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. We are kicking off a brand new series called Invitation to Rest.
We're gonna be walking through the book of Galatians together, and I am so excited for not only our weekend teaching, but our life group discussions as well. And I'm excited for you. I believe God is gonna do so many great things inside of your group discussion. But before we get into this week's conversation about week one, as promised in the last episode, we have not only a brand new host for the Life Group Leader podcast, we have a new groups pastor named Kirby Wood.
Welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad to be here. Kirby, why don't you give us just a minute on what you've been doing because while you're new to being our groups pastor, you've been here for a little while. I think a lot of people are gonna already know who you are, but let's go ahead and give a little background.
Yes, of course. As Jared said, my name is Kirby, and I'm now the groups pastor here at Mariners Church, but I've been working with Rooted for about three and a half years seeing incredible life change happen for our people. And I'm sure that you are one of them because you're a Life Group Leader, which means you've surely been through it. And I love that Rooted has helped introduce us and the people in your group to biblical communities.
So in my new role as the groups pastor, I will continue to support and manage Rooted, but I now will help support all Life Groups by equipping you guys, your coaches and our affinity ministry pastors with everything they need. That looks like this podcast, that looks like sermon based series content and other additional coaching and equipping. And I'm just really excited that this podcast will hopefully be a big way that we can help you guys feel excited, equipped, prepared and hopefully even relaxed as you approach each incredible small group discussion time. I like that you said that even relaxed.
There's something so important about us as leaders showing up not feeling anxious or worried about how this conversation is gonna go. And Kirby, I think you're the right person for this to be able to help us feel resource and equipped. Because it's a big deal that we not only study God's word, but we have conversations about it. And then we practice these seven rhythms, the things that we started Rooted that we continue to do throughout the time that we're in Life Group.
That's what the early church did, that's what biblical community is supposed to be. And so I'm grateful. I'm grateful for you. Thanks for what you're bringing to our church.
And before we open up and talk about week one, we have a conversation with Eric where he's gonna walk us through kind of the overview of this series and what we can expect as we study the book of Galatians together. So without further ado, let's bring in Eric. Eric, thanks again for joining us for the Life Group Leader podcast. We are talking about the series coming up here with Easter, where we are walking through the book of Galatians, which I have heard you say is your right now, at least your favorite book of the Bible.
Why is that? It's been my favorite book for, gosh, almost 10 years. I love the book of Galatians. I need the book of Galatians.
It's written for people who wrestle with doing things to get their approval. So that's probably my biggest spiritual wrestle is forgetting that I'm already approved because of what Christ did and waking up with a sense of a burden to earn my standing before you who were listening, before my kids, before my wife, before Jesus. So the book of Galatians is that it drives a heart, I'm sorry, a stake in the heart of legalism, which sometimes we think legalism means people who are like very, have all these really strict religious standards to make themselves different from others or approved before God. And the proof before God part is true, but legalism is actually anything that man does to try to get God's approval, meaning we think we can earn God's approval.
And the book of Galatians is it's the treaties. It's similar to the book of Rolman's, it's just shorter and actually a bit more provocative. It's a treaties that drives a stake in the heart of legalism. I think it matters for people in Orange County and Southern California as a whole, because we live in a culture that is earned, achieved, as by or, you know, people, when I first moved here, someone says that Southern California is built for Taipei people.
Perfect. And I'm that person. But the problem is that Taipei can be opposite of the gospel and so Galatians drives a stake in the heart of that. So I love it.
It's so good for me. Every time I read it, I'm just like, oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. It's an incredible book. Yeah, that's amazing.
It's like sometimes we have global partners come into town and they talk about the spiritual poverty that Orange County actually experiences. It's because we are working so hard to earn, achieve our own relationship with God as opposed to like our title of the series is, which Invitation to Rest. We get to Rest in the finish work of Jesus. Is there anything with that title for you that even as you think about a life group leader and how they're gonna lead their group, why is an invitation to Rest so important for us right now?
I love that we're teaching it right now. If you just Google 2022 exhaustion, or if you just go to the news section on Google where it shows articles that have happened in the last 30 days, you'll see so many articles about how exhausted people are during this time. Exhausted because of living through a pandemic, exhausted with the pandemic, exhausted because they had to do more parenting duties than they've done before. Or they had to do those parenting duties while they were working from home.
Exhausted with disappointed because some of their plans, they had to push back a wedding. They had to be outside in the car while their spouse was inside the hospital. Or they could be there for their sons' delivery of their, the grandparent couldn't be there in the hospital like before COVID, you could have been. So there's frustration and exhaustion.
So Rest feels really elusive right now. And the book of relations is offering Rest. I'm meeting a lot of people at our church at a given weekend that I wonder, I've been making this connection in my mind and I'm not 100% sure if it's fully accurate or not. But before the pandemic, if you went 20 years ago into a Barnes and Noble and you look at the self-help section, it was like two racks.
By the time the pandemic hit, it felt like half of Barnes and Noble was the self-help section. And I'm meeting a ton of people on the patio that I think their attempts at self-help life is the pleading exhausting and falling short. So that's great inside Jared. And what I think we would have to say is like the self-help section hasn't really helped.
Exactly, because it's gotten bigger and bigger. And it hasn't, it's only led to more exhaustion. And it is true, the self-help section will cause you to be tired because you will not find Rest by doing all of the steps. So then when you don't find Rest after doing all the steps, you're now more frustrated because you did everything that someone said to do and yet you still don't have Rest.
I don't mean only physical Rest. I'm talking about, I know you don't talk about group leaders, like Rest and the Soul. You're at Peace where you know and I'm approved and everything's gonna be okay. There's a guy who's watching over me.
You can read all of those self-help books, not have that and therefore be more frustrated that you don't have it than you were before you read the book because you did the work and so it's work. And that's right. And really the strategy of most self-help books is to get you to buy the next self-help book, right? It's like, that's why we play.
It's like a series of self-help books. Exactly. And it becomes a hamster wheel. It does.
That is extremely exhausting. And so I'm excited for this series because with the title like Invitation to Rest and it being a study through the book of Galatians, I'm really praying for a slowing down but also a deep rootedness in the people of our church who will find their source outside of themselves as opposed to continuing to muster up and look within to try to survive this life, right? So as you are, you know, as you were thinking about this series as you're preparing to teach it, you know, it begins with Easter and we're gonna be walking for 10 weeks through this book. Yeah, including Easter will be 10 weeks.
So if you think back to when we, over the summer of 21, we walked through the book of First Peter, we had those nice books that people had, group leaders loved them because you were able, I heard we heard this from a lot of group leaders. So I'm assuming somebody listening this happened to you, you were able to tell people in your group, hey, bring that book with you. It served as a good discussion guide. So imagine that except the book of First Peter is the book of Galatians.
And they get handed out at Easter. And so it feels like a great journey post-easter in this incredible, in this incredible book. Yeah, not only will you have articles written by many of our team, not only will it be visually beautiful, you'll also have your life group study guides built right into that book. And so I think it's gonna feel like a great companion.
I've seen it, it's really beautiful. I'm really proud of our team for putting together. Yeah, without a doubt. So, you know, Eric, as you think about the 10 weeks that we have beginning with Easter, we also hit a lot of major holidays inside of there too.
There's Mother's Day, there's Memorial Day, there's Father's Day. There's gonna be a lot of great, I think opportunities to invite our friends, right? For people to come and be a part of this series as well. It's a great, the next 10 week run we have, Count Easter, is really awesome in terms of being able to invite people to church and invite people into this incredible book.
So you have Easter and there's two weeks and then it's Mother's Day. Father's Day, we always make a big deal around here. Then there's vacation Bible school, that's right, week and summary. And we have, there's a passage in Galatians about the gospel being preached way back in Genesis and that the whole intent of the gospel is to rescue people from every single tribe, tongue and nation.
Happens to fall what we planted this way. We have our global outreach weekend on that same passage. So there is a lot of really great things that our church does that are gonna fit in so well with the book of Galatians. It's really what I'm so excited about.
Yeah, it is, it's gonna be a gift to see you teach a book that you love so much. It's really been such an important spiritual book to you and I'm excited to receive that. I'm excited to be somebody that gets to just learn and grow from you that you've been transformed by it. That's the best way to teach it.
And so let's do this. Just as we kind of wrap this portion up, we have a whole bunch of new groups that are starting with this series. So about 60 groups that did root it together. 60 groups starting.
Are now life group leaders. How would you encourage them? So if you are one of the people who signed up to be a life group leader, my goodness. I think I hope right now you're super honored and encouraged because here's what happened.
Somebody whether it was the root leader who got the group started or the root leader and some people in the group or some people in the group. And so when Robert went down, somebody recognized that you're the leader. So that says a lot about how you were showing up, how you were shepherding people, encouraging people. It says that even though you may not feel that you are worthy to do this, that other people looked at you as if you were worthy.
By the way, thinking you are unworthy is the only qualification. The only qualification is realizing you're unqualified because that's when God really shows up and uses you. If you think, man I got this, I don't need his help. I can pull this off myself.
Then you are actually disqualifying yourself. So congratulations if you feel like, what have I signed up for? I can't believe that somebody recommended me for this. I'm really proud of you for taking the step to shepherd people and for you, your first group experience to be through the book of Galatians, I think it's awesome, here's why.
Because you don't have to put a whole lot of pressure on yourself, you can let the scripture do the work. You're in the book of Galatians, it's a powerful book, you can let the scripture do the work on people's lives and just love on the people, encourage the people, use this incredible scripture to apply the gospel to people's hearts. I've actually met Life Group leaders that are gonna start with this series. Think about this, they came to their first Mariners church experience was Christmas.
And now here they are as a Life Group leader. And their first Life Group discussions gonna start with Easter. How awesome is that? That's the best.
The best run and God brought you through it. So congratulations. It's exactly right. Well, Eric, we did this last time and I would love for you to close us again, just by praying for our leaders as we get ready to start a new series together.
God, thanks for these leaders. I pray you give them wisdom as they lead discussions. I pray that you give them compassion for the needs in their group. I know the needs are many.
I pray that you give them Holy Spirit conviction from you to guide the people that you've put into their care really well. I pray you bless them and give them the time, help them steward the time that they have really well so they can lead this group well. And Lord, thank you for putting them in this important position in your name. Amen.
Amen. Thank you, Eric. Wow, I love hearing from Eric in that way. Hearing and being so impassioned and excited about God's words, of course, but also specifically his favorite book of the Bible.
This is gonna be an incredible series. So Jared and I are gonna spend some time now getting into this discussion guide, pull out your magazine, pull out your Bible and we'll talk through what we perceive to be some things that could come up for your group. So as you look at page one, lean in. Lean in is so important as we start to look at Galatians as we want to open up what people could start to think as they perceive their own experiences and their own stories.
So with that, as we look at their main point, what's the main point of this, Jared? What do you see as the intention of this first chapter of Galatians? Well, as we are gonna open up and look at Galatians one, there is an intensity to it and I know we're gonna talk about that in this next section, but the reason it feels so intense from Paul right off the top is because he's questioning really why people are turning to other things that they consider good. The gospel is the good news and there is no other gospel that can be the good news of Jesus Christ saving us and rescuing us, like there is nothing better, nothing greater.
And so as you think about the big idea, it's a pretty challenging big idea that says like, look, there's a lot of things in life that feel really good, but there's no other gospel. There is no other truly good news than what Jesus has done for us. And so even as you look at the lean in question and you talk about what's some good news that you just gotten, it's kind of like, don't turn it into a gotcha moment of like, oh really, is it better than the gospel? Like we gotta be careful, right?
But it doesn't become that kind of conversation. Absolutely. And I think that's why we start with this question and then we'll read the, we'll read Galatians together aloud. So as we think of just good news that's happening in our life, some people might actually struggle to come up with good news.
Others might have a million great things going on. They'll be like, I've got so much good news, but we're trying to pull out of everybody different things that are going on in their lives to help them see in the future conversations and then we're gonna have about the importance of how incredible the true good news is, right? So with this, as they think about good news, what are some other things that could come up when they're asking, okay, group, what are some good news that you've heard this week? Yeah, I mean, there's the obvious traps of people feeling like you said, I don't have any good news, or potentially even worse, like my good news isn't nearly as good as your good news.
And now I get in this trap of this objective nature of what does good actually mean, right? And so it can be a little bit daunting as a leader to try to figure out how do you make sure that your group doesn't start to turn on each other so quickly, like, well, I'm glad your life's going great minds not so much. My group would never do that, absolutely. Good, well, I just think for this question, it's good to be reminded that there's some good things out there, but as we turn towards look down and we open up God's word, we read Galatians 1, there is an intensity that's gonna come at us really quickly.
So I wanna make sure that our groups don't feel like the Bible is now gonna just sort of jab us at thinking, oh really, your good news pales in comparison to the great news that is the gospel. So as a leader, you'll just wanna navigate that conversation a little bit to help them see that Paul's intensity is really because of his love of really what the actual gospel is, what the gospel, what the good news is. Beautiful, beautiful, and that leader note under Lean in really points out that there might be people seeing news as subjective and then we move straight to look down and we say this is the word of God, this is the one truth that we can look to. And as Jared said, that's why we see this intensity.
So without trying to help them, or without trying to overly force them to arrive at that, you can start to have them call out the different things that they say, asking that question, that third one there, why is it appropriate for Paul to invoke us? Where in the text can they see these intense things as maybe positive or protective or just really truly righteous and holy things that Paul is pointing out and protecting the real essence of no other gospel. Any other things that you see stick out to here and look down, Jared? Well, for the look down question, I just am thinking about how many new groups we have this session and people that are even looking at, why is the conversation, are these questions even broken down like in this order?
You know, my thing about opening up God's word is for someone who's maybe not following Jesus for very long, the Bible can feel very daunting, it can feel mysterious, it can feel like, wow, you guys really, this is the Bible, you know, it's so holy and separate from us, it's a sacred text and all that is true, but it's also approachable, it's accessible. It's the living word of God that is going to be the way the Holy Spirit is going to speak to us every day in our life. And so for the life group leaders that are listening, this is a great invitation for you to just remind the people in your group that as we open up Galatians 1, we can observe the text, we can read it and we can interact with it, we can ask questions, we can even look at, you know, a question like the fourth one there, what is the source of his message, what's his identity, what is it that's essential? There's not just one answer that's inside of all that, we can actually pull different aspects from within these first 10 verses and everybody can contribute.
Really the deep thing I want everybody to get here is that I can read God's word, I can interact with God's word and God's word can speak to me too. So if you get that right off the top, you're gonna really train and equip every person in your life group to have an active growing faith by daily devotion, just being involved in God's word. So, you know, look down is a really important one, but then as we get into look in and to look out, now we're making this shift to what does this mean to me and then what am I supposed to do with this stuff that I'm learning? That's so good, I love that you said how this can apply to everyone, so you can see everyone start to pull out different parts from the look down.
But moving on, as you mentioned, into look in and how this is going to start really impacting the way we're viewing ourselves, the ones that the different things that different people called out is because of their own different views or perspectives of God and this is an incredible opportunity where people as they share their answers to their own false gospels or their own other things that they've really idolized over the true gospel, you'll start to see people's walls break down and hopefully people come to new revelations of things that they have placed above God. Any other things that stick out to you here, Jared? Well, when I look at even this last question in this section, just other things that Paul mentioned and these verses what's meaningful to you right now, once again, it's a way for us and leader, you can model this to just say, man, this line, these little parts of words, like I'm even looking right now at verse four, Galatians 1-4, it says, Christ who gave himself our sins to rescue us from this present age, this present evil age, that little bit of words there, this present evil age, that speaks to me, that's something that really resonates with me because of life circumstances right now. I'm just surprised at how dark and broken our world actually is, why am I still surprised?
I don't know, but it's just hitting me right now. So that's a part where I go, look, when I'm looking in, why is it that that part of God's word is sticking out to me? There's probably something that the Holy Spirit wants me to see in that. Absolutely, and as always, I mean, we want to take our time through these questions, leave room for that awkward space, allow the Holy Spirit to move and reveal these things that as we really, truly look into ourselves that the Holy Spirit will convict, reveal, and show where we can make changes.
So as we move on to look out, now we think about how do we apply these convictions that we have now to our lives? How can we apply or even be challenged by these things? And I even love this third question, how can we follow Paul's example, right? We all are seeking, hopefully, especially you, as the life group leader, a great example of how to live out this call of the one true gospel.
So how do we follow Paul's example? That can really start to help the people in your group feel or sense where they are differing as they want to speak truth and love and share the gospel with those in their lives. Yeah, it's important in this section that we do two things. There's a conceptual nature to it where we say, like that opening question of just, what other gospels do people turn?
So you're not saying, who in your life is turning to something other than the gospel? You're just going, like, where are all the places that people turn for good news? Will they turn to the self-help section of a Barnes and Noble? They turn towards lottery tickets.
What are people running to to try to rescue themselves? Well, that isn't the true gospel of Jesus. The gospel of Jesus is, I came to rescue you. Turn to me and I will give you rest, right?
That's really the good news about this. And so you want to have a conceptual conversation, but then you also want to turn it in and make it a personal one. Right, yeah, and I see that both, right? Like, how can I apply this to my life as I impact others?
And then how can I be on the lookout for those in my life who are turning to other things that I can then share? What I know, no, that's my truth. And the danger of skipping a section like this is that, well, my life group is just for me, and it's about my spiritual growth. Well, the real active part of your spiritual growth doesn't just happen in conversation, it happens in action.
If we don't live different, we're only kidding ourselves. So studying God's word and having a conversation and praying together and being vulnerable is really beautiful. We must do that stuff. But we also need to challenge one another to say, okay, between this session and the next one, how are you going to speak truth and love in a person's life?
Absolutely. And that's the first thing that you can do. So I'm always, I'm big in how do we turn our faith into an active faith where we participate in the kingdom of God? So I don't know, I think this is going to be a great week for our groups.
This is obviously just week one. And so yeah, I would use this as a chance to set the tone, get excited about what we're going to do, and even encourage people to read the content that's in between this weekend next. There's a couple articles. Oh yeah.
It's going to be so great. And Eric will continue to share more and more about how this invitation is to rest and rest on Christ alone. So we hope and pray that your group this week would have an incredible discussion and would hopefully attend church together this upcoming weekend.