Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Jesus mentions in Matthew 28, verses 19 through 20, to make disciples of all the nations. Now people will often think evangelism is going on mission strips halfway across the world or it's about the street preacher on the boardwalk.
But what would it look like for you to reach the person on the other side of the street? Your neighbor, your coworkers, your family members. Today's conversation is with our college pastor, Tiffany Lyons, and we talk about living on the street. We pray that today's conversation emboldens you to connect to the people in your lives and tell them the story of transformation that Jesus has done.
Let's tune in. All right, life group leaders today. We are sitting with Tiffany Lyons, our college pastor. She is one of the most joyful people I know on staff.
If there's one person that has golden retriever energy, it is Tiffany Lyons. I feel like you're always super happy. So it's a blessing to have you on the podcast today. Tiffany, welcome.
Thank you so much. Of course, we have these personality tests on staff. And there are four colors that you could be coded by based on your personality. And one of them is yellow.
And yellow is like, I want to be involved in the conversation. I want to connect with people. Think of it like woo kind of from- Yes, winning others over. I'm high, woo, also.
Oh, you also. That was not surprising. You are like the most yellow person I know on staff in terms of the personality test. So it's a joy to work with you.
So thanks for being on today. Oh, thanks, Sam. As a yellow, thank you. Of course, yeah.
Because I feel like everybody surely wants to be yellow. That's not true. But as a yellow, that's what I think. I am highly blue and I really push myself in ministry to be yellow.
But I will say I default to blue. I haven't done it yet. Praise God for blue though. We need blue.
We need yellows. We need- Bloo. Don't know blue is like get the details done. Processes.
Yeah, absolutely. Take everything happen. Yes. Anywho, today we're talking about living on mission.
And what that means is because honestly I had to look this up before this process. Living on mission means reaching the people in your communities, your neighbors, your coworkers, reaching the people near you for Jesus. It's fulfilling the great commission with those that are already in your circles in your spheres. And we thought what better person to bring on this podcast than Tiffany because of your backgrounds.
But before we dig into this podcast, I would love for our listeners to know more a bit about you, about your role here at Mirrors and also a little bit about your upbringing, which is very applicable to being on mission. Yeah, absolutely. So I have been, we were just talking about before we started recording on staff at Mirrors for almost five years. So I'm super excited because when you're on staff for five years, you get a little cube.
I know it's going to sit on my desk probably. If I make it, the next few, I'll need a few more weeks to make it. I'll make it. Anyway.
Right now I get to serve as a college pastor. I love it. I love getting to be a part of our Thursday night community and all I got is just unbelievable. And then because we have such an effort and it's staffed well and our senior pastor preaches at our Thursday nights, there's a lot of stuff that's just taken care of, which means I get to spend a lot of my time on college campuses.
So I mean, I just actually got back from UCI just now. And so I love that I get to go and try to connect with students who are far from God and help them get connected to God to each other and community. It's great. So that's been super fun.
And then most recently I volunteered to help launch the Church on Skid Row. That's right. And that is not really part of my job. Because I love it and it's been awesome.
It's been great. We opened the door to the public just a few weeks ago. And so now my favorite position is to stand right outside the doors and invite people to come. So it's been really, really cool.
First, how many college campuses are you kind of working on and bringing your brain rooted to these campuses? So how many different colleges are you working on? Well, we're attempting a lot of colleges right now. And in faith hopefully it's going to be all over Southern California.
But the only two so far have we actually launched. And one that's thriving. So UCI is the one that's thriving. We launch about three groups every session, three times a year.
And then we try to get on Vanguard. So we got a little group going there last fall. But looking for opportunities to get critical, massive students that would want to take rooted and sometimes transportation's an issue, locations an issue. So if we could just bring it to them on their college campus, how amazing would that be?
So that's the hope and the prayer. And then URM, every Sunday I see you guys loading buses of volunteers over to URM. How many people are serving right now at Union Rescue Mission? I, because I'm not blue or detailed oriented.
I'm going to give you my yellow answer of what I think it could be. A lot. A lot. And I'm probably about 100 people on our launch team.
That consistently serve. And so some serve every week, some serve every other week. And so we don't have 100 volunteers there every week. But probably half of that or a little more than half every week that come.
And so doing everything from kids' ministry, the hospitality, to community engagement, or we walk around the building and invite people to come to serving at Bag Check, because people can't bring the stuff off the street into the building. So I mean, somebody came into church the first time he opened the doors. And they checked their knife and their beer. And they came into church.
It was awesome. So yeah, it's just been really, really cool. So it's just all sorts of stuff. But yeah, lots of volunteers go every single week.
And it's awesome. So this is a shameless plug, Life Group Leaders. Oh, yeah. If you guys ever are looking for a serve opportunity, check out our college ministry, check out Union Rescue Mission, and no Tiffany and the team would love to have you.
Now, yeah, as I mentioned, we're talking about living on mission and evangelism. So I would love for you to share a bit about your upbringing, because it's so applicable. Yeah, absolutely. So I was born in Manila.
So I grew up in the Philippines. My parents were missionaries, both sets of grandparents were missionaries. So both parents grew up in the Philippines on different islands. And so my whole life, I was just surrounded by ministry.
And my aunts and uncles, they were all in ministry. So my dad was my pastor the majority of my life. And so I got to see it firsthand, in different seasons, from when I was little and getting brought to church and seeing all the different things going from island island to island with my dad to check out different people groups and see if we could share the gospel with them. And so I remember just really loving what my parents did.
And they never forced us. But they invited us into the mission. And so I loved being able to go see what God was doing and getting to just surf. And so when I saw that, I just couldn't.
I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I wanted to surf with everything I had. And so it was just a really, really cool time growing up with Philippines. Wow.
What a full circle moment that your parents who were pastors inspired you to be. I was certain continue that of reaching people. And we're talking about living on mission. And we can do that in a number of ways.
I mean, your family literally picked up. Where were they before the Philippines? I have to go back a couple generations because both of my parents were in the Philippines. So my, so my, both sets of grandparents, actually, it was in the 50s and 60s, they got on big ships and sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge.
No way. I was like, oh, I'm gonna go and get a cruise ship. This was like a ship that would take like three weeks to get there. My grandma looked at my grandpa and said, do you think that we'll be able to fit a refrigerator in the knee butt that we might have to live in?
And so she didn't even, like they had never been like on a survey trip. They just felt like God was saying, go to the Philippines. And so it was that kind of faith of like, we don't even know what's gonna happen, but we're going. That is so awesome.
That's incredible. Heavy metal man. Well, I mean, those generations ago, I put on their heart to go and reach people on the other side of the world. Yeah.
And so we do that. We're fulfilling what Jesus told us to do, which is go and make disciples of all the nations. That is our mission. That is the Great Commission.
But what I think a lot of people don't realize and what Scott and I are kind of wanting our life group leaders to understand is that we can actually do that in our circles around us, in our everyday lives. We can reach people near us. And that's what living on mission means. So can you share a bit about why that is important, why we need to kind of take Jesus up on that Great Commission and, yeah, can you just share?
Absolutely. Yeah. I think you're so right. If we're going to go and be a part of the Great Commission, we have to go.
And there is a level of going. My grandparents absolutely felt led by the Lord to go across the world and share the gospel with people they didn't even know. And yet we are meant to do. Everyone has been to do this.
This is not the Great Commission for the holiest of the holies or the elite Christian. There is no such thing. I mean, if you have been saved, then you are now on mission. Congratulations.
You're commissioned to do this. And so I think it's sometimes easier to go on a faith adventure and to share the gospel with someone far away and then to go across the street and to share the gospel with your neighbor or to go have that conversation with that sister or with that uncle or all these things. And the reason I think it seems easier to do it with other people you don't know versus the people you know and love and are close to is because you're scared of what that will do to the relationship. And especially nowadays, it seems like there's so many things that are taboo that we can't talk about.
And often faith is part of that conversation. And so it just feels heavier because you love them so much. It feels scarier because what if they don't respond the way you want them to respond and would that really fracture the relationship. And so I think there's a lot of reasons why people don't live on mission where they're at, but they wait to go on mission.
And so I love this topic Sam, this is so incredible. I think it's so important because their Christian is all over the world. And imagine if every single Christian all over the world decided to live on mission where they're at. They don't change their schedule at all.
They don't change anything about where they work, where they go to school, how they raise their kids, what sports teams they're on. They just do all those things. But yet on mission. Could you imagine what would happen?
And what does that look? We'll talk about what that looks like. But if people did that, like I'm thinking about the life group leader listening to this right now. Think about every single person in your life group.
Think about every single job, every workplace, every neighbor, every teacher. I mean, teacher. I mean, your group has more access to people in your community than it does. That's really huge.
I mean, for sure more than me and you say them because we're not in those spaces. And so there is unlimited opportunity and it's really exciting that we're talking about this. That's so good. You talk about how it's easier to sometimes reach the person on the other side of the world than the person across the street because we're scared of damaging that relationship.
What if they don't agree? What will they say? How will they view me differently? And I was just wondering if you wouldn't mind.
What would you say to someone, let's say, across the street that in a way to make it kind of honoring, like, hey, I care about you enough. Like, I just want to share something with you that's really big on my heart and it's Jesus. What kind of language would you give those that are listening that are maybe in that same boat of, man, there's pressure. I feel a little scared to do this.
What encouragement or language would you use? Totally. I would say there's actually a couple steps I would do even before the language of those conversations. The first thing, it sounds so simple and so like, of course, but we don't do it.
And I don't always do it either. So like, I mean, this is convicting conversation for me too. We have to get to know them. How am I really going to share your faith with someone when you come in?
You have your garage door go down before you leave the car. You never talk to them. And so the first step is just connect. And you don't connect with like, hey, do you know the Lord Jesus is your Savior?
You're going to die and go to hell. That's not you. You're like, hey, I like your car. I don't know.
Just like, how are you? How are you? What do you do for work? You just leave with curiosity.
You leave with, hey, I just want to get to know you, period, with no strings attached. And it's really crazy. That is so rare. So if you start with just let's get to know you, let's show hospitality.
That doesn't mean you have to have them over to your house all the time. But you can show hospitality just being in your presence. So I mean, there are times when I'm running late to something and my neighbor across the street, or not across the street, but my neighbor right next to me, she's not a Christian. And she wants to chat.
I pause as much as I can and I chat and I try to get in her world of what's going on. Because I know Easter's coming up or I know Christmas coming up and I know that if I can just keep on building relationships, maybe one day she'll say yes for four years she said no. But maybe one day she'll say yes. And if she just knows we love her.
And so like, so I think the first thing is get out of your head and get around other people and try to talk to them. And I think some of the objections to that is, well, I'm an introvert or I don't have time. The Great Commission is not just for extroverts. It's for everyone.
So if we are going to be on mission when we're in line at Starbucks, let's talk to the barista. When we're picking up kids from soccer practice, let's take a moment and talk to the other parents. In all of these spaces, let's just ask God to open our eyes to the people around us or first see them. When I think about Jesus impacting so many people, often in the scriptures, he saw the multitudes and he was filled with compassion.
So if we want to be filled with compassion, we have to see them. So the first thing I would say is if I was leading a group and this was a topic, I would say, hey, let's write down everybody in our sphere of influence. Like let's just even if we don't have their name, barista with blonde hair or whatever. And just start to look for opportunities to build relationships and then as you build relationships, just be normal.
Don't be weird. Don't be the weird Christian. And so be normal, be life giving, ask God to open doors. And it's wild when you start to ask God for that.
He's going to answer your request. And so my neighbor, for instance, we were asking for God to open a door and I found out that her boyfriend passed away. And which is so hard. But that was a moment that I was like, I'm so sorry, can I pray for you?
Like, just looking for those moments and she still was very standoffish about that. But that wasn't opening. And I was praying for her God in this time of just like devastation. Would you show your goodness to her?
Would you show her that you're pursuing her? And so things like that, God's going to open the door and you're going to be able to comfort them in hard times, celebrate them in times of celebration. And then he's going to open the door to, hey, do you want to, it's not going to feel weird now when you ask them, do you want to go to church? Have you found a church?
So starting the conversation, I would start the conversation with, okay, how do I turn my now regular relationship and regular conversations into spiritual conversations? And it's not as hard as you think. Because Sam, if I were to ask you, how was your weekend? Most likely, he would say, it was great.
And if I said what you do, you'd say I went to church. That's a really great opening. That's an awesome line. So I start and I ask people, hey, how was your weekend?
Tell me about it. They're going to tell me. And then if they have just a little bit of interpersonal skills, they're most likely to ask me one question. Oh, how was your weekend?
And that's your end. Bam. Boom. And so it can be that simple.
And so I would just start with those types of moments. Now, when you turn into like, when God really opens the door of sharing the gospel, we can totally go there if you want. But at that point, you already have the foundation of I love you. And so I think that's the biggest thing.
Man, you had so many good nuggets in there. A couple I want to highlight and just really hope that our leaders soak this in is one that living on mission is not just for the extroverts. It's for the introverts too. And I think the best people to reach introverts is other introverts sometimes.
That's so good. And so God is going to use that. And then when you were talking about creating lists of people who God wants you to connect with in your everyday life, what I imagined was a life group leader leading a life group night or day, whatever their meeting is, and asking the Holy Spirit to impress on their hearts in that moment for them to just pray together but also for the Holy Spirit to impress on their hearts. Who is it God?
And then just waiting to hear from him and just taking notes. And then for that life group leader to then encourage their members to go and reach those people and just start the conversation. Hey, how is your weekend? Hey, what do you do for work?
What do you do for fun and simple things like that? Getting to know that person opens up the door. So yeah, those were a couple things. Man, that was good.
Preaching. You're preaching, Tiffany. So you mentioned one last thing I want to ask you about. You mentioned like, gosh, let's say we do open up, how is your weekend?
And then the person asks me back, how was my weekend? I say, oh, it was great. I went to church. And then they're like, oh, what do you believe in?
What do you believe about? Like, what does your church do? What do you guys believe in? For someone that is maybe new to evangelizing, that can be a scary thing.
Like, oh man, now I have to clearly articulate the gospel to this person. And I feel like I need to convince them of following Jesus in this very moment. What encouragement would you give that person listening? And I have a feeling you're going to say, it's not all on them.
It's not on them at all. But. You're absolutely right. It can be overwhelming, especially if you are under the idea that it is on you.
If you start to feel like, oh my goodness, this person either, their eternity hangs in the balance and it's on my answer. Great news for you. It's not on your answer. You can mess up and it's okay.
It's okay. God's bigger than you. And he's more powerful than you. And he loves them more than you.
And so I'm trying to remember this quote from Louis Giglio, but I think I'm going to butcher, this is the Tiffany version, but basically, you don't have to be an expert in everything about the Bible. You just have to be an expert at everything God has done in your life. And so that's not the exact quote. But I like the sentiment.
I like the sentiment because if you start to then think, oh my goodness, where do I start? Because there's so many ways you can go about it. And so I like to go to the personal. That's where I like to go.
The only spirit will lead you and guide you. But I like to, so somebody would ask me, okay, so like you go to church, what kind of church do you believe? What I would do is I would say, oh, the Christian church. And in fact, it's more than just going to church for me.
Jesus has totally radically changed my life. Would you mind if I ever share that story with you of what Jesus has done in my life? So if you switch it to personal versus I'm trying to convince you, because convincing doesn't really work anyway. And so I think that I can argue with you if you want to have a conversation about is God real, the facts of history and validity of Bible law.
There's a lot of people on both sides that can argue points. But if you say, hey, can I share how this one versus impact in my life? Or let me share my story of how Jesus saved me. No one can be like, that's not right, that's not your story.
Because that is your story. And so I would quickly go to story. What I've done before is I share it with people how to, like one method of sharing the gospel is through something called the bridge illustration. And so often I will say, would you mind if I share a verse with you that has really changed my life?
And most of the time they're going to say yes, because they care about you. So I'll do, there's a lot of verses in Romans that you can do. But for the way Jesus is death, but they get to God's eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. That's the one I'll go to.
And so as I do that, I can kind of walk through that verse. You can actually describe a whole gospel and how it impacted you and you share your story within it. And so that's been really helpful. And I think if you are on purpose to ask people their story and their faith story, then they're really open to hearing yours because now it's just an exchange of stories.
And the Holy Spirit's going to guide and direct and then they're going to ask more questions. But you start with this foundation of relational storytelling of what matters to you because our stories are so precious. Like our backgrounds are precious, our beliefs are so precious. And so are other people's, even if they believe something that we believe is wrong.
And so there was just a quick story. I did this thing called apartment life, which is really a really cool way to do exactly what we're talking about. Basically, I was like an RA for our apartment complex and my undercover mission was to try to build relationships with people and then share the gospel with them. That was like my whole thing.
And so anyway, so one of the girls that I had built some relationship with, she's from India and she follows me on Instagram and I just happened to repost something Christine King said and it had to do with purpose. And she DM'd me and said, wow, this is so wild. I'm wrestling with my purpose right now too. And I said, oh my goodness, I'm getting chills now.
And so I said, oh my goodness, I would love to get coffee with you and hear more about that. So I took her to coffee and I just asked her, like, tell me about this and tell me about your story. And then she was so curious about me. So I shared the gospel kind of like what I'm talking about now.
And I shared my whole story and how like now I just know beyond a shadow of a doubt. I was like talking about just the security I have in Jesus. And her response was so surprising to me. She said, the thing I'm the most surprised about your story is how sure you are.
You have found something and you believe it and you were confident you're right. Hindus don't believe that. We spend our whole life searching and we die searching. And so she was so when you start with story, then you know how to get into the theological discussions because what if I'm trying to convince her or something she's not even thinking about.
But now I realize, oh, this is the foundation of what she's going through and what she's worldview of, okay, it's a searching religion. And so I think when you start with story, then it might get more hard. It might get more complicated. You can talk to somebody who has really, really hard questions.
But at least you know which ones to hit and which ones to ask the Lord for wisdom on. Man, that is good. And rarely I think after you've listened to someone else's story and you ask them to share yours, rarely will they say no. I bet they will never say no.
I'm sure that does happen. And every time I've asked someone like, hey, can I pray for you after even if they're not a believer, rarely do they say no. But it does start with building that relationship and figuring out their story. And then that gives you an opportunity to share your story.
And what God has done in your life, no one can take that from you. No one can say that's wrong. So that's so good, Tiffany. We so appreciate having you on today and everything that you shared.
God has definitely prepared you to continue sharing the gospel. And I believe that for our life group leaders too, that he's preparing them. And would you mind just closing us out in prayer or praying over our life group leaders, praying over their life groups that they would just have a fire and a delight in reaching the people near them for Jesus and just sharing what God has done in their lives? Would you mind praying over them?
Absolutely. I would love to. Lord, we come to you and we're so grateful that you have saved us. Lord, that you have rescued us, redeemed us, said us on mission.
And Lord, I just pray for every single life group leader who is listening today. Lord, I pray that you would put this fire in their belly to live on mission. I pray that you would put people in their minds. Even right now as they're listening to the podcast, I pray for them to be thinking of the people that they see every week, Lord, that they can reach out to and connect with.
And Lord, that they would be just like you saw people in your mood with compassion. Lord, I pray that they would be moved with compassion. And Lord, I pray that this would be something that they could lead their groups to also embrace. Lord, I pray that their groups would be a space where every week they come and they celebrate.
They celebrate the winds. And the winds aren't just when somebody accepts you, although that's a huge wind. The winds are just even when they make contact and connect with someone and have a seemingly insignificant conversation because nothing is insignificant. And so Lord, I pray that this would just be something that impacts the rest of their life.
Lord, I pray for everybody in their life group, Lord, I pray that you would use everyone who's in a life group at Mariners to live on mission everywhere they go, that you would give them eyes to see compassion, courage to have conversations. Lord, I pray that they would feel emboldened. Not because they're expert in everything that you've ever done, but they're an expert in everything you've ever done in their life. And so Lord, I pray that you would use your people in a mighty way throughout Southern California and for life groups that are even online around the world.
Lord, I pray for them or that they would do a mighty thing in their communities, Lord God. And I thank you that while you could do anything to share this amazing hope, you could have used anybody, used anything. You chose to use people. You put us on mission.
The great commission is such an amazing thing to live by. And I pray that we would be people who do that. And Jesus name, amen. Jesus name, amen.
Amen.