Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This week the 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. Hey Life Group leaders welcome back to the podcast. My name is Alex, I'm your middle pastor and I'm going to post alongside Linda Vino, the discipleship pastor over marriage.
Welcome back to the podcast everybody. We have some new leaders, we have some new groups, just graduated rooted, just got through life group launch night. Life group launch night. It was so fun.
Seeing people lock arms, always something that stood out to you. Then coming together again after rooted, they were all chatty on the patio and hanging out and it was just so fun to see. So for existing leaders may you just be reminded of those moments. Remember when you first launched an excitement that you had, I would say when you tried to take on hell with squirt guns, like the excitement that you could just do anything, you're going to read the whole Bible in a week.
Right. May you have some of that fire as you go into the summer, into this fall or even as you jump into our Exodus series, which I knew was going to be good, but I was not expecting it to be as good as it is. Like every week I'm blown away at how great the series is in the response of our church. I agree.
I agree. It's been really great. I hope you get to experience that with your group, which means you're going to jump into the questions. We all have our magazines.
We are on page 78. That is the Life Group Discussion Guide and Lean In. We're going to get everybody to lean in. We're going to get everybody to talk, everybody to share bits of their story.
So I think it's a fun question if you could relive anytime or season of your life, which would you choose? Childhood High School or something else, explain why you chose what you did. I think I had a ball in college. I didn't expect college to be as fun as it was.
I just really, really had a lot of fun in college. College by college years. I went to Cal State Long Beach. I went to Cal State Long Beach.
Yeah. I was a little fun. I just really sucked the life out of that experience. I wanted college.
Just lots of fun. We had a lot of fun in college. I graduated, so that's good. Great.
What about for you? I would pick the newlywed season. Yeah. Like if I go back in time, newlywed, now that I do so much pre-meral counseling, I always tell couples if I were you, here's what I wish I could go back and do.
That's good. We were just spending more time. We don't have kids. We thought we were so busy as newlyweds.
We had the world at our fingertips. We just felt we were so big. We could have done so much more. We could have built so many great rhythms for our marriage now, this month as 10 years of marriage.
So good. We had some really, really fun moments. I just want to relive some of those fun moments where we could just leave. Right.
You want to just leave? Yeah. I'll just go. You just go to dinner right now.
We don't have to pack up a bag or anything. Pack of plays. Yeah. If I go back in the newlywed season.
You're piecing together people's stories. Well, it's fun to learn new things about people in the leaving question as well. I would have known that about you. Right.
Which is fun. I think that is carried over to who you are. Because Linda is, I got on the third floor. She's like the life of the party, everybody.
I pretty much am. Like if you don't know that, if you hung out with Linda, you probably know that. But if you haven't, you're like, I was hearing your voice on the podcast. Linda is kind of the life of the party on the third floor.
I like to have fun. You do. And I like it's snacks. Where's the surrounded by good snacks right now.
I'm sitting here, there's peanut m&ms, there's chocolate, there's candy, there's popcorn. I'm just in your office and you got everything. You are the life of the party. It's so much fun.
So I see it. Then we're going to look down, we're going to look at scripture. So if you go to the page before page 76, you'll see all of the passages that we're reading from XS15 through XS16. So you can kind of look through it, read through it, have a couple people read through it.
What are they complaining about? I like doing different versions too. Calling on different people to read different versions of the scripture. I think that's insightful.
And the Bible hub is a great one because you just click, click around to all different versions. So I like to do that, just get a context. It just sings an idea. What translation people naturally use.
Right, right. I get that a lot. Yeah. Especially because Kenton spoke at Irvine last weekend and he used NLT.
He did, I got his thought. Yeah, it was on the screen and normally we do CSV. We do. So it was reading it in a different way.
It was really fun. Right. No, I agree. I think it's nice to find different translations.
So you can talk to this question. I like that second question. Following the Israelites complaints, what does God say he will do for them? XS16, 4 through 5.
So it's a test. So XS16, 4 through 5, God is testing that. Yeah, he says, I'm going to bring bread from heaven for you. So the people, then they had to go gather the bread.
So they were complaining about not having pots of meat to eat. And you know what's interesting to me when I was reading through this, I realized it had only been like a month and a half or something. It was crazy how short of a time it had been. And they began complaining so quickly.
A month and a half from then cornered into the Red Sea. Right. Where are we going to go? God says move.
Right. Like how quickly we can't forget. Yeah, seeing the miracles of Jesus, of God and what he did. It just, yeah.
Mm-hmm. And this is a tough one because you could easily jump into putting it in your own life for your group. So I could easily look at these questions and be like, oh, a test. Well, here's the purpose of a test and go into like teaching mode or go into like another question of, and how often do we forget?
Do we forget God's good? We could easily go into that. But the whole point is how can you get people to look down? And some of these questions, you know, I love the questions most weeks.
These ones are a little bit more trivia questions. So I think like what Linda recommended is getting different versions. Say an answer to you from this version. Let's read from this version.
What are you noticing? Or it could turn into sort of the latest things that are happening in the news. It could turn into people being weary with what is happening instead of focusing on the positive because, for instance, a look out question, what are some of the most common complaints you hear people make about God? That could go into a lengthy session of a lot of different opinions in your group.
And it could be a real time sucker. So how can you help them if they're going that way? How can you bring the group back? Well, I would just say that's a very interesting take on it, but let's pause and let's talk about that after meeting.
But we're trying to just quickly move along so that we can cover all the information that's in the book. And we can do that in group time. Yeah. So if you're moving, you are the leader.
You have the authority. Hey, let's get back on track. Yeah, I like to say like in one sentence. Otherwise, people get into a story like in one sentence or give me a word, one word, one word, some things, health issues, you know, different things that you say.
Okay. So if you start with what's one word, just give me one word. Everyone go around and give me one word. So what you would say, what's one word?
What's one word? What's one of the most common complaints you hear people think about God in one word? In one word. In one word.
Fair. Yes. I would say health issues, even though that's two words. You know, we're trying to phrase.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah. So that's quite a few things without getting specific in an issue. Yes.
Because of the people tell a story. I think that's really, really great wisdom. I will be logging that and stealing that. Okay.
Okay. But we're looking out now. Now they're looking out in the culture. Some most common complaints you hear, but really what you for you as leader to have eyes to see is this could be a complaint that they personally have.
You know, it's easy to be like, oh, well, they complain about that. But this could be, you know, people in your group really opening up and sharing. Maybe here's a frustration that I've seen that I've had that I've experienced. So it could be like having new ears to hear and really discerning on where to go.
And care for people. Well, I liked it. Flip. So after the common complaint, then you're saying, where's the common ways that God provides for people?
And so then you could flip it into one phrase, how has God provided for you financially? Yeah. Health, kids, whatever it is that you can now flip it and go, let's not forget about the goodness of God because he's only good. I immediately thought of the tech people at church.
Yes. You never know when they're doing good because you just have that assumption and things work great. The minute one thing, the minute a microphone doesn't work or the minute a slide doesn't go up. Everybody notices that they did one slip up and one mistake, but rarely do they.
Wow. Service went off without any issues. They're not the ones getting. That was so smooth.
Yeah. I think sometimes we could do that with God too. Yeah. Like we can, when things are going great, it's like, yeah, this is how it should be without having appreciation and gratitude.
Yeah, the expectancy of it. Absolutely. So we're looking out and then you get to turn the corner looking within. And maybe some people have kind of led a little bit and might be discerning.
Okay. I feel this person may have a complaint, a frustration, or maybe they're walking through something. Now we can begin to help them look in. So think about your life before you trust a Christ who believes in God, you sometimes tend to go back to that life.
This is a really bold question to ask in group, which kind of leads into a stronghold's moment. It could lead to it. So perfectly consider that. How would you advise them to walk through that?
Well, that is our rhythm for rooted this session. And I would just, you don't want to err on the side of someone's says, actually it feels like it was a lot easier because I think a lot of, some people might feel that because we know that following Christ does not provide his perfect life. Yeah. But it does provide his peace and joy and immeasurable love and comfort and guidance.
So just being able to remind people that it's important to wake up each day in repentance because we do forget. We just talked about it. So just reminding you, think about all the things we talked about, all the complaints that we had, even if it was wrong phrase, confessing that before the Lord. And I think we have an advantage, you and I do, because we facilitate rooted often.
And maybe not every leader has facilitated rooted, but they've all been through rooted. So if you're going into a stronghold's repentance moment, like there was a level of preparation for you for rooted, right? Yes. Like it's not like everybody, everybody around if you're in a rooted season.
We all know exactly when we fight this. Right. Like there's a preparation. So how would you spiritually emotionally prepare for something like that?
Well, I think it's anytime you prep your group ahead of time and say this is what we're going to be talking about or as they're coming to the group that you, they understand that this is something that we're going to be talking about in the next couple weeks. And then I would just make a, I would make a list of those things that are from the rooted book and revisit those. Maybe even hang those out and say, okay, next time we get together, we're going to tap talks through these things and go into a little bit of a stronghold. Yeah.
There's a preparation for the group. It's a week for every week telling them you need to show up next week. Right. There's going to be something that's going to come up because I know spiritual warfare.
Yes. There's probably going to be something that comes up that you're going to be like, oh, I'm not going to show up next week is a week that you're not going to want to miss. It's going to be different, but it's going to be so good for you. So I don't give them like everything, but there's a preparation.
At the same time, there is a spiritual preparation that there's a whole lot of prayer that goes into week five of strongholds. It gets brought up at staff meetings for us to pray. So for you as a leader, there's a part of spiritually preparing for this moment as you go into a stronghold time. And transparency too.
You lead the way with immavility. Yeah. So every recession I always start. You always start, right?
You start with your story. You start with strongholds. You set the tone for vulnerability. And everybody who leaves that week is so, feels so much better because they get to hear everybody's stories, such as you're visiting that once again.
Yeah. So it's going to be a really beautiful moment for your group and then you have this beautiful question. How has God provided for you in ways you've never expected? I love that.
I love that so much. You can just go off for hours on that. Right. Right.
It's going to be really great for people to journal, thread on a piece of paper. Just keep, everybody take five minutes and just get the notes app on your phone and just write how he's provided for you. I think too, even if you did the stronghold singing a little bit different, you wrote down something that you're struggling with and then one person read through one. And maybe didn't associate the person who wrote it, but it just kind of gives you that, yeah, that's how I feel too.
Like I'm struggling with that too. So you feel like at least people in the room are experiencing the same things that you are without actually calling people out. And then you go back to the people and say, okay, this is the thing that you need to pray about and repent about. And then do the same with the goodness of God and just be letting people share that and make sure that everybody in your group does share because it's important to hear how God is provided for everybody.
What you're hitting at too is also a lie that we tell ourselves is no one's going to relate with me. No one's going to have the same struggle. Mine's the worst. Yeah.
If I shared the group with disown me, right, we tell all these lies, but really what you're helping us see on this that we're more like than we think we're all broken and we're all in need to be safe here. Absolutely. Even as leaders. Yep.
Even as leaders. This could be really powerful week for your group. So I pray that you take some extra time in the passage. I pray that you take some extra time spiritually preparing for the battle that will happen in your group.
And I pray that God does something incredible, incredible in your midst, and measure what you can ask or imagine in your midst of the study. So we're praying for you. We're thankful for you. Thank you for your leaders.
Yeah.