Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This week the 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 to Life Group Leaders to week number three of All in the Table. This is our sermon series looking at hard hitting questions that often confront Christianity.
Week one, we looked at why there's so many hypocrites in the church, week two. We looked at what is the unpardonable sin. And this week we're looking at technology, God's blessing or man's downfall. And we're looking with our college pastor, Tiffany Lyons.
Hey, so it sounded to be here. Yeah, thanks for joining us, Tiffany. And some of you may not know that. You know Tiffany, because she's served in our team for some time here now, was the next step pastor did an incredible job.
And she jumped in and told our adults team with them serving our college students with a college pastor. You've got a front review also for some exciting things that are happening on Thursday night. It got to a great stuff. Why don't you just give us a little bit of a recap.
I know it's early in. It's early in. What's God doing? Oh man, we've only experienced two Thursday nights, which is a brand new thing of Mariners.
It's the first service of the weekend, a service designed for young adults where we're inviting people that are college students and their 20s and their 30s to come. And worship Eric preaches the same message that the rest of the church here's. And the last two weeks have been phenomenal. We have seen, I think we said almost 1200 the first night and then over a thousand the second night and we saw 48 people stand up and say, I believe this past Thursday, unbelievable.
It's just, there's just something incredible that's happening. And I think we know that something really amazing is happening and we don't even fully know exactly what God's gonna continue to do. It's awesome. Yeah, that's beautiful.
For the one time I was able to go to the first one, just either the hugger in the room, the community people lingering around substantially at the end. Oh yeah. People coming forward for prayer. And then the kinds of people that God's bringing in is all over.
You've got folks that we're just connected for are completely unchurched. Right. Nothing to do with it beforehand. That God's meeting them in beautiful ways.
So of course you're all what you're doing. So recall students in particular, not just on Thursday nights as a pro. Oh, thank you. I'm so excited to see what God continues to do.
That's it. All right. So if you are young or young adults in your life, come out Thursday nights. Come on.
Do the thing. Seven o'clock. That's it. All right.
So we jump into this week's questions. We're looking at technology. Great message. Eric take this message this weekend.
I love how you really framed it from this understanding of this technology bad, good, neutral. Well, it's really, you know, how you use it. You look at even through scripture, the introduction of technology as this walks us through Genesis and in tar and out tar was so influential, the building of modern societies and ancient societies and how technology really is an unavoidable part of our life. But we should be noticing what it's what's doing for us who is causing us to become.
We were just saying as you're sitting down that in this year is all the table, this one, I think maybe not as hard-hitting maybe some of the questions, but we're saying it's what that hits our life every day. Oh, like every day. It's unavoidable. Oh, totally.
So we're going to talk through it. Let's go to our lead in question. I'm curious what you might say here too. Like mobile apps, do you use to maximize your time in one of the mobile apps that you use that drain your time?
Okay, so I'm really excited about the first half of this question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so I love, I'm an auditory learner, so like I love listening to things. I can like, I can like consume so much more information audibly, which the phones are amazing for.
So I love the Bible app and then I turn like, as I'm reading it, I don't just read it, but like it reads it to me and depending on what version. In the voice of Joe Jones. I know, yeah, yeah, it could be like, I could be really like, I feel smart listening to it because if somebody with a British accent, that's great. And I do love that.
I also love like Audible or podcast. I mean, even this podcast John, like I will listen to this on my way to my group. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm running a little bit late.
I'm gonna be there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I love it. And so I, those are the things that I think maximize my time is like redeeming drive time, praise God is amazing.
And then as far as draining my time, oof, probably Instagram. It's the Graham. It's the Graham. Yeah.
Yeah. You've got pretty substantial influence out there on. Oh gosh. It's not really, but I, what, what trains me is like the dumb, like I mean, they know exactly what I wanna watch and then they feed it to me and I eat it.
I love it. Like lately it's been just like dumb, like animal videos. I'm like, oh my gosh, that monkey's hugging money. I didn't need to see that.
I didn't need to see that in my life. I know, but now we said that loud. You'll probably see it on your algorithm. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, same productivity stuff like, ever know, I never still use ever know, right? Yeah, still thing. I was doing ever know that I moved off to notes, just straight up notes. Straight up notes.
I like that too. Yeah, I like both. But it's actually for years, right? So things are cataloged and tagged.
It does tell me to be a little bit more efficient. And then absent drained. It depends on the time of year. So football season, the fantasy for the game.
You got to check the waiver wire, because I've got to beat all the other team members on staff here, which I've never done. So I'm not using it properly. But that's the thing where it's like, I don't really need to look at the waiver wire to find that kicker who might give me over the top. But here I am.
So this is driving on that point, though, right? Two of these apps that could be good, cause more efficiency. But certainly, without a stinking about it, I mean, dooms rolling. Oh my gosh.
Even just like when I'm walking from one office to the next, I'm on Instagram and I didn't even realize I did it. Yeah. Yeah. And you think about the span of time.
We didn't have the stuff. Not that I mean, I'm old. So I needed my first cell phone until maybe three years into our marriage. Oh, wow.
That the flip-reaser film, because that's all we had. Oh my gosh. That was it. And I was walking with pagers for a long time.
I showed up on college campus with one of those giant word processors in a briefcase. No laptop. No, man. I just have really old.
I love it. Oh, but it's crazy. Like, how quick. Yeah.
Technology could have done that. It used to be snake too. Do you remember that? Like on Nokia?
Oh my gosh. Yeah. But how quick it changes, but how quick it normalizes. And it held numb, we get.
Yeah. It's a fact. So tell really important discussion. I'm going to read the anchor passage for this weekend is Titus 1, 15 through 16.
And then a few questions that you're propped to. Just again, we say this quite often. But always helpful when you're sitting in groups. Ask the question before you read the passage, because that helps you to look at it for the lens of the questions, too.
So a few questions here. What is the harposter of the impure described in the passage? What are the behaviors of the impure? And then what does it mean that to the pure?
Everything is pure. So a few different questions to think through in the passage here is what says in Titus 1, 15 through 16. To the pure, everything is pure. But to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure.
In fact, both their mind and conscious are defiled. They claim to know God, but they deny Him by their words. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good work. This is the word of the Lord.
And so of course, not maybe a describing, describing directly the use of technology. But it is giving principles for how to be utilized for different things in the world around us. How do we intake them? How do we use them?
Do you think that out to you, Tiffany, when you look at the passage of the questions here in the look down? Yeah. When I was looking at this, the first question of what's like a harposter? And the first thing that came to my mind was the word unbelieving.
And so the person who is defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. And so those are the key things. Because often we think about the opposite of pure being bad or defiled. And we can easily think of things you do versus the harposter.
You know what I'm saying? And so I love that we start with this question of not just like, OK, let's describe these people. Who are these impure people? But instead it's like, oh, OK, unbelieving.
That's like the fundamental detervener. Yeah, which is a posture. Like what you said, which informs our mind and our conscious within also defiled. So it's a foundational state, which how we interpret the world around us is derived derived from.
That's right. But even then, still, too, things can have an effect on us, even with the best, in terms of the perspective of the use for it, for sure. But I love that. I love what you're pointing out.
It's a harposter. It's a foundational posture first. That's great. And then what do we learn about the acts of the impure?
Well, he says it's pretty bluntly here. That they claim to know God, but they deny he and buy their works. So there's this sense of acknowledging who God is, even in an intellectual, maybe in a relational sense, but denying him by their works that a life that the message doesn't matter. And so what do they look like?
Well, they're detestable, they're disobedient, and they're unfit for any good work. And if that's the state of the person, then how we utilize good gifts that God's gift gives us, technology is a good gift that God has given us, is also going to be defiled and disoriented for sure. Really good. All right, so we move into the lookout.
Sure, let's do it. Couple of questions. Where have you seen? Where have you seen technology used for pure and impure reasons?
The same kind of technology used for pure and impure reasons? How might current technology play a role in God's plan of redemption? All right, good questions. These are great questions.
So how have you seen? When we're in examples, when you think about technology different platforms and things, where you've seen it, I can see this being used for a really good thing. I've also seen it being used for damaging things. Yeah, very, very obvious.
Totally. Yeah, I think one of the more obvious ones, are like, yeah, our phones and our pockets. I'm so grateful that we have the Bible. Let me buy a lap is like an amazing tool that now I have and available.
It's in so many languages. So I see the expansion of getting the word of God into people's hands. And now you don't have to be like, I got to go find my Bible real quick because you just have it with you. And so it's readily available.
It's such a gift. And at the same time, that phone, that's readily available, there's all these other things that are really available. And so just as easy as it is for us to download the Bible out, there's a lot of other apps that you can download. And so I can think about just things that are like, probably could be good or bad, like Netflix or early, even on there, like the spectrum of entertainment.
Most of them, I would probably describe as on pure. And so it's easy for us to not even be looking for anything negative, and yet we find ourselves on the same phone where we read the Bible in the morning, watching something that's like, oh, this is against what God has for us. So yeah, the same tool that can be used to go if I got further love and appreciation for him and for others, the same tool that we can use to look at graphic images to bully other people. And also just idleness too, right?
Like if you're looking at something that's necessarily quote unquote bad, but the use of your time on it. And it's easy for us with the idleness too. It's like some of these things, because sometimes you think of like you said, like there's like graphic and things like that, that we know like, okay, clearly, this is not good. But then there's other things that slip into our hearts in the ways that we don't even realize.
Like I can be watching other people doing ministry on Instagram and celebrating what God is doing in other places. And at the same time, I can start this like real in my head. As I'm just scrolling through for way too long, thinking, ah, look what they're doing. Like we're the same age and look what they're accomplishing and what I'm not accomplishing.
And you're like, you know, and I can start too. Or like they've got like 10 vacations this year. And so in January 15, that's crazy. So it's easy for us to easily like start to compare.
And then that just sucks a life out of us as well. Yeah, I mean, it's such a good conversation to have. One that we can't so richly explore. There's so many great papers and resources, articles and Eric's message of course here.
But yeah, I mean, many have have completed that. Just the phone itself has got to be, you know, the number one deterrent towards spiritual growth and forgation. And when you think about our growth and formation, could we do that before phones? Absolutely.
We didn't need it. We didn't need it. And so I know someone makes the case, well, it really helps, really aids. But it also has an incredible hindrance if we're not looking at it properly, asking really good questions and how we utilize it.
Not to mention social media, not to mention the use of the phones on our youth and our kids. And you know, we're raising two girls right now, one of them is 14. And she's got it, she has, she now has a cell phone that we look at pretty robustly with her. And always reminding her who's voted is.
It's not your voted, it's our phone. You know, how I can use, but you know, we didn't have access to it. Yeah. That would be there, let alone just the negative things that you'd expose to everyone there as well.
Oh, totally. And also like just with the idea of having access to everything all the time, because of technology, I think Eric talked about this, like what a great gift that when it comes to trying to eradicate diseases and things like that, like the spread of information. But then I also think about we know about every single natural disaster that hits, every single, it can become overwhelming and unbearable because before the technology that allowed us to know it was happening on the other side of the world like that, now we carry all of those things. And we're trying to make peace with it.
And it's hard for us to do that. Yeah. So just a couple things for parents or perspective parents. It'd be really helpful on January 24th.
That's a Wednesday night here at Mirrors Irvine, Che and Eric, a guy who are going to be leading a discussion on kids' kids and technology. They're going to be really good. They're going to share some learnings with raising their two daughters. We're going to have some time to look at like a sample phone contract and what that looks like.
And then ask some questions in the room on that night too. So I want to encourage you to come out to that on January 24th and be a really good discussion. And then even before we get to look at, I love these four questions that Eric highlights in the message. We look at the use of technology.
Good rubric for us to go through and to take others through. Why do I want to use this? Why do I even want to use this tool? What's the driving motivation?
Is it efficiency? Am I trying to get that loneliness? Is it feeding some kind of unhealthy addiction? Like what is the core motivation for why I want to use this?
Is it as simple as, you know, I want to be more efficient. I want to have my car insurance card on my phone. So I have to wait for it to get milled in. Great.
I want that no room going through ways. What are great? Why do I want to use it? Secondly, what is the goal in the worldview of the creators?
Man, not something that we are always looking at, looking into that these platforms aren't neutral. No, they're not. They really are. They really are.
And their creators are neutral. There's often an in game or collateral damage to the use of this that we need to discover. Am I saying we only need to use Christian app? No, that's not it.
That's not it. But we also don't want to be naive to the purposes behind some of the things that we use. Then this question, what is it doing to me? So who is it forming me to be?
What are the habits I'm noticing about myself? Who am I becoming by using this? And then what are the healthy practices for me as I use this? And you notice that they say, don't use it.
But what are the practices? What do I need to do? That's good. It's just about intentionality, right?
All the way through there. That's really good. Any of those questions stand out to you, Tiffany, from the things that Eric walks us through and the four questions that we should ask for ourselves when using technology? I think these are great.
I don't think these are something you have to ask once and you're done. I think this is something that I think is going to be a great tool for me, a great framework for me to assess. OK, where am I at? Because we're not going to always nail it.
It's not really a problem to solve, but just attention to manage. And so I like number three for that reason. Because I think I like all of them. But number three, what is it doing to me?
Even just as I'm hearing this right now, and as I was listening to the message, I'm like, you know what? I probably need to do this maybe once a month. And just about me, OK, what are the different technologies and then what are you doing to me? And then make adjustments accordingly.
Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, don't be passive. Be active. Be intentional with what we use.
We already mentioned the kids, their parenting and technology. Leaders in tech. We're doing this on February 4th. And Sunday, Eric's going to be hosting that with a special guest Bobby Greenwald.
He's a pastor, innovative leader at Life Church. And he's one of the founder CEOs of the U version Bible app that you talked about. So talk about redeeming and using technology for you. That's going to be a great discussion on February 4th, where we can hear about a theology of technology and how do we use it to serve and spread together as human force through the kingdom through that.
So mark that in your county's chief at Berkeley for it. Really good. All right, a couple of questions in the look down. In what areas of your technology use my God be inviting you to take a pause and redefine your relationship with technology.
In what wisdom do you need from God in navigating the digital age with purity? So where do you take inventory? Where is God taking, causing you inviting you to pause and redefine your relationship with the use of tech? In what wisdom do you need in navigating digital age with purity?
This is a good conversation of vulnerability and honesty with the people. Totally. Yeah. I think for every single one of us, the right if we're not asking a question, then we're way, way behind it.
We've got to ask the question, have an honest look at ourselves. And they make a change, right? And that's easier said than done. Is there anything that you've learned just with kind of breaking habits and routines and practices that you've put into place?
I'm done. I think seasons of fasting has been really, really helpful for me. And so there have been times, probably, without this framework of like, OK, what is this doing to me? Like, I love watching a good TV show.
Like, I mean, suits is on the rise again. Do you ever watch that? Is that because of the whole making of the mark? I don't know why it's that.
I don't know why it's that. I feel like I'm missing. Re-emerging interest. Yeah, yeah, but I remember watching that.
It's not bad. So instead of going, I would crash at the end of a work day and just veg out and watch TV, which is not always bad. But I feel like you have a new level of something you want to share with me this year. This was a few years ago.
So I'm just going to fast from TV. This is pretty big all year long. And so I didn't watch TV for a year. And that was hard.
But it was good hard. And so I've done a month or something like that, where I'm just like, OK, I just want to spend more time with God. But those have been helpful resets. And it's not because I think everyone should do that.
That just happened to be like, OK, I'm just going to try different things. And so even right now, I'm not in any sort of season like that. But just some confession. Yesterday, I was on my phone.
And my niece was with me. She's three. And my sister told me about this color by number. So I was speaking with her.
And after a little while, I was like, I'm so tired of doing this. And I'm like, all right, you got to sit down. We're not going to do this. It's not going to look at the phone all the time.
I'm telling her that. And then I pull up my phone again and look at it again. And she's like, but you're doing it. I was like, oh, God.
Not that they're having a good reflection to you. Totally. Because I hardly think it's not good for a three-year-old to look at the phone. But then I pull my phone up right then.
So I'm like, OK, I need to pull back on this a little bit. Yeah. But there is something to that. I'm seeing the misinformed practice in somebody else.
Yes. It is a bit of like, oh, I don't want to be that. Like, we do that with our kids where we'll be a restaurant. We'll see a family on their phones.
And we'll not a judge, but you'll point it out. Yeah. Yeah. Or hey, that friend that always seems to be unavailable or distract.
Oh my gosh. Yes. This is why or that friend that is in this cycle. This is why we don't let you have social media.
This is why. Those kind of examples can be helpful. But of course, what are we modeling that? That's a big one for us.
That's a big one for us. And what's the practice that we're helping to shape and our kids both good and bad? But you don't have an opportunity for transformation unless you have the question we really ask. Right.
That's why we're in community, right? That's why we have a group of people that we can ask that question and offer support and encouragement for us to resolve. Because we're not going to get this right 100% of the time. That starts with awareness and tensionality and then making choiceful decisions to make that change.
And one of the biggest things that I feel like in this discussion has been helpful is to hear how other people are processing it. And so I know that my brother decided to over Christmas break, just to delete the apps from his phone. Didn't delete the account. Didn't say like, no way, not doing this anymore.
It was just like, hey, this is just what I'm trying. And so hearing different people try different things is helpful for me to consider. And that doesn't mean nobody uses exactly their game plan. But as far as groups go, I would suggest asking everyone, what is it that they're doing?
What have they seen done? Because often that's going to stir up something. And you as a leader or other people to be like, OK, let's get some skin on this. What does this look like in real life?
I mean, you should go hold your off from TV. I'm like, man, I know. It was tough. What?
Sports? Sports, sports, I guess. Oh, gosh, John, sports everyone crossed my mind until this moment. That's how much I missed it.
I mean, the passion, that's one thing. That's easy. Oh, gosh. Golden Bash land existed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was great. All right, well, Timmy, thanks for joining us. You're always so helpful and insightful on these discussions.
And group leaders dig into that conversation this week. All wear this, intentionality. Have a robust discussion about it. And then again, mark those two workshops that we have coming up.
The first is on January 24. It's kids in technology in the worship center with Eric and K Geiger leading that. And the leaders in tech on February 4. Eric, going to be sitting down with Bobby Grewald, who, again, you version Bible, Apple, Life Church.
Give you a really good discussion for us there. All right, guys. Thanks for your time. And we'll see you next week.