Anonymous questions

A few times a year I'll have an occasion to ask for curly questions.

I will do it at the start and the end of the high school scripture year.
It will not be unusual to have a question sheet appear during any year of youth or young adult small groups.
Last week I did it near the end of a youth group talk on sex.

 In order to get genuine, honest questions I normally employ two techniques.

The first causes confusion in scripture classes.

Normally, the class will be given a sheet of 30 FAQ's and, in pairs, need to select the top three to be discussed. The confusion arises once I invite the class to either a) make the sheet into a paper plane or b) scrunch the piece of paper into a ball and throw their sheet at me.

In theory, this should result in fairly unidentifiable results from the class.

But when I have two or three questions, I will use a different method.

After giving the questions to be decided upon, I'll invite the audience to choose one question they want answered.

Then, choosing their question, all they need to do (once everyone has lowered their head and shut their eyes) is put up the number of fingers which corresponds with their selection.

Again, the responses should remain fairly secretive.

I will often use this later method when dealing with more controversial topics such as masturbation, porn or where there are pressing needs to be addressed, but nobody wants to actually pose the question.