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 back to the Life Group Leader podcast. My name is Jared Kirkwood.
I'm our discipleship pastor here, and I am joined with Jeremy Maxfield. And we are excited to spend some time talking about a brand new series. Jeremy, this is the summer series. We're going to be walking along a single book of the Bible throughout the course of the summer.
First Peter, and we're going to be looking at what does it look like to have hope in a hopeless time. How are you feeling about this series, Jeremy? I'm excited about this for several reasons. One, I feel like we should probably all be experts on this topic by now, right?
After the past year or two, what does it mean to have hope in hopeless times? And two, I'm excited just about church with all the, you know, we've got the magazine and kind of all these creative elements that are involved. People have really put a lot into this series. And so I'm just excited to have so many people contributing to it and experiencing it in different ways.
It'll be a lot of fun. Yeah, it is going to be a lot of fun. And this is an opportunity for life groups. I know rhythms change.
People go on vacation. We're trying to figure out how do we keep meeting consistently. And like a bleeder, I would encourage you to keep your foot on the gas and say, we're going to be consistent. Whether that means you're going to meet every week, every other week, people are going to have this mixed being in person online.
Do what you can do to keep the rhythm up of meeting together. Far too often we see groups not make it through the summer because they were consistent for three, six or nine months. And then something happened once summer hit and then things fall apart by fall. Let's not tell that story again.
Let's make it through. We're going to do it. And we believe that being God's word together and practicing some of these rhythms will really carry you through. We believe that groups that stay together through the summer are healthiest, most vibrant groups because it really shows that you're not waiting on the church calendar to make your group for you.
But instead you're saying in the reality and the rhythm of life, this is what matters to us as we keep meeting. And so life group leaders do it well and the best you can. If you need some help with us, please let us know. But I'm grateful that if you're listening to this, you're trying to figure out how to start with this week one of the series.
So well done. Now week one is a good starting point. We're going to be walking through first Peter and we get to go through verse by verse. We're going to be looking at every single aspect of this book.
And Jeremy, as we dive into week one, what should be the main outcome of our first group conversation? All right. So obviously the series overall, it's right there in the title that we're talking about hope and we want to look at where do we find our hope and just the reality that when our hope isn't anchored in something, all of us put our hope in something. But this first session in this whole series is really about saying where we place our hope is going to affect the rest of our lives, all the other parts of our lives.
And so in this first session, we want to say that anything outside of Christ, when we said our hope in Christ, he becomes that kind of solid rock for everything and everything else fits into place. Yeah. So I'm going to talk about the privilege of teaching this opening session at Irvine. And as I look at just this section of scripture, the first 12 verses, there's a beautiful picture here of hope being multifaceted.
And I kind of took the 10th great English angle on the message prep here and I talked about hope being a noun. Hope is a verb and hope is an adjective. And so what does it look like to have a living hope as a person? Then as we think about an adjective, how is hope going to be an active element of our spiritual life that's with us in the midst of adversity?
And then lastly, hoping an adjective, a way that people talk about us, that when we follow Jesus and hope is alive within us, people see us differently, talk about us differently. And so as a life group, I'm excited for the group to talk about where we are able to hang on to hope, where we're struggling with aspects of hope, maybe where we've placed our hope in wrong things. And for our life group leaders, this is the start. We're going to be talking about this all summer.
And so Jeremy, how can we prepare as leaders to make sure that we don't try to tackle the entire topic of hope when we do have a multi-week series about it? Yeah. So we definitely want to pace ourselves. And that's kind of the purpose behind breaking it up in these sections and our leader guide to help us kind of identify specific topics.
But as we prepare for a new series, things that I want to remind everyone about, anytime we start a new series, especially a new book of the Bible, one, if you can, find some time to kind of get familiar, read through the whole letter, in this case, first Peter, read through the whole book of the Bible if you can, just to kind of get a feel for it as a whole. Pay attention to things like, okay, so this is a letter from Peter. So just think about what do you know from Peter's life? And as you see him talking about things, what does that bring to mind as you think through the life of Peter?
He had all these human experiences. And so we're going to see those and kind of come to light as in the different things that he advises here in his letter. And then we've got all kinds of additional free resources mentioned in the leader guide. So there's Bible project videos that this is, once again, we're hitting a different genre of literature within scripture.
You know, Esther, we had this narrative, the teachings of Jesus, we were in all these different gospels that are kind of like, you would read them like history. We had wisdom literature earlier in the year. So now we've got an epistle. We have very clear teaching from someone to the church.
So we've got these different videos that help leaders kind of get familiar with how to interpret the different genres and teach from different genres of literature. And then finally, I would say just kind of familiarize yourself with the leader guide. We have tried to put multiple questions within each section so that kind of as your, the purpose there is just to provide you options for how to navigate conversation. We want this to be as natural as possible.
It'll be almost impossible to try to hit every single question in every section. So just be familiar with the ones that you think will resonate most with your group. And then as you're leading, feel free to skip over questions or kind of follow whatever the spirit brings up through conversation within your own group. So don't feel that pressure to get through everything.
Just be familiar with it and pick and choose as you go. That's excellent. I wanted to just jump in and share. I got a one of these CSP study bibles a little while back.
The thing is like 18,000 pages long. It's so awesome. It's right here. It sits on my desk.
Look how thick. I know if you're listening to this. You're like, I have no idea. It's a solid four inches thick.
I mean, it is just amazing. And I really love what you shared Jeremy that when we start particularly a full book of the Bible to stop and to read the whole book, it's, you know, it's manageable. You can do this and not that long a time. You can read the book of first Peter.
You can know where it's going, but these study bibles provide a beautiful overview of who is Peter, the timeline of his life. You get the cultural context. You start to see that this is written to a book that was dispersed people living in the era of Nero who are struggling, right? I mean, it is truly hopeless times.
Let me just say this. Life group leaders, if you're here and you don't have the CSP study Bible that I picked up out of the Mariners bookstore, you go down there and you tell John Thomas that Jared said on the podcast, I could get one of these and John would pay for it. If you go say that, I will make sure that John buys you one of these because it's been a really helpful resource for me as a leader in our church. And for our life group leaders, I want you to have one of these things.
So podcast exclusive here friends. I've never done a commercial before, but I'm really enjoying this because I want you to feel really equipped as a leader. And this Bible, I think, is a really excellent resource. So Jeremy, I'll hop off my soap box now.
How can we take this conversation deep with our groups that we might be able to break beneath the surface and just talk about the aspect of hope in our life, particularly around these opening comments from the book of first Peter. Yes. So first of all, as we've already mentioned, just remind your group that this is a letter from Peter to people in a real historical situation. And so just remind everyone of just kind of the humanity of what's happening.
This is real life. And these are really, really tough times. And so we can all relate to that. And so that would be kind of the second thing.
Be prepared to share from your own experiences times when you felt hopeless or you've been grieving. You felt lonely. He writes to the diaspora, those who are scattered abroad. So there's times where maybe in your life you felt like, I don't know if anyone around me, anyone in my circles of influence, maybe even anyone in my own family or home.
I just feel like I'm here by myself. And just how God had worked in your own life to remind you you're not alone. You may be kind of feeling isolated, but there are people all around you, God's it work all around you. So be prepared with stories like that from your own life.
And then another big thing that's going to come up in this first session is about how we see Peter identifying himself and mentioning, identifying the people that he's writing to. So one of the things we want to consider as a group is how our identity, how we view ourselves and the way we view others, how that reveals where our hope is placed and how that's going to have a ripple effect into the rest of our lives. So just kind of be prepared to think through those things with your group. Yeah, excellent.
And then what about any kind of problems that we might encounter here, one of them that I was thinking about, even as I was preparing for this message is that on one hand, we can look at the scriptural picture of people who are truly living in hopeless times. And we could say, well, mine is not nearly as bad as that. We can almost diminish our own struggles. And then when we diminish our own struggles, we then keep them at bay and we don't really dig into them as if God doesn't care.
Right? And the truth is there's nothing going on in our life that God doesn't care about. So this is a chance to really get into that. But the other side might be that we overemphasize our own struggles and it can get us to the point where we almost, we just build them up so big and inflated that we lose sight of a more global perspective or perhaps what other people are experiencing.
Anything else you'd add to that? Yeah, I think that's good. Avoid just kind of the surface level. Things aren't that bad.
My job as a Christian is to say that life's pretty good. That's not true. We need to be honest about the hardships we face. And we don't want to glorify our trials and kind of over-exaggerate them.
And that's something you talk about within rooted, learning to tell your own story, right? It's not about glorifying sin and good testimony. It doesn't have to be the whole... I talk about all the bad things that I used to do in love and then God changed my heart through Christ.
We don't want to build up or diminish, but our desire here, our goal is a healthy perspective of God and ourselves and others around us and our circumstances. So we want to look at our... We just want to be real sober-minded with this is the truth. This is what's hard.
This is what I'm experiencing. I know that I'm not the first to struggle. I know that I won't be the last. I know it's not the end of the world.
But this is real. This is what's happening in my life and to listen to one another with empathy in those situations. I'm grateful that we can create places at our church where people can have honest conversations about what's going on in life. And for the people of our church who have found their way into your groups, life group leaders, you have a real opportunity here to help people engage with God in the midst of everything in their life, right?
You may not be able to fix every problem. In fact, you shouldn't even try to fix, right? That's not really the right word. But instead that we can help people gain a sensitivity to what Jesus wants for them in their life.
And ultimately, it's about people developing a healthy relationship with Him. So just before we close, I want to say I'm so grateful that we have a whole bunch of new leaders. We just graduated a reading class with another 50-some odd groups. We're also kicking off Life Group Connect.
And I know we have a whole bunch of brand new and other 25 groups are jumping in from there. And so for you, Life Group leaders, as this might be your first podcast, we're so glad that you're listening in. You join in the great one because you got a new series and I just offered free Bibles. So come on.
How fun is that? And yeah, I would say that this is a great environment for you to exercise your own spiritual gifts, for you to keep growing in your own faith with Jesus, but also to care for people along the way. And so we're ahead of us of digging into First Peter, understanding God's Word and its application to our life. And we're going to practice some rhythms throughout this summer as well.
So we are going to enter the fall so ready for what God wants to do because of what He's going to do this summer as well. So Jeremy, any last thoughts for us before we finish out this week? As we get into First Peter and as you're maybe in new groups, just remember that we kind of journey through different seasons in life. And so maybe you'll be able to think back and say, I've been through hard times in the past, maybe you're right in the middle of hard times right now and this is timely in that sense.
Or maybe God has you in a position to where you're going to be able to offer comfort to others. And so just I would encourage people to be prayerful and listen, be sensitive to the spirit and say, okay, God, where are you seeking to bring me hope? How are you seeking to work through me to offer others hope by pointing them to Jesus? So this can make a huge difference in our own homes and our communities.
This can be a pretty life changing series. I'm excited. All right, life repeaters, we are grateful for you. If there's anything else that you need, don't hesitate to reach out to us.
We are with you all along the way. And we're praying for you. We're praying for a great summer, praying that God would open your eyes and that He would continue to do a great work in and through you as well. God, we're grateful for these people.
Would you bless them? Would you keep them? Would you make your face a shine upon them? Because God, we need them this summer to do a good work.
We're grateful. Listen to me, Jesus. Amen. Amen.