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, practice the spiritual rhythms and changes the world together. Welcome back leaders to week nine of our podcast series looking at the book of Philippians, our study on fighting for joy. So glad that you're joining us again as we head into the final two weeks of this great series that we've been looking at during the summer of a really great encouraging book study.
I love that we're taking the time 10 weeks to really go really verse by verse through this incredible book and being encouraged and challenged all the way through it. I've been lots of fun studying it in my group and I've been lots of fun to have different members on our team sit down and interact with me on this podcast and this week we have the amazing we gifted the talented the personable Paul, Paul, Paul, thanks for joining us. My pleasure and so glad to be with you all. Yeah, Paul's been a long term part of part of our staff team and has contributed to so many different different areas.
But Paul, some may not know what you're currently up to, how you're serving our church. Just tell us a little bit about what you're doing and what excites you, what you see God doing right now. Yeah, for sure. I'm currently serving in our care and recovery ministry.
And so for those who don't know what that is or aren't familiar with it, it's really beautiful spaces that our church gets to step in and walk alongside people who are maybe going through a difficult season of life or who may be facing an issue or a pattern of behavior that they're asking Jesus to rewrite and break in their lives and the church gets to step in and stand with them and remind them of the hope that's in Jesus, which is kind of all about what Philippians is about. Right? We get to turn our attention to Jesus and point to the true hope as the source of our real care, real healing, real redemption. And so that's what we get to do as a church.
That's what we get to do as a ministry. And if you're not familiar with it, I want to invite you to check out any of our groups and many of your group members might be needing some of our resources, some of our community spaces where we can sit with people in some painful times. And so just suggest that you check out our website, our care website on our website. Yeah, Paul, you're doing a great job, man.
Faithfully leading it. I love what you said too, that the resources for group leaders, sometimes the group leader, we have the temptation to think that everything that happens in a group rests upon us to fix to solve, to work our way through. And while we love that, like sense of ownership, that group leaders have over their group, man, in no way is that your role to fix and solve everything. And people are people to solve, right?
People love and pick the care and care team and you guys just a great job of supporting the whole of our church, but particularly with our life groups too. So thanks for having service really well on that. Yeah, thank you. All right, man, should we jump in here?
We've got two versus we're going to look at a Flip It's for a really good versus I, but really good for it. Probably the best versus right. The whole thing. So why do we leave with the questions?
And as we do, we're going to interact with them, Paul and I, and we might rephrase some questions. We want to leave this like as we would be leading it in our group responding to it. So that's the idea with this. We know we got a lot of new leaders that are listening to this right now.
So we want to make sure you're touching the model and then kind of the fine ways to leave this out. So we got our lead in question, which is our icebreaker question. I'll read it as it's stated. Because what are some things that you like about social media and what are some things that you dislike about it?
Okay, there's lots of ways to interact and respond to that and some of the generic, you know, stay connected with friends and see what people are doing. And then of course, there's lots of things to dislike about it, kind of the curated picture of people's lives and all that stuff. But I think what's getting behind the question is how we feel our space with different activities, some of them mindless and numbless and what that does for us. Paul, I liked an alternative question you had to this that gets us to the same place.
Yeah. And I think, you know, hopefully some of our life groups, you guys have been walking with each other for some time now. And I know that your conversations always turn to, you know, what is the best and newest way to show that you've been watching? A lot of us have been binge watching things.
And so that might be a great question to open with is like, yeah, what is a TV show or maybe a movie that you've watched recently or that you've been obsessed with? And then kind of turn it more introspective of like, how has that impacted what you think about or what you talk about, how you talk? I know that when my sisters watch the Kardashians, they're their voices change, right? And so you might start pointing out certain things of like, oh, yeah, when I watch Yellowstone, maybe I drop a couple more.
Yeah, Chris, Paul, baby. Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, how quick we can run towards these activities to kind of fill the space, how that space is being filled by things that often, you know, are not enriching, not enriching, right?
Not developing. But we have so much information and entertainment and amusement that was message that message here at our disposal. And those things often are neutral that are discipling us in certain different ways. And of course, we've seen the overwhelming negative impacts of social media and technology, what we hold in our hands.
Yeah. And it's a pretty stark reminder that this stuff is neutral. Right. That shapes us and what we give our thoughtfulness and attention to.
It really does shape and form us. And I think one way that that's shown up even in my own life, and maybe this is a way to frame the question as well, is the difference that it has on my day when I wake up and I turn to my phone and I start scrolling on Instagram versus when I wake up and starting God's Word, like completely sets up my day in a different way. And so maybe that's a different angle too, is like, how have you noticed, you know, the difference in your mood, in your walk with Jesus and even your mindset when you start your day off with social media versus even in God's Word? Yeah, that old doom scrolling is a real thing, right?
Yeah. I was talking to Fred just yesterday, he started reading, you know, Cal Newport, he's got a new book out called Digital Minimalism and it's about evacuating digital space to create more presence, awareness, thoughtfulness, something that's going on around you. And of course, there's so many spiritual principles that are within there that these entanglements really have a way of cluttering our mind or action, how we see ourselves, God, and others around us. And we're just starting to really see the beginnings.
I think of the impact of the research of what we open ourselves up to, yeah, the mental health crisis, certainly attributed to our connectedness or, you know, the veneer of connectedness, the social media, you know, a lot more about that than I would for sure. But that's the impulse of this question. Yeah. And I think we'll get into it a little bit later, but even that discernment of what we're taking in, right?
Because a lot of things posted on social media, TikTok, on Instagram, Reels, it's like, they're presenting this as truth or they're presenting this as like, this is the best way or the only way that you should do or think about this. Yeah. And just really being disearning about what we're taking in and who we're taking it in from and counting as true. That's good.
Very good. Right. When I read the whole of these two verses here, really impact versus will interact with it. So flip it's four, eight through nine.
It says, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy, dwell on these things, do what you have learned and received and heard from me and seen in me and the God of peace will be with you. I love and get in that promise of pieces there, God of pieces there to be with you, to bring you into his restoration. And so there's this encouragement here then of, as you've seen me do it, this is a Paul from an ivory tower.
He's like with people. He's given instructions of what he taught, but also what you can see from his life. He's giving them real handles of things to concentrate on, to dwell on as he says. What stands out to you, Paul, in those couple of verses, what are some questions that you might want to lead groups through to highlight here?
Yeah. I mean, just to go back a little bit to what you just said, I love how Paul is saying what you have learned, received, heard and seen in me. And so hopefully we have some great examples of what this looks like. And Paul is suggesting that we see that in the context of the church and community.
Right. And that's a great thing to kind of affirm within your life groups is like, wow, we don't have to do this alone. We have to actually witness that, learn from it from each other. You know what I noticed when I first read this verse is I've read through Philippians quite a bit and I've noticed that in the past I've kind of just like skipped over these words.
I'm like, yeah, those are good things. Yeah, true things, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable. But I haven't often stopped and thought about what those actually mean or like the real world application of what that means in our context too. And I think that's why I love kind of the third question.
It's not really a question, but kind of a prompt for our groups that as a group make a list of true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, morally excellent and praiseworthy things. Because I think that one, that'll be a great exercise for you personally. But even for your group, you're going to see people with different perspectives on things, different life experiences where they're witnessing some of these things maybe in their own industry, in their own walks of life and their own families. Yeah.
And you're going to get a really cool kind of comprehensive or maybe a more extensive list together as a group than you would maybe even doing this apart. So I really, really love that prompting for the groups. Right. So you can ask them, you know, that opening, just what do you see?
What do you learn about what we're supposed to do well on in these two verses? What do you see? What do you learn? Because let's action it.
Let's make it real and applicable to everyday lives, like begin to list out with these virtues that are listed, listed things that match up with that. Where do you see it in your own life? What are the things that you want to call out? Maybe what are the things you want to call out in people in your group and even like begin to write that down?
Yeah. I think that's great. Anything that you would interact with, like if you were to make your list of third of anything that would stand out to you, just to give folks maybe an example of anything? It's good.
I mean, right now, I think what, for whatever reason, what is pure is standing out to me. And I think that that is in such, I don't know, direct contrast. As a young person in my early 30s, the world considers pure is oftentimes a very different list than what Jesus might say is pure. And so I think in my life group, we're all kind of in our 30s.
It would be interesting to even see what that means and what that looks like for us to live out as some of us are single. What does that look like in our lives? What is really glorifying to God in that space? Yeah.
That's great. And then the look out question, and you're kind of telling into that a little bit too, is okay, as you look at these lists of things, the world at large, does it make it easy to concentrate on these things? What are other way to ask that could be, what are the opposite messages that the world puts up in front of us? Where do you see that?
Where are they conflicting? Where are they loud? Where are you maybe some more susceptible to some of those things than others? So you want to go out, list it, see what they are, and then the lookout is interacting.
Okay, and how does this work in the world? How does the world put these things in front of us? What is the message that's behind these things? Yeah.
So gosh, even aside from like values, I think Eric had an illustration a couple of weeks back, just of him falling asleep to the news and how it's just this like, you know, the equivalent of doom scrolling. The news is kind of a giant doom scroll most days. And yeah, I feel like what's beautiful about this exercise, I think, is that as human beings as a culture, we're much more focused on some of the tragedies that are happening, the negative things that are happening. But I remember even during the pandemic, I think it was John Trissinski started a good news channel on YouTube.
And it was years and years ago, Paul, don't break us back. I mean, how groundbreaking it was at that time to just focus on how people were kind to one another. And something really heartwarming happened and how that was unusual to what we were taking in. And so I think it's not easy or it's not hard to see this question like lived out in our lives because we're so used to seeing the negative things and the pure good, you know, those things are an exception sometimes, right?
Yeah, a lot of the encouragement. It's an active one, right? It's not just something that just sort of happens through osmosis. It's no actively dwell on these steps.
So that's a discipline. Yeah. It's like, no, I'm going to stop. I'm going to take inventory.
I'm going to look at God's word creation in my relationships around me. And I'm going to look at these things that meet this different criteria that ultimately point to who Jesus is. And ultimately also bring us into peace. Yeah.
And you're so right. Like it's a counterintuitive message of our culture when the tragedies of the pain and they're real and we don't ignore them. Yeah. We don't ignore, right?
But we also don't ignore the goodness, the farce passing goodness and grace of Jesus that he's actually overgrant all of this that brings us into peace. And so that's an spiritual discipline. That's an active choice is I'm choosing to dwell richly on God's word, the truth of who he is, the impurity of who he is, and it's actually going to then impact a way that I see things around me. What you spend your time on, what you dwell on impacts, how you see the world around you.
That's just true. You know, if you're going to go buy a car, right? Like if you're in line to buy a red Toyota, whatever, you know how that goes, right? You on the road and then all you see is red.
Because you're fixed, you're fixated on it. It's the same principle as passage, then we dwell on these things, these virtues that are price centered and price shaped that it will impact how we see ourselves, the others around us up in our world and we're brought into peace. Yeah. So the looking question, I love you're talking about a call back to the list that people made.
How would you have them interact? The looking question in light of how they interacted with the look down. Yeah. I think the looking question, the first one says, how can you adjust your focus or schedule this week so that you can more consistently dwell on God?
Anything a great way to kind of bring that full circle for them is to refer back to that list that your group just created. Yeah. You have some real tangible things that hopefully everyone contributed at least one thing too, right? And so now you have something very real, something very tangible from their lives that you can then encourage.
Hey, what does it look like to actively where you're saying intentionally focus on some of these things and incorporate that into your walk this week? That's great. Awesome. Well, there's so much in here in these two verses for you guys to kick around together.
And then of course, refer back to the message this weekend from Kenton. So many great content insights as usual and encouragement is always taking notes in the sermon too, right? As you're listening because that's going to impact your conversation for the week ahead. So it's been great to spend this time with you all getting group leaders.
Paul, thanks for joining us as we wrap up week nine. We've got one more week to go. And the next week we will talk about our new sermon series right around the corner. All right, you guys.
Thank you all. And we'll see you back next week. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.