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Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking: Ecclesiastes by Josh Hunt: A Review

Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking: Ecclesiastes is by Josh Hunt, part of his long-running Good Questions Have Groups Talking series.

Know exactly what you are buying

This is not a book and it is not a commentary. It is six ready-to-use lesson plans on Ecclesiastes, each containing roughly twenty questions written to get a group talking.

The part worth understanding: the answers Hunt supplies come mostly in the form of quotations from other authors and from standard commentaries, people like John Piper and Max Lucado. So what you are buying is a curated question set with sourced material attached, assembled to save a volunteer leader preparation time. That is a legitimate and genuinely useful product. It is not original exposition, and it would be misleading to present it as one.

Why Ecclesiastes is a good fit

Ecclesiastes is the book of the Bible most likely to be read by a man in his forties who has achieved several things and found them thinner than expected. It resists tidy answers, which makes it hard to preach and unusually good for discussion. A question-led format suits it better than most books of Scripture would.

Check the edition

Hunt has reissued much of this series, and there is a newer Ecclesiastes volume under the title Question-based Bible Study Guide: Ecclesiastes. The material overlaps. Compare them before ordering so you do not buy the same lessons twice.

What we removed

The old review quoted a reader saying “These lessons penetrate my spirit and set my mind to work” and another saying “We started with ten, now we have over 40. This book saved us preparation time and multiplied our impact.” We could not verify either. There was also a quote about truth moving from head to heart to mouth that we could not source. All gone.

The old title also contained a double hyphen that WordPress renders as a dash, which is why the page title has changed.

Where we land

Buy it if you lead a group, have limited prep time, and want six sessions on Ecclesiastes you can run this month. Do not buy it expecting to read it. Check which edition you are getting.

Good Questions Have Small Groups Talking: Ecclesiastes by Josh Hunt on Amazon