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. Most people think changing the world requires a stage, platform, or a massive following. But what if it starts somewhere much smaller, like a living room, a circle of chairs, a group of people choosing to live out their faith together?
Today we're talking about what it actually looks like to activate your faith through service. How stepping outside your circle together as a group can create real lasting impact because this isn't just about gathering. It's about going. It's about living what you say you believe.
Today our special guest is Hannah Edwards, the group serve associate director at Mariners. She's gonna share some practical tips and ways that our groups can step into serving and activate your faith in real tangible ways. Let's listen in. Sure.
Can you ask in our lecture leader podcast? Of course. Yeah, we were just chatting before we started recording about our favorite food and found out that you're allergic to shrimp. I told you my favorite food was seafood.
I know. But you're a sushi lover, right? Yes, I am. Just not shrimp.
And that's my wife's favorite food as well. And I just told you I came back from Hawaii and enjoyed amazing pokey. I think that's how you pronounce it. I sometimes pronounce a pokey, but it's pokey.
I think it's acceptable, yeah. All right, there we go. Well, what I had to talk about pokey or sushi, necessarily. We're gonna be diving into how our life groups can change the world.
That's part of our transformational loop through biology is growth together, serving one another and changing the world. If you could share Hannah, is it your first time on our life group leader podcast? Yes. Oh, welcome.
I thought this was, you were a veteran, but you're always at our leader training. I know. So I thought you meant that on before, but maybe you could introduce yourself briefly to our life group leaders. For sure.
So I'm part of our outreach team here. And it's super in honor as I get to share with our life groups as life groups get more involved in our church. I get to come alongside them and get to shepherd them and what it looks like to step into serving specifically through outreach ministries. So when you talk about change the world, some people don't know what that means.
So changing the world really does mean stepping into serving in outreach ministries. And so that could look like a lot of different things, but ultimately it's showing and sharing the good news of Jesus both locally and globally. So that's kind of what I get to do. I get to help life groups and bridge that gap between outreach and life groups.
And it's beautiful. Yeah, that's been amazing to partner with you, Hannah, and our outreach team both locally and globally. And it's been awesome to see our groups participate in different sort of opportunities and our group got to engage in the special needs. Yeah, I'm a good thing.
That's part of the Penn State out and so many other things. And it's been a real delight and joy. And our groups got stronger through that. And it can be a blessing and it can be a sign of the feed as well too.
So, okay, so what is changing the world, I mean, kind of diving a little bit deeper, what does it look like for our average life group? What does a rhythm can look like? We've talked about serving together in our rooted groups. But we want that to continue.
We don't want it to stop. And so what's our encouragement to our life groups? Yeah, I kind of want to take it back just one more step. Because whether you've been in a life group for 10 years or like two months or literally just started a life group, I want to like go back to your rooted experience and try to think through the rhythms that you started there.
And we really started with reading God's word. We did a prayer experience and we did a serve experience. And we learned the basics of what it looks like to do discipleship basically. And so I kind of want to just emphasize that because that's what we want to do here as life groups too.
We want to create rhythms for our life groups. It's about reading God's word. It's about praying together. It's also about serving in our communities together.
Because we believe they're all essential to not just growing together, but also the health of our groups. So yeah, I think that's important to think through as you're even considering serving. But as you go into outreach, as you want to create more rhythms in your group, I would consider doing quarterly. Yeah, once a quarter.
How can we serve once a quarter as a group? I think that's pretty manageable as you think through the seasons of your life group. And we have like the winter season. We have the spring slash summer season.
We have the fall season. And you think that the busyness of your schedules, and when you think through those quarters, it's pretty manageable. And so in those kind of quarters, we actually have really great outreach opportunities, that land within those quarters. That we also want our life groups to be aware of.
We have in our winter quarter, we have great local opportunities. So we have foster mastery. We have special needs ministry, like you mentioned. In our spring quarter, we have great packing events that have been.
We have one coming up in April. Yeah, the Union Rescue Mission. We have packing events for our urban groups. And that's so easy to do.
So easy to jump in. And then even in the summer, we have great opportunities for life groups to go on a faith adventure, which could be as easy as two hours away down in Mexico, or even beyond if they feel like they want to do that. And in the fall, we have so many opportunities through our seek the good season. And so whether it's Christmas party, or gift sorting, or any of that, which I know your group also did, which is awesome.
And so we have a serve opportunity for every season that your group can serve in. So we want to be just as prepared as the group is on. Yeah, and I love that. I love having that rhythm throughout the year to serve one's procession, one's per quarter.
And that way, like we're studying God's word, we're growing in our faith. But we're also being activated in our faith. We're actually God is speaking to us, pouring into us. And then we're pouring out what he has filled us with.
And so I love that. You had mentioned going down to Mexico for faith adventures. We've had that vision that was cast at about Mexico 500 to go, to give and to go. And so can you speak a little bit more about what it looks like for our life groups to go together?
You said there were one day opportunities, and then weekend opportunities to do home builds as well too. So if you can kind of unpack that again. Yeah, we had a great weekend. A couple weekends ago, we got to hear more about our Mexico partners, what you referred to in our give go.
And so we do believe that we could mobilize 500 people to go on a faith adventure and serve with our partners in Mexico. It's a bold step that people might take, but it's really encouraging and exciting. And it's also one that people don't have experience for. I think that's a hard one people might have.
But yeah, there's three that I want to highlight that are upcoming, that I think life groups would have so much fun on. The first one being a home build trip that is open to anybody. So May 15th to the 17th is a home build trip. The weekend trip, so it is not as family friendly as maybe a one day faith adventure.
So this may be for adult women's or men's groups that want to come onto the strip. And this is a great opportunity where you actually to go down and help build a home for a family in the local community in Mexico in partnership with the church there, which is really beautiful. And then we do have a one day faith adventure coming up in June on the 27th. And that is a really great family friendly opportunity.
So if couples groups want to go as a life group and bring their kids, it's beautiful. It's really special. Even as young as five years old can come, we just had two families come last weekend with a five-year-old and they had the blast. So we want to invite our life groups to join that as well.
And then the last one I wanted to highlight was another home build, which is June 26th through the 28th. And that's for men's groups. It's just a men's specific trip. And so we'd love to invite men's groups to join us on that home build as well.
That is awesome. I got a chance to go down with some of our pastors here over a month ago. And we had a blast. I mean, just to see the partnership that we've had, for how long it's been like 20 plus years with Pastor Daniel and his centui.
Yeah, 30. There's a man there, the vision that he had to see 50 churches planted. And now the 63 already planted in his vision to plant 500 churches. And they're doing just such incredible work.
And not just planting churches, but so many other just blessings that they are spreading in that community. And so we get to join in and partner and see God move in Mexico and all of the world as well, too. And so that's not an incredible opportunity, I think, for families, for life groups, for men and women to go down there. How would they sign up?
What's the easiest way for our life groups to sign up for these? Yeah, I think for the Mexico trip specifically, they'll want to go to our mannerschurch.org Mexico 500 page. That way they can find their specific trip for them. But for any other life groups serve opportunity, we'd want them to go through the life groups serve portal.
So that is your best option for any and all future opportunities outside of faith adventures. So they can go through the life groups serve portal as a life group leader. And another great tip is to sign a serve champion. So they can help with that as well.
Search champions are great resource as they really help lead the group and what it looks like to step out regularly and with a rhythm in their groups. Because they can also go on a life group serve portal and sign up for that too. Yeah, we can't encourage enough about that. We have a search champion in our group and she's been amazing.
Oh, she's the best. Yeah, so share ownership, recruit a serve champion and have them facilitate your serve opportunities. That's great. Well, any final words of encouragement to our life group leaders?
Yeah, I think my final words of encouragement would just be to step outside of your comfort zone as a group. I think when we step into changing the world, sending into serving an outreach, we get a glimpse of who God is outside of the normal rhythms of our group of praying and reading God's word. We see who God is when we step into serve in our communities. And so I would say when you serve an outreach, you get a glimpse of who your group is even more so as we see the unique giftings of people.
There's spiritual gifts that God has given them. You see them on display when we step out and deserve. So yeah, I would say just see how God is going to move in your group. So let's talk about your comfort zone and take a next step and outreach.
I love that, Hannah. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for serving here at Mariners. You really are just a glue that helps all of us to come together and serving locally and globally and you and your team are an amazing team that helps us understand that every person is made in the image of God.
And as we go out on these faith adventures, God opens our eyes to understand like His love for the world for every son and daughter of God. And as we are His hands and feet, like He does something in each one of us. He blesses us more than we can even bless the people out there. And He changes us and our group, both in the vision of co-op really becomes stronger through these faith adventures and serving in open globalism.
Thank you. From the bottom of our hearts, we are so pleased to have you. Thank you.