something, which is exactly the difference between an intention and a decision.
Everybody walks at the same time, so nobody is watched crossing alone. One couple at a time would turn the choice into an announcement, and the room would start comparing who wanted to go back and who did not.
Do not ask anybody what they chose, not even afterwards. Both chairs are honest answers, and a couple who chooses to go on as they are may have reasons nobody in that room knows.
The risk here is not a person exposing themselves. It is one spouse exposing the other in front of the group, and it is the couple in trouble being compared with the couple next to them. The seven were designed against those two things, and it comes down to three rules.
Nobody describes, judges or guesses at their spouse in front of the group. It sounds like a detail and it is not: most of what goes around about couples asks for exactly the opposite, one of them talking about the other so the room can judge whether they got it right.
There is no winning couple, no couple who got the most right, no model couple. A marriage is not a skill you show off, and comparing couples is what makes a couple who is struggling decide not to come back next week.
The husband who does not come, the wife who came with a friend, the widowed, the not yet married. Each of the seven says what that person does, and none of them invents a pretend part just to keep them busy.
Anyone looking for an activity for a couples small group almost always finds the same game, under different names.
The couple goes to the front and answers separately about their favourite things, one recognises the other's voice blindfolded, each writes down traits of their spouse for the group to guess, the couple moves forward in the race when the two answers match. The object changes, the mechanics do not: it measures how much one knows about the other, and it keeps score.
In a group of real couples, somebody is always going through a bad stretch. The score turns that stretch into a public result, and the couple who got everything right becomes, without meaning to, the measure for the others. What is a joke to one couple can be the confirmation of what another already suspected.
An activity where what shows up at the end is a fact the whole room has just produced together, and not a grade that sets one couple apart from another. It is the same subject, knowing the person you live with, with nobody being graded in front of their friends.
The same activity that does well in a close group freezes where the couples barely know each other. What decides is the state of the group on that night.
The couples are not close to each other yet, and the subject has to stay away from the bedroom and near the front door. On this page, activities one and two.
People who already visit each other can take a question that makes a couple look inside their own house. That is where four of the seven are, because it is the most common state of a couples small group that has been running for a while. On this page, activities three, four, five and six.
Here the group can look at what stopped happening with nobody getting defensive. On this page, activity seven.
Six of the seven start from something that was lost along the way, and that is where their honesty comes from. But three of them in three weeks turn the group into a house of mourning, and the couple who is doing well starts to think they should be doing worse. In between, it is worth having a meeting of good news: a testimony, something to celebrate, the lesson of the night and nothing else.
Pick one that works without the couple being complete. It happens every week: one of them got held up at work, or the husband simply does not come to the group. If the activity only runs in pairs, that person spends the night watching everybody else. The seven on this page say, in the steps themselves, what whoever came on their own does.
No. Almost everything you find about couples small groups is the same quiz of how well you know your spouse, with points and a champion at the end. It sounds harmless, but in every room there is a couple who has been fighting, and they are the ones who will get the answers wrong in front of everybody. None of these seven keeps score.
The protection has to be in the design of the activity, not in the good sense of whoever leads. Each person speaks about themselves, never about their spouse. What gets written is not read out loud. And the question that presses is answered on the inside, with nothing told to the group. What exposes a marriage is almost never the hard question. It is having to answer it in front of other people.
One about inviting people and opening your house, not about what goes on between the two of them. On this page they are “The guests” and “I or we”. The first ends with each couple inviting somebody from the group for a coffee outside the meeting. The second does not go near anybody's marriage, because its subject is the way each person tells you about their weekend.
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