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. Leadership isn't just about doing more. It's about multiplying wisely.
Today we're diving into how life group leaders can expand their influence while avoiding burnout along the way, because fruitfulness should never come at the cost of your health or calling. Our guest today is Kim Hamilton, discipleship, pastor, four young adults sharing practical insight on developing leaders, building teams, and leading from a place of rest. Let's get started. Hey, we are so excited to be here today with Kim, who is the discipleship pastor of young adults.
Oh, yeah. Good pastor. Oh, my goodness. I'm so happy to be here with you guys.
Yeah. And Kim, when I think of you, I think of a leader and someone who loves leading others. And that's a passion of yours. And every time when a meeting can get part of the discipleship team, you have so many wonderful things to share, so much wisdom to glean from.
And so I just wanted to kind of ask you, like, where did that kind of passion and interest or desire come from? Oh, thanks, Scott, so much. I think I would say my dad was a pastor. You're a PK.
I'm a PK. The good kind. What is the bad kind? I shouldn't ask.
Well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know if I can tell. Okay. You're the good kind, whatever it is. Okay.
And I saw how leadership really impacted people's lives when they were challenged. And we had people in our homes all the time, all the time, staying with us, eating dinner with us. And then as I grew up and chose what I wanted to do, it just excited me so much to be somebody that could walk along other people because I had people that did that in my life and I know the change it made in my life. So to have the privilege to walk with people and encourage them and just be with them, it's just, it's a complete leverage just in that place.
Yeah. And right now we are seeing just an explosion happening. God is moving in the Young Adults Ministry and you're a huge part of equipping and encouraging the cycling leaders. Tell us more about what's happening in Thursday nights and Young Adults and the challenges but also the beauty of it as well too.
Amen. It's just the blessing of God. It's just his work being done. Really, we all as a team stand back weekly and say, can you believe what God did this week?
Can you believe that? Why are so many people coming? It's because people are inviting their friends. Or they say, you know what happened?
I got to work today and my co-worker said, Hey, I heard about this thing on Thursday nights at your church. Could I come? It's just the organic thing that's happening all over Orange County and they come from even further than that where they're looking for community and something different in life. They may not have defined that it's God that they want yet but they know they want something different.
And when they finally step into that space, we just want to be ready and prepared for any kind of conversation and just to make sure they feel welcome and in part of the community. Amen. That's awesome. And say, I just love working with you, Kim, because you care so much about our young adults, our leaders at Mariners and you take it to heart and you know that is your mission from God to empower them, to equip them, to resource them.
So we're happy to have you today. One of the topics we're talking about right now is multiplying influence. So our life group leaders, multiplying influence with the people in their group, raising up leaders to lead in other areas of the church to lead in their families, communities. So we just want to have a little chat to discuss multiplying influence.
So when I think about the model of discipling other people, I think of Jesus. So just want to hear from you what about Jesus's character in his model of discipleship, what can we learn from Jesus? What have you learned from Jesus when it comes to raising up leaders? First of all, thank you, Sam.
Love working with you too. We miss you on the Thursday team. Oh, make me cry. Oh, man, we had so much.
I think the two words that come to my mind might think of Jesus, especially in relevance to groups is grace and truth because he held both and the way that he demonstrated that over and over against speaking truth into people's lives, not wasting time, but saying truth but always with grace in a way that it can be accepted is so important in that space. That's good. And sometimes life group leaders, we need to speak truth into the people in our groups. I see something in you.
From your experience, Kim, do you think people often step up to lead or do they have to be spoken into? What have you seen in your experience raising up leaders? That's the question. Yeah.
I would say most of the time we need to be asked or we need that encouragement from somebody saying, I see this in you. This is why I think you'd be a good leader because I see this in you and this in you. And I think God has a plan for you in that to develop those skills and those passions that you have. But we all like that for somebody to see something and then ask us instead of stepping forward.
I think that's super important. So good. You know, I once heard, I think maybe you guys have heard our role is not to fill someone's cup to empty our cup and as leaders and we're all leaders listening to this podcast. And Kim, you had given this illustration one time in our discipleship team meeting and I'll never forget about pouring into the people that we are shepherding and leaving.
Could you kind of describe that? I wish this was a video podcast. You could see it visually, but you brought these dishes and you kind of shared what that look like. So can you kind of unpack that?
Oh, yeah. I actually saw that when I was in college and it impacted me the same way, but we can't pour out our cup if we don't have a cup. And if we're not leaving our cup under what God has pouring into our lives to catch that so that it overflows into everything else that we do, it's just a continual flow. And the fast pace of life that we keep or we keep moving around and we take our cup with us, we're not sitting still under the grace and truth that Jesus can pour into us.
So the visual is that there's a pitcher and that represents God. And then there's a cup, a picture like a big coffee mug that you have at home. And then under that is the saucer and then at the bottom is the plate. So God is the pitcher and we're the cup.
It can't be turned over. So it's upside down because then obviously nothing can go into it. It cannot be moving back and forth because then we're not paying attention listening to God or looking at his word or spending time in prayer. And the more that we stay in his presence, our cup gets filled to the top and overflows into the saucer, which is the people in our lives that represents all the relationships we have from our co-workers to our family to acquaintances to girlfriends that I talk to.
It's all the people that you pour into or pour into you and that is the saucer. And then the plate at the bottom, you know the phrase, my plate is really full. It's all the stuff we do. It's the commitments we make and the priorities we have.
And if the rest is lined up, if God is pouring into our cup and that's overflowing into our relationships, and that's overflowing into our plate, then we choose different things. So our plate would be filled differently than if we weren't sitting under the grace of God to pour into this. That's a beautiful picture. It really is.
You just need to find a picture at home and create the visual for yourself because when you're pouring it and you watch the water come out of the cup, that was for me that was like the aha, like, oh, I get it. You always hear that word overflow, but when the water actually starts to come over and go into the saucer, the visual finally made sense for me to see that. That's so good. That's great.
Continuing on with this dish. Maybe I'm just hungry. I don't know. I'm thinking about a plate.
I say it's sitting in front of our life group leaders and they're saying, man, my plate is full right now. I have a lot of my plate. It's piling up like a buffet, souplantation level salad bar. It's just going high and they're like, I can't eat all of this.
What comes to mind is I need to invite someone else to share this plate with me. I need to empower other people in my group. So thinking about multiplying influence, how can we invite other people within our group to share this plate? So that way it's not on the life group leaders every week to do everything because from our point of view, we don't want you leaders to do every single thing in your group.
Not only is that not healthy, but you're not empowering other people. So what practical ways could we empower other people to eat this plate alongside us? I think when people come and I'm going to say leaders, when leaders say, I'm tired and kind of burn out, this is too much. I think my first question always is, okay, so tell me what your group look like.
What roles do people in your group have compared to what are you caring for your group? And if it comes back to, oh, yeah, I don't really want to bother them and have an asked people in our group to carry those roles because I know they're already busy. So I try to do everything for our group so I can bless them, which is not a bad thing. That's really a great heart, right?
But at the same time, you might be taking the joy away from someone else that hasn't had the joy of serving yet, like a serve champion, a prayer champion, a snack champion, a birthday champion. Like there's all kinds of things just like in family. We all have different roles and we help make family work. It's the same thing with the group and if people have a real purpose in showing up, if I don't show up tonight, they're not going to have snack.
If I don't show up tonight, I'm going to let them down and take care of the prayer requests, things like that, if we all have a reason that we need to be there. It's really a beautiful thing and it takes the weight off. It takes the, if you want to call it the burden off your shoulders to just be pure joy in doing the part that you're gifted in or passionate about for your group, you don't have to carry the whole group on your own. Yeah.
So there's buy in, you're allowing other people to use their gifts. I think I've shared this on the podcast before, but my wife and I are life group leaders and for the first year of us leading our group. We did all of the snacks. We hosted, we did all the prayer requests.
We facilitated every discussion and not only that, but I think we put it on ourselves to be more of teachers rather than facilitators. And for me, I'm passionate about it, but I saw my wife get really burnt out. And as a husband, I was not watching over my family, which is my first ministry. And I was allowing that to fall while I was propping up this group.
And I think it was maybe a pride thing too. I'm just being vulnerable right now. And we had to have someone else speak into us within the group say, Hey, how about we rotate leadership on who facilitates? How about that person also covers the snacks for that week also covers prayer requests.
So since we've done that, I had a conversation with my wife today how this time around feels different. There's more structure. We're planning ahead, like breaking open that 90 day plan and seeing who's going to lead what weeks were empowering other people to use their gifts, but we're taking the weight off of ourselves. I don't know if you've ever experienced anything like that, Scott.
If you've ever been burnt out. Yeah, I mean, totally like we say like life group is a team sport that we don't have to do this alone. And as you were sharing Sam and Kim, you as well as that, not only is it giving ownership, giving an opportunity for others in your group to exercise or give some passions as a search champion, prayer champion, bring snacks, facilitating, but it really helps you as a leader too, to have some margin focus on what you can do as well too. But I did want to present a little bit more about kind of burnout and exhaustion.
Like Kim, you mentioned when we share ownership with others and we multiply influence, that can really take some of that weight off. But what are some other things that causes exhaustion or burnout or this weariness for those who have been leading groups? I think a lot of it comes back to that cup picture thing because really, truly, you can only lead from an overflow. I feel that in myself, when I'm not filling up my cup, you just keep going and going and doing the tasks instead of using your passions to accomplish it.
It's not a task to be done to show up to life group, but it's a blessing to be in that space with that circle of people facilitating and providing a space where people can talk about what's really going on in life. That's such a gift. We don't have that. Like, some people never have that.
If they're not in a church, there's very few places you can go that you get to share what's really going on in life, knowing it's safe, knowing I can be vulnerable and I can trust these people. And then we're going to hear from God, we're going to study His Word, we're going to pray about it where the real power comes from anyways. But I think it comes to we have to be so diligent and mindful of our own spiritual walk because you can't give what you don't have. You can't lead people to where you haven't been.
And I know from my life that is very profound. And sometimes still, I don't realize it until I'm getting near that point. Why am I so irritated? Why am I so out of energy?
Why am I not able to accomplish all these things? Because I'm not lined up for it's supposed to be. That's great, Kim. Kim, this has been so rich, such a blessing.
We love serving with you and your husband, Dave, who is so involved. Shout out, Dave. Regeneration and so many other ministries. Would you be able to close us out and encourage all of our group leaders by praying over them and cheering them on?
Oh, I'd love to. God, thank you for the privilege to be about your work in the kingdom. We're so grateful. You don't need us, but we're so grateful you want us in this space.
Lord, I pray for all of our life group leaders. And first, I just want to say thank you. We're so grateful that they said yes, and they have stepped into the sometimes messy work of leading a life group. God, I just thank you that you meet them right there.
And I pray you would minister to their hearts this week that they would sense your spirit, that their cup would sit still as you pour into their life, and they would find such a joy, such a joy in being in the space with their life group. I pray their conversations would be rich and sweet and challenging. God, that you would grow leaders, more leaders out of life group, that they would in turn start serving other places and using the stories of their lives to bring people to know you. We do need each other.
We all need each other. We're so much better when we're in community, and we thank you for the privilege of even having these conversations. So I pray for a great week with our groups, that they would have aha moments, that they would be closer as brothers and sisters, and that they would see you work. In Jesus' name I pray.
Amen.