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To give now and partner with us, visit marinerschurch.org slash gift or click the link in the show notes. Thank you. 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.
Welcome, Life Group leaders to the Life Group leader podcast. My name is Dallas. I am going to be hosting today. And I have my good friend, our men's pastor, Tim Lucai, joining us.
Tim, welcome to podcast. Hey, thank you. So good to be here. Always a pleasure to hang out and talk to our Life Group leaders.
Thank you for leading such a pivotal part of our church in the group life discipleship part of Mariners. Yeah. And Tim, we just got back from man camp and I would love to hear just some highlights. There's going to be some guys listening here who went.
There's going to be some guys who are about to have a little bit of FOMO as you share all that God did. But if you could just share a little bit from your perspective, what did you see God do at man camp? Yeah, there's just countless countless incredible stories of what God does up on that mountain. It is a special sacred place.
What was neat this year is we had representation from every congregation and not just a few guys, you know, even guys from our newest, not even launch congregation representing Anaheim. But of course, we still have guys driving up from Oceanside and every, you know, 30 guys from MV 30 guys from Santa Ana. So I love that there is men from all over Orange County in Southern California. And what happens in such a short amount of time is just a beautiful thing to see.
Many highlights, the worship in Hormel Hall is an incredible thing to hear, you know, hundreds of men belting out in worship and the worship team did a phenomenal job. But man, there was moments where the instruments just stopped and, you know, the JC or whoever was leading kind of pulled away from the microphone and you could just hear these men belting out off key terrible. But man, it was so beautiful to hear the worship and these guys hands up, raising God. Hormel is always a highlight.
Victory Circle was a beautiful expression of men surrendering their life, crossing the line of faith that we hit a new record, not that it matters, but it's certainly something to celebrate that 20 different men stood and said, I believe in cross the line. That's a big deal. That's so cool. Yeah, that was incredible.
The other part of the Victory Circle moment, for those of you listening, what the heck is Victory Circle? It's an outdoor amphitheater with a huge cross and a big bonfire. It's the world's largest bonfire. You know, 370 guys around one pretty big fire.
It should be bigger because, you know, there's a lot of guys, but we got the fire going pretty good. Wouldn't you say no? It was going. It was going.
But there was a moment where guys had the opportunity to stand and say I surrender and kind of symbolizing certain things in their life that they surrender. Like, and it wasn't prompted, but the very first guy that stood up and said I surrender. And I don't remember what his was, but there was there was things like I surrender my selfishness, I surrender my pride, my anxiety, I surrender my issues with lust and pornography, I surrender my lack of commitment towards things. I surrender all these and every single person stood and actually named the area of their life that was potentially an addiction stronghold or situation that was withholding their ability to surrender their life to Jesus.
And it was powerful. I think close to 50 guys stood and said that. So like transcendent moment of the weekend. Absolutely for sure for me watching that.
The amount of guys afterwards were like something to me just changed. Right. Right. It was amazing.
And just there was so many moments that felt surreal and just experiencing the spirit in real time, moving and transforming guys hearts and minds. And yeah, we got to baptize a handful of guys on Sunday. I've gotten, I feel that I sent out a response survey. And so I've had about 30 guys write how God changed their life at main camp.
So amazing weekend. I'm so excited for all the ways that guys are going to take an next step and engage to their congregation. Lots of guys that want to step up and lead. We have a ton of guys that want to go build a house in Mexico coming up in a few weeks.
So really, really beautiful weekend. Mm hmm. So cool. I hope our church gets to experience the fruit of that of seeing men come back down the mountain and influence families that work.
Our church, I can't wait to see the fruit on the other side of this. So well done leading the charge for that transcendent moments for so many guys and guy after guy hearing them, just talk, Hey, this was so good. Even I'm in a group chat with my life group and hearing the group chat go off like, Hey, a few people weren't able to be there. And we just said, man, camp 2025, put it on the calendar or all going.
So it was really fun, really fun weekend and really cool to see God move in such a way. I'm like, be calm. But it's Father's Day. Father's Day is here and it's here for our study, our series, habits for a fruitful life.
But we talked about man came and talked about Father's Day. Like, maybe tell us a little bit about like just your hope, like for guys this Father's Day guys in our church, you know, we've talked like man came, but like just overall, like how do you how do you have to see guys, the men of Mariners engaged in the life of Mariners church? Yeah, I think I love Father's Day at Mariners church. Dad Fest is a really, really fun and celebratory weekend at Mariners and the church and our team does a great job throwing an amazing party to celebrate fatherhood to celebrate what it looks like to be a great man of God who cares deeply for his children.
And man, what I would hope is that the dads out there would feel very honored by the celebration that they would recognize being a dad is no small thing. For those dads who are struggling with the role of fatherhood, that they would be inspired to become better at being a more present, engaged and emotionally, you know, available to their kids. I think fatherhood is essential and whether or not you're listening to this in your dad or not, you can be a positive male role model. Yeah.
Many, many kids. There's one in four kids without a father in the US today. So the fatherless generation, it's a real thing. There's real data.
There's real stats. So fatherhood is critical. Having a positive role role role model in a child's life is so pivotal, not always necessarily the nurturing role, although that's important, but one who quips, leads, loves and cares for kids is so important. So I want them then to feel honored, but also to step up their dad game.
That's good. I think for life group leaders, how can you honor the dads in your group? If it's a men's group, like how can you just take a moment to affirm one another in the group and make this a big moment? This is an exciting moment.
Father's Day is a really big deal. Like I love Father's Day. I love being a dad. So how can you guys as leaders make the most of this moment that you have with the guys with the dads in your group?
How can you take some time to just honor them, not make it a whole like hour and a half of honoring you two hours of group time, but just take some time before you jump into the text to just take some time to dance. So that's my encouragement to you guys. Yeah, absolutely. But we do, I do want to hit a few of these of these group questions as your group is diving in.
Hopefully by the time you jump into these questions, you guys have had some time to connect with one another. Maybe you did the affirmation moment for the guys just affirm them, encourage them. But there's some really great questions. Make sure you're reading Colossians.
You have your magazine, page 48, 11, the magazines, 11, seeing people bring them to church every week and engage with it. So leaders, this is one way we can lead the way is by bringing our magazine, engaging with it. And let's jump into some of these questions. The first one, lean in.
Who is the strongest person you know that you personally know and it could be physically, emotionally or intellectually? Who's the strongest person that you know? Are you asking me the strongest? I'm asking you.
Yes. Who's the strongest person that you know, Tim? I think the strongest person I know that came right to my thought was someone that we both know, someone that has worked at Mariners Church for I think over 30 years, his name is Roman. Oh, yeah.
And then when you're seeing Garcia, he's head of facilities. He has the biggest heart ever. And I've never seen him ever lose an arm wrestling match ever. I've seen some seriously strong men go against him.
He has the most incredible dad strength I've ever seen. But also he's very, very strong on a more emotional. He's a strong man of God. He's a guy.
He's always fixing things, building things he can do. So he is who I thought of. And I know that even with two arms, I cannot beat him. Yes, I've never seen one lose.
He's let me use both arms and I could not do it. He's gifted strong man. It's like a full grown man taking on a child. Like that's that's how easy it is for him.
That's it. Yeah. He's cool as dude. He would never know he blends in on the weekend and he's never making anything about him.
If you see him, if you know him, tell him hello. Yes, he's incredibly humble. Works his tail off, loves Mariners Church has given so much of his life to the church, but he is strong in every way. There you go.
You're listening, Roman, which I doubt you are. There you go. Shout out. We're going to send it to him.
Okay. Then we jump into colloquions. It's one we're finishing the first chapter, always the first couple verses of chapter two. And there's a lot about rejoicing and suffering is go for the church.
Wasn't mean to be mature. So you're just looking down, like your players, let's engage. I think that's what's so fun about having the magazine is you could turn to the page before page 46 and really encourage people to engage and grab a pen, start engaging as you're reading the passage, circling things, underlining things, what stands out to you, some of that. So that's how you look down, look down together, look out.
Remember, we look out means we are looking out into our culture. We're not looking at it. We're looking at it. So how do we see it?
So how is weakness viewed in our culture? So make sure we're looking out and as a life group leader, how can you really hold your people accountable to this to remain looking out because you get to that last part, which is looking in and we really want to help people look within themselves. What might the Lord be teaching? That's always one of my go to questions and facilitating is, you know, when in doubt, I just need another question.
Hey, what might the Lord be saying to you? What might the Lord be speaking to you? What might the Lord be doing in your life? So those are some great, great questions.
If you have plenty of questions, you know, if I were leading, I would probably pick one or two of the look downs. I'd pick one look out, then I'd pick one or two look ins and just kind of pick my favorites there and then spend some time, spend some time praying together. And I think this will be a really, really good wholesome group conversation together. But to many final closing thoughts for us, anything you got?
No, I just have to put you on the spot. No, I think as you're closing, if you didn't do it on the front part of your group time, we did mention, you know, honor and celebrate the days. But maybe the closing would be a time where you can pray for the dads and just encourage them to keep pressing into fatherhood. That's good.
Really good. And in the book, it says, a rhythm reminder is prayer. So having a moment of prayer. So it all ties in together.
There you go. Perfect. Well, Tim, thanks for being here. Life your leaders.
We love you. We're praying for you. We're so grateful for all that you do for our church. Thanks for listening in.
And we'll catch you soon.