Note: I posted this article in May 2025, but after yesterday’s post “Stop Discipling Only the People Who Agree With You.” I got a few requests for kinds of questions that eventually lead to spiritual conversations. So, i thought this would be a great repost.
Enjoy!
Jesus used two tools to launch a spiritual movement that changed the world forever: discipleship questions and stories. Almost every recorded conversation we have between Jesus and another person started or ended with a question or a story.
💥 Questions and stories prompt us to step outside our presumptions, think more clearly, and better understand what we truly believe. This deeper level of communication becomes a harvest field for spiritual conversations.
🔑 The key to moving a conversation from casual to crucial, and from surface to spiritual, is asking the right questions. It doesn’t mean that there are specific questions that are “right,” but that you are asking the “right” type of question. Jesus crafted questions that were tightly targeted to the person he was speaking to.
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What Type of Discipleship Questions Start Spiritual Conversations?
Understanding the categories of questions and their characteristics will help you choose the right question to peel back the next layer in a conversation.
Two broad categories of questions are open-ended and closed-ended questions. Each type of question serves a purpose.
Open-ended Questions vs. Closed-ended Questions
Closed-ended questions are helpful to quickly understand where someone stands on a specific issue or idea. They can be answered with a simple “yes,” “no,” or some other one-word answer. However, once you know where someone stands and are ready to understand WHY they hold certain beliefs, it’s time to move to open-ended questions.
Characteristics of Open-ended Discipleship Questions
Here are a few characteristics of an open-ended question:
Open-ended questions
require an answer of more than a couple of words
allow someone to give a free-from answer
lead to more open-ended questions
allow you to find out more than you hoped for
uncover motivations and reasons for beliefs
allow you to engage in deeper-level discussions
often start with “how,” “why,” or “what.”
What Type of Questions Dive Deeper than Surface Opinions?
You can ask open-ended questions that elicit either emotion or thought. Both types of questions can take a conversation to the next level. Emotional, open-ended questions often prompt people to want to engage and delve deeper. Thoughtful, open-ended questions often prompt people to reason with the other person.
It is difficult for people to be emotional and logical at the same time. Therefore, if you want someone to reason with you, questions that evoke emotion are not necessarily the best route to take. When people are experiencing emotions, they tend not to be willing to challenge their logic about an issue.
On the other hand, if you want to evoke emotion to draw someone into a deeper conversation, steer clear of thinking questions.
Each Open-ended Question is a Stepping Stone to the Deep Waters
Remember trying to make your way across a creek as a kid: you would take one step on a rock emerging from the water's surface, then look for the next one. That’s similar to navigating through a conversation to explore deeper waters.
As you progress through the talk, try to craft your next question in a way that will go just one baby step deeper. If you do this well, it will only take a few questions to get to the things that really make a difference. The twenty questions below follow that progression, allowing you to get a feel for taking baby steps.
20 Discipleship Questions to Take a Conversation to the Next Level
With all that in mind, here are 20 general questions to help you move a conversation from surface to spiritual or casual to crucial. Remember, these are just sample questions. To be most effective, practice crafting questions that are relevant to the conversation at hand.
How did that make you feel?
What do you think about ___________?
How do you feel about that idea?
Did you experience that when you were younger?
Are you familiar with the history behind that?
Who influenced you most on that idea?
Where do you think that idea comes from?
How does that change your perspective?
How does that line up with your values?
What values do you have that drove that decision?
Where does that lead if nothing changes?
Do you think there is a purpose for that?
How can that tragedy be used for good in your life?
What will life look like down the road if that problem is not solved?
What’s God up to in all this?
Does that line up with how God designed things to work?
How does God factor into that experience?
Does faith impact how you feel about _______________?
Does your faith change how you will move forward with this?
Where do you see God moving in all of this?
Some Helpful Resources for Making Disciples
Excellent online resources are available to sharpen your discipling skills and help you ask discipleship-related questions. In fact, some of this content was inspired by teachings from Dan Grider and the Ignite Discipleship Network. Also, make sure to check out Dan Grider’s book on Crucial Spiritual Conversations (click here).
If you want further training and support, contact me here.
Excellent
So you see the discipline of apologetic and the apologetic traps set as arguments?