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 Life Group leaders. This is week five of On the Table.
We are coming into land on this incredibly impactful sermon series. And this week, we are looking at, I love the title of this, just a title itself kind of jumps out. Woke and social justice. What does the scripture teach?
Oh my goodness, that's a sticky title right there. And lots of jumping off points that you can go just by that word. Woke, what does that mean? I hear this, what does that term mean?
What does it matter? How do we think about that as Christians? And then social justice. That's another term that we hear up time.
And so we're going to lead you through a discussion this week. I'm not doing that by myself. I am here with our local engagement pastor. It's Valoria.
Hi everyone. Such a joy to be with you guys. I don't know about you, but some of you probably heard Woke and social justice. You've maybe got a little anxious, a little sweaty in your car or wherever you're listening to this.
Others, maybe you're excited. You're jumping up a bit to have this conversation. It feels like a finally moment for you. No matter where you're at, you can trust your church.
We are going to have a dynamic and yet compassionate, yet truth-filled conversation around these issues that are so prevalent in our culture and in our world today. Yeah, that's so great. I love that. And you talked to our talk here coming into this message.
I mean, he's poured himself into every single message. But I think there was something unique about this week in this conversation that we're going to have. Because of those kind of cultural buzz words, reframing those, in a lot of sense, like recapturing. When we think about the word justice, and Eric, of course, does this throughout his message, that's a turt that gets attached to all kinds of different activities, ideologies and movements.
And actually, justice is a biblical word. It's a biblical term that's supposed to have a biblical response in action too. And so I'd love that Eric's going to leave us about discussion in this week's message. Yeah, and just the passion that he leads us with and the clarity really for us, because it can be tempting to have something that feels maybe co-opted, overused.
The temptation can be like, well, it's been so watered down or mishandled that I'm just going to stay away from that. And it seems a little divisive, maybe a little too spicy of a word, I'm going to stay away from that. But truly, the conviction to justice is the kind of word we want to hold onto, because like you said, it's a Bible word. We don't want to let go too easily of Bible words.
And so this is our effort at maybe reclaiming it, maybe getting if it's felt taboo over the last couple years for you or someone you know to use. If it's felt like, yeah, this needs to stay off the table. Hopefully after this weekend, after this message, week five, we feel a little bit more confident using it and putting it back on the table, but really putting it back in its rightful place and having our hearts and our kind of minds coming from the right posture when we engage this word and this topic as a whole of justice. Yeah, that's good.
I love that word engagement too. It's how we think about it, physically and critically, but it's also the activity that's attached to it. Because obviously, we know we're hearing great messages and sermons, but sermons alone don't transform us. It's a part of the transformation.
The other part of that transformation is actually putting it into action too, right? And so this weekend, there's going to be a real exact call to action with our sermons. Why don't you give us a little bit of what to expect as life reporters and how we can leave it out? So responses message.
Yeah, sure. So I mean, the spoiler just right here, if you haven't listened to the message quite yet, truly we are a church that puts justice in action. We are called to do justice. We're commanded in scripture.
I mean, the church so often reminded, commanded, invited, into doing the work of justice, which is, like you said, an action. It's the way we engage our faith. So everyone is going to get the opportunity to do that. Our outreach teams, they are ready to go.
Our volunteers, our staff, our teams, are going to be present. More predominantly, specifically at our urban campus, but across all of our congregations, there will be representation out waiting for you in the lobby, patio, wherever that host service hang area is to have conversations about what it looks like to take that step and join an interest meeting of one of our outreach ministries, where you can learn more about a specific ministry, a specific community, a specific vulnerable area, a demographic, in ways that we are currently engaging and ways people can step in. So that's the invitation. The invitation is to learn about an outreach ministry.
Say yes to attending an interest meeting. That's it. You're not signing your name at the dotted line or committing to anything, just saying, hey, I want to learn more. I know doing and engaging my faith in a way that is serving specifically vulnerable communities is critical to my discipleship journey and to my Christian faith.
It's not an add-on. It's not an extra for the good Christians or the ones that are maybe a little bit more inclined towards mercy and compassion. We need our shrewd thinkers in outreach ministry. We need our observers.
We need our intro. We need everyone. And so really it's an opportunity for you to express interest in learning more about an outreach ministry. And that alone is a huge step.
It's saying I'm open to learning more, especially about others that might not look or that I might not relate to at all. I might not understand. And I think it's easy to keep things at arms distance, especially if they seem like a dicey issue. It's easy to keep things at an issue.
But to really kind of come a little bit closer and allow yourself to engage with the people, the families, the individuals, the children that that issue might represent and what's really kind of going on under the surface. Yeah, really good. And of course, all those different serve opportunities that you're going to learn more about, that going to these informative meetings, the opportunities that are behind those ministries are always on the resource page. But I love the invitation this weekend.
It's just common, Mark. Common, what, can it be informed? Yeah. And I think from that information, there could be an activation piece that comes on the back end of that.
And Gloria, you and I were just talking before again. There are so many different ways in a church like Maryard's where you can get involved and where you can serve. And we love that so much. They're life groups.
Ministries that happen here on campus, the big events that we run, the weekend things that we do here, we love that. That groups serve one another, serve the church through their gifts here. But we are talking about something different, right? That is important, but equally important.
It's how we go along and serve outside of our church context. We serve the marginalized and pursue them with the love and grace of Jesus through all the great partnerships that our churches have through years here in Southern California. And so there is a distinction between when we talk about, and you might hear some of our teams talk about sometimes, it was the last time your life group, when's your life group serve? But what we really mean by that is being, like serving alongside local outreach with one of the partners that we have a longstanding history relationship that's really important for our hearts, because we get to learn, we get to take next steps there.
And so while we love all the great things that we get to do serving one another, super important and valuable, when we talk about this conversation this week, we are talking about stepping outside and serving others with the love of Jesus through the power. Absolutely. And yes, there is a distinction. Both are beautiful.
And the church has engaged in both and will engage in both forever. That's the fullness of the expression of the church and the local church is the hope of the world. And so it is so important for us to be serving inside our church walls, so to speak, and building up the kingdom right here now. So we love when people are activated, and they are committed and serving either one time or on a regular basis, say for our kids in our next generation, or our guest services on the weekend as part of the weekend, or these one-off events that we throw, it's so amazing to serve in your church.
But there's a distinction in serving in outreach. That's really important, and really important for us as the church. We all have this gravitational pull towards comfort and sameness and homogeny. And it is so tempting for us as believers to kind of create these holy huddles.
And they're not intended, but they happen naturally because we love our churches so much. And so it's a place where we are fed, like the word of God, it's where we huddle together in life groups, which is our beautiful place to grow in deep connection with others, grow in our faith, understand our stories more, and serve within our church walls. The distinction in outreach is serving outside of our church walls, serving the community that is potentially as barriers to coming to and becoming part of our church body because of some sort of cycle at play, or some distance or lack of resources that might create barriers of them coming to. So when we serve in outreach, we are breaking the barrier.
Now we might be hosting one of our ministries on at one of our campuses. We can do that quite often. You might restore and... Yeah, absolutely.
So you might actually be on campus, but it's the posture of our heart that we are so committed to not being a holy huddle, that we are so committed to fearlessly changing the world. And you only do that in a community engagement way when you are bursting that bubble intentionally. And when you are pursuing specifically vulnerable communities. And so we get that breakdown in this message.
I even think of that verse in Zechariah where it says, administer true justice, show faithful love and compassion to one another, do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the resident alien or the poor, and do not pot evil in your hearts against one another. So scripture so often specifically calls out these communities. And it's God saying, I have a special place in my heart for those that are vulnerable, weak, marginalized, set aside either by society or others that are oppressed, and church you should too. So that's why there's that distinction and why it's healthy and good for us, as individuals and as groups to serve specifically in outreach.
Because when we do, we are seeing God's heart on display in a different way. We're seeing how God works through trials and traumas in a different way. And it really expands our view of who God is when we engage and we serve those that are so near and dear to God's heart. That's it.
And I love what you call that too. Sometimes the gravitational pull towards comfort. That could be a real thing. And the church is at its worst where we operate like that.
Like we operate like a cruise ship of just goods and services just for those that are in the boat. Oh yeah. And the best we operate on rescue boats. Like we're pulling out and we're doing, we're not staying and just enjoying all these great resources just for ourselves.
Yes, we enjoy those great resources because the con to God's kingdom, what he gives us, but they're there so that we can go church the called out. We go and do it. So I love that you're calling that out for us. And it's extremely valuable for your groups.
It's one of the ways that you hear God's voice in unique way and gets you out of just kind of the normal rhythm and monandie. And sometimes you're meeting week in and week out. And that's great. We love that.
But actually getting outside of yourselves and serving others is where you get to see some of the kingdom and bands and some pretty beautiful. Absolutely. I mean, I think of rooted service I've been on in groups and how just getting out and doing something experiential really kind of brings out different strengths, different personalities. And I can think back so many times to the quieter, more introverted person in the group shining when it came to our outreach serve experience together.
Because maybe some of that quietness had to do with a lot of their own story that they hadn't maybe unraveled yet. Or a hidden talent or gifting that the group setting didn't quite put on display. But getting active, getting out there, and engaging with the community, you see different parts of the people in your group on display. And someone could shine brightly in that air.
You could see a new side. And you know, you have that shared experience too. But unfortunately, the group right now and next weekend we're going down to Sunburst Youth Academy in my own life. We meet on Sunday after this message.
And we're going to pin our survey date in for in February to know that we want to get out. We want to do the stuff. We want to do the stuff. So I love it.
I love that you're on for this week to reframe that value for us and to give us some handles on it. We're going to walk through the questions. We'll just be able to get a shorter fashion. I want to give you guys just a few things to pull out of the questions this week.
The first question is a lean in question. If you woke up in the morning and everything was the way it should be in the world, what changed? So what is this question getting at? It's kind of getting at like, we can see sometimes that things aren't right and we want to make things right.
So what is justice in your kind of worldview or narrow perspective? What are the things that you look at and say, yeah, if tomorrow everybody did this, the world would be a better place. And you want to try to keep that question kind of light and fun, whether it's, you know, people we line. They don't jump in line over the place.
Absolutely. No traffic. I think that would probably be the biggest in California one. Just no traffic.
Everybody's on time. That would be fantastic. Where your kids go a lot of bed on time. Without complaining.
And eating vegetables. It's a wonderful thing, right? So have a conversation around there. Then we turn towards the passage, a real familiar passage.
Mike, a 6-8. It's one of a few passages that Eric's going to walk through this weekend. As we read the passages, what does God require for us in a horizontal sense? And Eric talks about that person to person.
And what does God require of us in our vertical sense? Person to God. So Mike, a 6-8 really has both of those three lines there. How we relate to one another and how we relate towards God.
So what do you learn about God's requirements through that verse? I'll read it for you here now. Mike, a 6-8 says, mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what the Lord requires of you to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God. Anything set up for you?
Gloria, you want to pull out of that familiar, great, kind of full passage? Yeah. Not one's quite familiar to us in the outreach world. It's one of our foundational verses and pieces of scripture.
And again, just calling out that act justly. That's really what we're doubling down on in this conversation in the message this weekend. But that justice is an action. But it is one done in the utmost humility because we know that we are the ones that are justified through Christ.
And so because of what he has done for us, we then in humility and in compassion, you see that mercy. I love just that they all go together. You cannot truly do one without the other. So you can't do justice, the right and the true thing, the law and just having all things be right without humility and without mercy.
They go together. Yeah, really good. Awesome. And then moving into the lookout section, we talked about some of this a little bit already.
But a couple of questions here. What definitions of justice have you heard or used in recent years? How do these definitions align or contradict with the biblical view of justice? So we're getting at that concept of justice, right?
So we're here all the time. It's actually a biblical word. So where do we see that word sometimes? Misused and co-op.
Does anything come to mind for you when you think about that term justice in a non-typical sense? Sure. I mean, I think this is where you guys are going to have probably the lightliest element of conversation around your groups. I'm sure so many of you like group leaders are praying for that person in your group, right?
Just have a soft heart and an openness. And that's what I would say is if this conversation elicits any passion at all, that somehow, some way, on some level, there is something to affirm there. Because it's someone that either has a bend towards the truth and justice being what is right. And that is a godly right inclination to want what is true, to want there to be justice and a sense of all things right in this world, to want the scales to not be tipped, but to be evened out, to want to see things be different.
So just an ability to affirm the passion, but maybe if it's needed, challenge where they land or the posture. Because if that passion is bulldozing over the image of God on someone, some leader, some community, that is where it has, by our definition, that we will outline in this weekend's message kind of crossed the line, so to speak. And so that is the best advice as a life group leader, no matter where this conversation goes, to bring it back to how do we be passionate if things were passionate about, be challenged and take steps of faith where it's needed, but always uphold the image of God on all people, which means honoring them, seeing them for who they are and their intention, seeing them as inherently worth grace, change, transformation, wanting all of those things. So yeah, I'm excited for you guys as you engage in this conversation, or know.
This could be one of those buzzy kind of, you know. Oh, totally, yeah. There's a lot that happened this conversation. And Eric talks about this into getting his message, criminal justice, environmental justice, economic justice, racial justice, intergenerational justice, reproductive justice, it goes on and on.
And so you see the term justice, which is a biblical term, because God is just, we only know what justice is because we know who God is, is defined by God and his character. And so acting justly comes from the greater who is just. So acting justly has got to be a corresponding action in line with the character of who God is, right? And so it's seeing God for who he is, he's just, and then that's worship, right?
It's our response to that. But you see that we're getting attached to lots of different things. Good, bad, right, wrong, whatever. That often doesn't have the same biblical worldview, or the same corresponding action to what's it like to outward justice in these areas.
And so lots to talk about. Absolutely. You're great on that point. Yeah, that's good.
And then we move down to the look in. In the message, Eric talks about different aspects of justice. And sometimes we have a bent towards either justice being, and we're making an over-extending a point here on two sides, where we may see justice as truly acts of grace, and just love, and compassionate serving, and it shouldn't be that. Or we have a bent towards seeing justice as, maybe not even actions, but statements of truth, kind of that, to characterize it a little bit.
Well, people get what they deserve, because their actions require some kind of a circumstance that's created by that. And so you can look at both sides of those, all grace or all truth. And Eric poses a question to us of, when you think about justice, maybe where is your bent towards? Or you bent towards grace, or you bent towards truth.
So I have a conversation with your groups around those two things. But what comes up to you? I know you look at the message too, when Eric talks about those two different. And they're both.
We need both of them, but we need them both, not in competition with one another. Justice, when it is, after rightly, is both. It's grace, it's grace, and truth. How do you see that playing out?
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that it's not an either-or, but it's really both in this beautiful tandem, in like harmonious way, that truly only Jesus lived out perfectly, right? But it's this idea that we can be fully confident about what we believe and who we believe in, and where our convictions lie. But we are also fully compassionate for those that are experiencing all of what the world can throw at is that are experiencing the endless stream of the brokenness in our world, and how that kind of expresses itself on entire communities, generations, and things like that. So having that not necessarily that balanced view, because I think all of us, like you said, have a bend, but being able to know, like, I can't fully be a grace-filled person without confidence in the gospel, without truth.
Otherwise, it wouldn't be grace, it would probably be more something like tolerance, right? And you cannot be a truth-filled, Bible-believing, confident person without grace, right? And so knowing that while we have a bend, it's not an either-or both come to the table. Let's go.
So good. Super helpful, I think so much for the passionate perspective of which you bring now into this conversation, but the whole of our church, like God has clearly placed you in your role because of your passions and your experiences to help lead the whole of our church through this. And so I just love your wisdom and your insight. And it matters, and it matters immensely.
We want to be a church that understands that we've been justified through what Christ has done, and because we have been, then yes, we go and do justice. Absolutely. It's a biblical term, it's a biblical action. And as Christians, we should be on the front line of acts of justice and mercy, because after all, that's what Christ did for us.
Yeah, and if you know, if you, as an individual, if your group as a whole has felt hopeless around this conversation, has felt hopeless, maybe about of state of the world, state of affairs, kind of the direction where things are going, I hope you walk away from this conversation about injustice with more hope. And truly, and I thank you for just that encouragement and affirmation, but I want to thank our life groups and our life group leaders, because in so many ways, it's the grease in the wheel of discipleship at our church, because you can't go deeper, you are more seen, you're engaged more with the word and your personal story when you are in community. So there's so much power in life groups and what God is doing in them, even now in our church in the season, and our outreach teams, our ministries, we're waiting for you, we're ready for you, we're excited for you, yeah, and new ministries and initiatives happening all the time. So again, if you see something that, and you have a passion on your heart, but you maybe don't see it as a box you could check this weekend, this message, there is likely still a space for you and whatever it is you're passionate about on our outreach teams.
So don't let anything be a barrier, take that next step, whatever that looks like for you, and get to know our teams a little bit more, and we can kind of see where the best exit for you might be. Awesome, so jump in you guys, we're gonna be reminded what the biblical justice is this weekend, but this isn't just an intellectual exercise, this is an exercise to move us into actions, so groups, let's jump in and serve, and when we do it's a win, win, win, man. It's a win for us because we get to experience something unique about who God is as we go and do the stuff that he did, it's a win for others, as we serve them and it's a win for the kingdom, man. So let's go and do it, serve experiences, not meant to be something that we just did and rooted and that was something we put on the shelf.
It's that we really want to continually outwork. So we're gonna remind it of that challenge, and then let's go for it, let's respond with action this weekend. All right, good, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it.
Thank you guys, thanks so much for having me. All right, good leaders, we'll see you on your next week.