One of the things I did that I found helpful was to allow the students and ministers to come up with a list of potential topics for study/discussion. We would put those up on a chart or white board. Then we would discuss the learning optimization chart below. I know this is pretty funky, but we would have a reasonable facsimile on butcher paper and discuss how we learn and how we find the sweet spot that is more than just reconfirming what we already know, but not something that is so challenging that we don’t feel safe. Then we would ask students to write each of the suggested topics on a post-it and place it on the chart. I found this to be a super helpful way to take the temperature of the group about what we could discuss and what they felt was out of bounds for them. I didn’t come up with the graph nor do I remember where I encountered this idea, but it was a really helpful framework for students especially as we engaged tough topics together.