Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. What's up, Life Group leaders? This is Sam Smith, co-host of the Life Group Leader podcast.
Today, Scott and I sit down with Kirby Wood, our guest experience pastor at Mariners Irvine, and we talk about how to create an intentional hospitable environment for your life group. We talk about why that matters, and how creating an environment of hospitality encourages your life group members to take courageous decisions for Christ. Let's tune in to today's episode. Well, we are thrilled to have you, Kirby.
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. We're excited to have Kirby, our guest experience pastor here at Mariners. Yes.
She was previously a group pastor overseeing rooted and life groups, and we're just excited to have you as our guest to talk about hospitality and creating an intentional environment in our life groups. So thanks for being here. I'm so glad to be here. Truly, I love being a part of a life group.
I love rooted in what it does for the foundation of groups. And of course, that would be my current role. I love seeing how people can enjoy God and his purpose with them as they serve on specific teams beyond the group environment. But if you're serving and you're not in a group, like, come on, what are you doing?
So also Kirby is the goat for hospitality. Mariners Irvine, she does such a great team. Such a great job leaving her team at Mariners Irvine to make people feel welcome. So what better person to have on the podcast than Kirby would?
Thank you so much, Sammy. So for she, I was a kind. Kirby, I want to start with this quote that I read. It's from one of my favorite authors named Henry Nallard.
I don't know what book it's from. But this is what he says. He says, hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. One of the things that we share with our group leaders is that your role is not to change people.
Ultimately, it's God and Holy Spirit and their response to what God is doing in their hearts. But we create that environment for God to move in the hearts of people. So I guess to just ask you, why is it important to create an intentional hospitable environment in our life groups? Oh, what a great question.
I think the hospitality is something that often people will mistake as one person's gifting. And I think that that's often a group because you might find someone who's really organized or is really good at hosting. And you think, hey, let's charge this person with being the hospitality champion or what have you. But actually, as we look at scripture, a lot of the charges in the New Testament, you will see so often that it is a biblical mandate for all of us as believers to step in and be hospitable.
And that's actually an attribute of being Christ-like. So I think all of us learning how to do that, whether we're a member or we're the Light Group leader and ensuring our group does that, will help cultivate that environment where God will move powerfully and mightily as we lean into what God has called us to do. And that is to be hospitable. That's good.
That's really good. And the ultimate goal is to create vulnerability on our Light Group members. So that way they can take those courageous decisions. That's one of the values that merits intentional environments inspire courageous decisions.
So ultimately, we're trying to create these environments for people to say yes to Jesus, to serve with each other in a Light Group. So I'm just thinking practically what could Light Group leaders do within the home, within just among, as they're setting up chairs and tables, whether it's praying over the chairs, whether it's thinking about the food, what could they do? Yeah, I think I'd love to start on a just a value base of where that conversation goes and then we can talk about the practicality of those things. Because I think the practical things are often times what people can get hung up on.
It's like, I'm not a good cook. Or I don't have a big home. And so when we think about those practical things, I think it can be a little daunting at first. But when we talk from that value spot, then people can find you as a leader who are listening to this podcast, hey, how do I fit into some objectives?
And so I have ones that I have encouraged volunteers in and ways to be hospitable. And then we can maybe talk about somebody just like you said of ways to do that. So the three things that I really charge our team to be when they're thinking about hospitality is that hospitality is planned. Hospitality is sincere, like it being genuine.
And that hospitality is oftentimes surprising. It's something you didn't expect. And so first and foremost, hospitality is being planful or planned. I think it's really obvious what we mean when we say that, right?
But that's gonna look different, right? So I think that the people who are planning to be a person might mean planned means that they can't prepare with their homework to do. And I actually do believe that doing that is being hospitable to your people. Planned as a way to think about how to volunteer teams.
Oftentimes looking like we're expecting the volunteers to show up. So greeting them, having their name, type present, things like that. And there's ways that we can train like that to the group environment as well. Where it's like we're expecting people to be there by having your health be a certain level of cleanliness, right?
That your room is set up appropriately for the amount of people that are going to be there. I think shows that you're expecting people and you're planning for their arrival. So I know that's a little bit of a hard one for me. I think that's a little bit late.
So my planfulness might look different than someone who's more timely and things like that. But I still try to be mentally even prepared and planned and ready to be there for groups. So yeah, that's kind of the one thing I think about the planfulness. I'm curious what you guys think of when you guys, when I say that.
Yeah, I mean, I think about that idea of planned or being intentional. I'm more of a person that's a bit of a procrastinator. My wife is the one who's a planner. And so she's thinking through when life group is about the start that, hey, is everything ready?
Does the smell, even the cleanliness, the smell, music playing in the background is the refreshments out. Are we present to connect with the people as they come in? Because you know what? We have 12 members in our group and sometimes people come in a little later than others.
And we could still be talking with this one couple rather than when someone comes in the door. Hey, let me talk to you this person. I'm creating every person so that no one feels left out. And so yeah, that's what I think of Sam.
What are your thoughts? Yeah, I think about making people feel seen and remembering details about their life. I don't know why that's one thing that's on my heart right now. Before our life group, we usually have a time to fellowship, break bread, and just chitchat about what's going on in each of our lives.
And remembering what's going on with their workplace, what's going on with prayer requests that they've had in the past that makes people feel seen, that makes them feel like they are a part of the group. Especially, let's say you just recently added people on group finder or maybe they're a quiet people, they might feel on the outskirts. So bringing those people in is super important. And it makes them feel like they are a part of the family.
I love that. No, and I think that starts to speak to sincerity of like showing up generally authentically ready to connect with people. So there's both a preparedness to that. And there's a sincerity that I see as well.
I know my group, we've been together since 2021, which is awesome. We went through June, 2021 and been together since. We've lost people through moving. And then we added three people through life group finder, Lou this time last year actually.
And that's been an intentional effort that we've made to help them feel welcome. And it actually has come from us really engaging in a full level set. So I live with two of the girls currently in my life group. And I know a lot of the things that are going on in their life.
But once it's a life group time, I really do our best. And we've kind of agreed as roommates to really try to see everyone as individuals and include everyone equally. Though, I might know that she went on a date yesterday. I'm going to allow her to share that freely with the group and be excited in the moment with the group intentionally and genuinely, as if she was sharing it for me.
Not necessarily the first time, but as is an exciting thing. And I think so too. And maybe I'm speaking to the young adults. And maybe not even I've seen this in families and parents as well.
Being off of your phone is a really great practice of showing that sincerity and the intentionality and hospitality to one another. Even when I phone him, I have my notes on it. I try my best to place it down or to not engage, but be really present to people, especially during prayer requests or things like that. And going old school, I know we committed to this recently.
We were taking even notes on, we were doing prayer requests on our phones recently. We switched over to writing it down manually just so that we can, we just get tempted in little moments, to check an email or things like that. So we've been engaging in that more. Wow, that's pretty cool.
Question for you. Is that something that just one person will write down the prayers and distribute that to everyone else? Or does everyone write that in their own journal? Someone's prayer requests.
Sometimes we've done where people are resonating with it so they write it down for themselves. But we did, but they've had one prayer person for that week write them all down for us. But in busy seasons, I think even the person who's like, oh, I'll write the prayer requests, they're like, oh, are they using a detector? I don't know.
But we're trying to get better at that, I think, at times. You said there's a thing, talk about three things, right? Plan, sincerity. What was the third one?
The third one is surprising. Surprising. It's good. It's good.
More about that. Yeah, a great, a great question. Yeah, hospitality being surprising is something I've learned as a model of a lot of really great service industries, like Chick-fil-A or Disney or things like that. The element of surprise is where they paid attention to extra things that you wouldn't have recognized.
I know I have a funny story I share often that I went to Chick-fil-A. I'm from Georgia. And the Chick-fil-A I went to, they always write down. And you know this if you've been to a really great Chick-fil-A.
When they ask for your name, they actually also write down what you're wearing. And so when they do that, they come up to you. And they'll be like, Scott, and you're like, how did you know? I was Scott, you weren't the person that took my order.
But they've clearly someone's remembered something to your point, Sam. But when you remember things, there's an element of like, I didn't expect that. Thank you. But funny story is, I asked her to talk about milkshake and she was taking my notes.
And she comes around and the woman's like, we know what the milkshake. And she's like, purple sweater, purple sweater. And I'm like, what? I'm like, what do you mean?
That's me. I'm the top milkshake. And she's embarrassed. And so she's like, hiding the receipt from me that has my name on it.
And I'm like, let me see what they write. Because my name's Kirby, so people say fine things. And she's like, oh, I don't want to show you. And I grabbed the receipt from her.
And it said, kurtie. Like, see you are dy. You're just so funny. I was like, oh, this is classic.
I missed classic like Miss Stelling. She was like, so embarrassed. I was like, it's OK. This hilarious.
And my friends like to this day call me pastor kurtie all the time. It's like really funny. But honestly, there's a beauty in that of people when we remember things that are surprising element. And there's other things that we can do.
And I think we've all experienced great hospitality in restaurants, in retail, in hotels, things like that. And so much we can learn of how to create that environment in life groups, in community together. I guess another thing I wanted to ask was one of the leader's sensuals is sharing ownership. That we don't have to do everything on our own.
And so how do we create that kind of culture of hospitality? How do we encourage others to partake in that value as well? Oh, that's such a great thing. I mean, one, of course, is demonstrating it, right?
So it's like demonstrating and being a reflection of that, great hospitality. You got to set what you expect, right? So we're being a good witness. I think that's an element of it.
But two, I always do challenge even volunteers on my team to create space for people to step up into those opportunities. That's true, but leadership in it anyway. If you're constantly leading, or you bring snack every single week, nobody's going to think there's even room or opportunity for them to bring snack. So asking for help is an important step that a leader must take as saying, hey, does anybody else want to host this week?
Does anybody else want to bring snack? Are there other people that you can reach out to and taking that initiative to reach out, I think makes a world of a difference? And two, I think that one thing we've been doing a lot recently is when someone offers something that we accept it. I think there's been, now, like I mentioned, a couple of my roommates, we live together.
So it's really easy for us to be the ones to host, because there's three of us that live together. And that's not my directly correlate to you, but there might be things that come more naturally to you, especially as a leader, that you are like, well, it's just easier for me to do that. It's easier for me to do that. But sometimes it's not about the ease, but it's about the opportunity to allow someone to step into that place.
So oftentimes when our group has someone says, hey, actually, I can host this week. And I think someone's like, oh, her house is really far away. Well, we're like, hey, she wants to host, and so we want to do that, even though it might not be, she doesn't have the biggest living room, or she didn't have the most things, but it's allowing that to be okay, gives other people the opportunity to have that shared ownership with you. So those are kind of the main things that kind of my mind.
Are there any things that you guys have seen that work well? Yeah, for us, like I said, we typically open up with dinner. So whoever we've structured it to where whoever we rotate who facilitates discussion, when it comes to answering the sermon discussion questions, and that couple, we're in a married life group, that couple will actually also bring this next, and they will take care of the prayer champion responsibility. So it gives everyone an opportunity to step up, like you said, be a part of what God is doing in our group and to take ownership.
That's what comes to mind for our group. Yeah, I think for our group, we rotate what we need. So every couple has an opportunity to host, and then also we rotate snacks, we don't do a full on dinner, but we have that first 15 minutes to connect over some refreshments, and yeah, we really just take on the responsibilities of being hospitable. That's really good.
One thing you mentioned, Kirby, is that some people struggle with accepting help, and I think it's really important to dig deeper into that because I would say that's me, that's me, and I know a lot of our leaders probably are listening, like it's so much easier for me to just take care of it, I know how to do it. Or they're just not the type of person to receive they'd rather give, but it's so important to remember that Jesus modeled receiving as well. He wasn't above receiving, he allowed himself to, you know, his feet to be washed. Yeah, and his head anointed with oil.
So one encouragement for your life group leaders is to not forget that it's okay to ask for help. It's okay if you're not doing it all by yourself, but one last question we have for you is what's one habit or rhythm that you've implemented in your group Kirby that has been really helpful for your group culture that you would just want to leave with our life group leaders. I love this question. I think, I mean, there's so many things that we all do.
I'm sure like where it comes to pre-request and hosting in homes and things like that, we do, as you mentioned, we do break bread together on a regular basis. It used to almost be every single week, which was so sweet, but we just allow people to come early if they want to either bring their own dinner, or oftentimes we try to make dinner for everybody, that person who's hosting that week. And that just allows us a little extra time at the side from the study where it's not as formal. And I think that's made a really significant impact on our group is having that space.
But also, I would say one other thing too, is when we don't meet for some reason, that we still connect in some way. I think last night, a couple girls, one girl got sick, someone else was out of town, and the other person was like, actually, I think I'd like to take this opportunity to have a rest night. The few of us that were, of course, still planning on it, because that's group this week, because it's Tuesday night, we decided to also go on a walk together and still share life and ask for prayer and the things that we needed. And so I think we've all committed and set this time apart as time will connect regardless of even if there's things that come up.
And so that's made a big impact for us to all know that that's our time, and there's nothing else happening at that time. We guard it really, really well, and I think that's a huge impact. Well, Kirby, you're a rock star. We love serving with you.
I love you guys serving with us. You guys both do so well. Yeah, we're so thankful for you. And whether you're creating a hospitable environment for 13,000 people that attend on a weekend service, or as a co-leader in your life group, for how many, you have a new group?
Over the 10 women. Yeah, whether it's for 10 women in your group, you're making a difference. And we learned so much, just even your encouragement to all of us leaders, and is a great intentional, hospitable environment. So thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having me.