Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Hello and welcome to the Life Group leader podcast. Once again, this is Kirby Wood, your group's pastor and host for this podcast.
We are so excited today, and I am more than ever, because we have the very special and famous online pastor, Paul Haughn with us. Woo hoo, so glad to be here with you guys today. Thank you for all that you do to serve our groups and to serve and God's family. Absolutely.
Thank you guys. Exactly. We're so glad to be able to hopefully equip you guys for this week's discussion. But Paul, I'd first love to know how is online going.
Tell us what is it like on the weekend? Absolutely. I mean, I'm jumping into this world. It's only been about seven weeks for me too.
But what's super exciting is to see that we have probably just as many people joining us online as we do in person, which is about 10,000 people online from all 50 states, from all over the world. That's incredible. And about how many root groups do we have online right now? I'm asking you because I already know.
We have seven root groups going through, rooted together online, people from all over the country, jumping in. Incredible. And I will say, because me and Paul work closely together, we have people online because of comfortability, but also because of distance or convenience. And so we know even some of you that are listening right now are part of an online life group.
And we love and support you guys, no matter even if it's hybrid or what have you, know that online is always a great option when somebody's out of town or when schedules get a little tricky. But we have great resources and great tips and tricks to help support you guys in your online journey. But regardless of online or not, this podcast is still to help you have a rich and meaningful discussion this week, centered around God's word and the incredible sermon that we have this weekend. So Eric is actually preaching this weekend.
And it is also outreach weekend. Who who? We Paul used to be on our outreach team, of course. Love outreach.
Yes, but this message is so intentionally focused on where we as people can see God's intention for the nations and to how he is so worthy of being glorified by all people of all tongues of all tribes and all nations. So that is our hope for this discussion this week, that you guys would hear the message from the weekend and also be inspired to see, wow, God has fulfilled and has fulfilled his promise to all people. His grace is sufficient for us and all of our sins and all of the people of this world. So I'm going to get it.
Come on, you better preach, Kirby. No, this is mostly to support people. So what else about this main topic is our main point here, Paul. It's so exciting to you personally, as you think about life groups.
Absolutely. I think one of the most beautiful things that we get to be invited into as followers of Christ is to be ministers of reconciliation. And I think that we are coming out of a couple of years of some pretty heavy seasons of divisiveness, of disunity. Right.
And what I love about the body of Christ is that we're invited into unity. Yes. That because we are all united in Christ, regardless of your background, regardless of your ethnic heritage, regardless of what language you speak, there's unity through the Holy Spirit. And so I feel like in our life groups, you guys all get to be a picture of little pictures of a foretaste of heaven as we come together in unity.
And you know that week one of rooted, you probably thought you had nothing in common with those people. But now, as a life group, you're seeing more and more threads of commonality. And we know that that's the work of the Holy Spirit, revealing those story lines that are parallel that you feel connection to each other. And so thank you guys for reflecting a foretaste of heaven.
That's incredible. That's so true, Paul. And while that might feel like a very, we know that that's happening, whether you are hoping for that or not. But that's kind of your intention, as you think about this week's discussion.
Wow. What we get to talk about, what we hope our people experience, is a small foretaste of heaven, as we share the love with one another. So have that in the back of your mind as you're preparing and praying for your group this week. And so we'll jump right in.
And so, of course, as always, we love to start with lean in, kind of destabilizing the group, helping people feel acclimated and great. And this lean in question is actually a little bit different than normal. We typically have about one good one, kind of strong icebreaker. But this is more of a quiz.
What do you see here, Paul? I love that the intention is really to get to know your group members more, right? You're asking them, kind of their family of origin questions, maybe even things about their childhood or customs or cultures. I feel like this would be a really good bend that way.
I've learned about holiday traditions or I know Memorial Day is coming up. So is there something that you grew up doing and that was unique to your family? Absolutely. I love that.
And you get an opportunity to learn more about, wow, I didn't recognize that my family's long heritage was so different from somebody else's. Any assumptions that you may have have about someone can not only be, hopefully, deconstructed, but maybe they can even be enhanced as we say, wow, we are so incredibly different. And that is so incredibly beautiful. So that's a great way to kind of start, even lightly as we think about traditions, like you said.
Or how my family worked, or who ran our household, or what a holiday looks like if it's a very intimate holiday, or a big holiday with lots of family and different things. But those are all parts of people's culture, parts of things that really a lot of people attribute to who they are and how we can better get to know how God made us, and also how worthy God is of all the different ways we can worship and celebrate his goodness. That's good. Yeah.
Awesome. I love that. I hope that you guys will have a great little fun conversation around people's different traditions and heritages as well as their families of origin. But of course, we always want to turn back toward scripture, looking down into God's word to really understand what is true and what has he promised us.
So I'm excited for you guys to read these scriptures out loud together to really get a sense of all the different illustrations. And these are what a lot of these questions are about. Our, wow, there's an illustration here about a guardian, about being clothed by Christ, about promise, will, inheritance, and spending time intentionally reading God's word will help us reveal, okay, what was the intention of these illustrations, and what was God hoping to reveal to each of us by using these illustrations? Is there anything else here, Paul, that you kind of see as you think about the scripture today?
I think for me, what would be a really powerful discussion, or could be a powerful discussion is even just God's promise to Abraham. And I love that distinction that Pastor Eric makes between the promise given to Abraham based on faith versus the law given to Moses that is based on works. And I know that for my life in my discipleship journey, that distinction between man, I don't have to earn my way to God through the law. Actually, I'm an inheritor of the faith of Abraham.
A child in air. Right. And air. Absolutely.
And so I think that would be a really powerful discussion to try to. So good. Yeah. And I think the hope there is that you're really helping the group sense that like Paul was saying, it's not based on what we do, but it is based on God's promise to us.
And it's a promise based on who we are, his children, not out of anything we do. And that is so good. And so we hope that through these questions, you guys will be able to help break down the illustrations for one another that's saying, like, I don't quite get that part. Can we go back?
Let's reread that scripture and don't ever be afraid to reread a scripture. I mean, sometimes things, I know even myself, and I was prepping and looking at this, I'm like, I need to read this a couple of times to really get a sense of what exactly God is saying as well as how does this really apply to things that I may be thinking on the little backwards or a little wrongly about. Absolutely. I think that's the whole point of meditating on God's word is that you return to it.
You metaphorically chew on it. And then you can read it again chew on it again. And that's what the invitation is when we meditate on his words. Yeah, so good.
And we want to make sure that before we're looking in, we're really trying to get a sense of what this actually means because then as we move on to the look in questions, we can really start to help ourselves apply. Where does this really resonate for me? And I love this first question of the various illustrations Paul used in this text, which one was most helpful to you? You know, today, you know, maybe differently or personally, you might find different things.
You can even add the word today there or how can it help and what became clear? I love that part thinking, okay, you may have read the scripture before, maybe someone has regulations a hundred times, but different things can stand out to us and apply to the different things going on in our lives. Absolutely. I think that's a beautiful thing about the gospel too.
And I love that every week has been so centered around the gospel and presented in a new and different way. And it's such a good reminder that we all need the gospel every day and that it should be fresh to us. It should be moving. It should be awe inspiring.
And I love that in the look in you guys really get an opportunity to guide your groups from understanding it on a intellectual level and really integrating it into their heart, like integrating into what God is personally speaking to them. So good. So true. So true.
How many times have you thought, wow, that person knows a lot about God's word or God's will or even God's law, but they may not really sense or have allowed it to melt away some of their hardness or their own patterns of sin in their lives. And so this is definitely an opportunity for that. Before we move on, I love to at the second little question here, it says, we're at the halfway point, which is true. This is a quick moment where you can celebrate with the group and say, what has really stuck out over this entire thing?
And even Paul, you just mentioned, I mean, I love how Galatians has reminded us that the gospel, we don't graduate from this. This is new. This is working. This is active for us each and every day.
And that is something worth celebrating, right? That we've made it five weeks that you guys have had these great discussions each week and that we are able to really step through the sermon series together. And I would hope you guys would take that quick moment with your group to do just that. Absolutely.
So of course, looking out, this is so easy and so applicable this week because the emphasis on the weekend message was outreach. And that is exactly how we impact our world is through outreach. We're able to serve globally, locally, and even integrating with our city and engaging with our city. So I'm sure you heard lots about this over this weekend.
So before you even get to that first question says next weekend, I definitely want to double click back on this little paragraph to the side of reminding of God's of Galatians here, reminding us that God is pursuing people. And so this was the intention on the discussion this week. And I hope that you guys will really take a moment to follow back actually on maybe some of the challenges or convictions that people felt during this weekend message. So how did you guys respond to the message this weekend?
Maybe some people acted immediately and chose to give or chose, you know, or said, hey, I need to find an opportunity to serve more or something like that. So re-click on that and say, hey, how did you guys engage? Or maybe someone didn't have a great experience? Or was like, I wasn't even sure what to do.
And this is a great opportunity to kind of unpack some of that. Absolutely. I think that's such a beautiful role of the life group is to help not only keep each other accountable but to encourage one another in your discipleship journey. And maybe as a group, you just commit to praying because one thing I love about prayer is that if you're not sure about what your immediate next action step is, one thing that the Lord does through prayer is that he opens different parts of your heart.
He illuminates different parts of your story. And maybe as a group, as you're praying for some of our partners, God will reveal more and more how he's calling you guys uniquely as a life group into serving together. Absolutely. I love that too.
And I think this message is particularly helpful for anyone at any stage of generosity or any stage of partnership that you might have. So whether you're someone who's already very invested in our outreach or you may be invested in other local serve opportunities or nonprofit organizations, this message helps us re-center our intention. And the reason that we give, the reason that we serve, the reason that we love is not because we know what's best or because we're so great, but it is because we saw God do it first. We know that God promised first that he would love and care for and pursue people of all nations.
And we now get to learn from that from this weekend and from this discussion to reset ourselves and our intention for the way we hope to give and serve and love those around us. And so that's kind of the hope for some of these questions. That question number three and four, I think it was really great to start with, to start unpacking what parts stood out to everybody. And then of course, hitting into the next weekend for Ivy Leaf.
Yeah. And I hope that you guys will briefly think about, yes, how we respond to this weekend and how we can engage with outreach as we partner and give and so forth. But also when we think about, okay, what about my neighbor? What about my friend next weekend?
Because it's an Ivy League weekend, it could be a really great week to bring somebody for the first time because you know that Eric, actually not Eric, it's Christine Kane. Will be straight up evangelizing friends. She will be bringing the Word of God and will be really, truly sharing the Gospel with all love and all sincerity and hope that your friends could be exposed and maybe even say, I believe for the very first time. So any closing remarks there, Paul, about this week's discussion?
No, not really. Thank you for inviting me. Oh my gosh. Thank you guys.
Thank you, Life Group leaders for all that you're doing. We love you. We appreciate you and we're praying for you. Absolutely.
We are and let us know if there's any way us, your coaches or even some of our online, our online pastor here with his tips for online and support could be able to help you guys. So we like Paul said, we are praying for you guys and hope that you have a great discussion this week over week five of Galatians. God bless.