Vol. 1, No. 3 — May 2007
Learning to Listen: Interview questions
By Arloa Bontrager

Begin with introductions to make sure everyone participating knows each other by name. Feel free to modify, add or take off questions based on the things your youth are interested in discovering.

Thank you for sharing your story with us today. Let's start with the basics:

1. When were you born and where? How many brothers and sisters did you have?

2. What was the neighborhood like where you grew up? What kind of people lived there? What did you like the most or the least about it?

3. Did you have good friends growing up? What were they like? Were there people you weren't allowed to be friends with? How did that make you feel?

4. What important historical moments or events do you remember?

5. Who were some of the influential people in your life?

6. Did you attend school when you were younger? What was your school like? Did you have a favorite subject or a favorite teacher? Tell us about them.

7. Have you ever been married? How old were you and your spouse when you got married? How did you two meet? Describe your wedding day.

8. What was dating like for you: where did you go and what did you do?

9. Did you ever have children? How many did you have? How about grandchildren?

10. What values have you tried to pass on to your children and/or grandchildren?

11. Tell me about a really difficult time in your life, or a hard choice you’ve had to make. What did you learn from this experience?

12. What are your first memories of church life? Describe a typical Sunday at church when you were a child. What were the church buildings like?

13. Did you have a youth group at your church? Were you a part of it? What kinds of things did you do?

14. When and why did you decide to be a Christian?

15. Have you been baptized? How or why did you make that decision? Describe the baptism.

16. Were you raised in the Mennonite faith? If not, what (if any) tradition were you raised in?

17. When and why did you come to our church? How old were you?

18. Why are you Mennonite? What makes Mennonites different from other denominations?

19. How do you feel the church has changed since you were a child? What do you think about these changes?

20. What advice do you have for young people today?

Thank you for your time and responses.