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. This is week five of the Red Letter Invitations Discussion Guide, and we are walking through the content for our life groups. And it's exciting to sit here and look at the fifth week in a series that has shown us these invitations of Jesus that are really helping us not only learn what it means to follow him, but truly to become more like him.
And isn't that the goal of every one of our life groups? Is that we could figure out how to have an intentional conversation with intentional relationships that allow us to ultimately become more like Jesus. And so for you Life Group leaders, we are so grateful for the work that you do because it is holy and spiritual and sacred work. And we are honored to walk alongside you just for a few minutes each week to help you get better prepared and equipped for your Life Group Discussion.
And so this week, we are coming on the heels of Mother's Day. And we're talking about the invitation of love me. And so Jeremy, take us through kind of the overview. What's the big outcome for this week?
Yeah, so love and word is what we want people to come away from this week with. That we can really overcomplicate things in all areas of life, but especially when it comes to our walks with Jesus, our spiritual lives, our church life, so to speak, that we really overcomplicate it. And we see this week, this conversation that Jesus has, where he boils everything down, all of scripture, the entire life that is pleasing to God into loving God and loving others. And he says this summarizes all of it.
And so what we want people to see this week is that as we love Christ more, we start to love others more as he's loving through us. And so we want them to come away with a sense of love. And then this week we'll see that rhythm of serving, that really when we serve others, that is love for God and love for others being expressed in very tangible ways. So we'll talk about that in a little bit here too.
So anything that our leaders can do uniquely this week to prepare themselves for their discussion? I would encourage leaders to reflect back on the idea that was introduced last week of just sort of the head and the heart being in sync, that the things we say we believe and the affections of our heart, that the Christian life is this holistic face, that what we say we believe, the things that we think about, the things that consume our thoughts and consume our affection are ultimately gonna be what drives our lives. And so Christ is saying, a love for God and a love for others should be those motivating factors in our lives. And we're gonna open up this week by sharing stories about mothers following Mother Day.
So both maybe what you did to celebrate this past weekend Mother's Day, but just in general, all of us are imperfect, you know that, but a mother is about as good a picture as we can get right of a holistic care in this world, of just caring for a child selflessly, sacrificially, just kind of all the things we've been talking about over this past week. And so, you know, think through examples in your own life of just what does it look like to care for someone holistically? And how if maybe you've seen that as a parent, if you are a parent, how have you seen that in your own family growing up? Maybe if you didn't experience that growing up, like how did you know something was missing?
There's kind of a part of our hearts that even when we don't have the experience that we know should be normal, like we're aware of that. That's what makes it hurt is because we know it's not supposed to be this way. So even for those of us who didn't have those kind of experiences of a loving mother, perhaps, we know that there's this picture of what that should be. And ultimately, we see that holistic love expressed in our relationship with God and one another.
And that's just kind of a good way to introduce those concepts. Yeah, this is one of those weeks where even if you didn't have that picture perfect mother, which by the way, no one does, but you know what I'm saying? Like if your relationship with your mother was strained beyond the ability for you to speak highly of her in this moment, I would imagine that there's a female influence in your life that does fit that bill. You know, and that's kind of what we're getting at here is looking for that person, looking for the characteristics and qualities of that person who has an integrated, holistic approach to the way that they love.
And if you're married, this is like the easiest week to brag on your spouse. Like, come on, use this as an opportunity, even to put on display. What does it look like to affirm and to see the attributes or the characteristics of God in our spouse, right? And say, this is how this person loves, right?
So just a little opportunity, I think, for us, to continue to break through the surface of what we do in life groups, but really show, hey, this is what I see behind this person, not just what they do, but who they are. And that's an easy way to kind of put that on display in a group. Jeremy, as people are thinking about their conversations they're going to have, what are some things that we can do to make sure that that conversation does get deeper, breaks through that surface level stuff this week? Yeah, so love can be a pretty abstract ideal.
And sort of hard to talk about beyond just the word love. And so in the guide this week, we've provided some ways to tangibly express love in our look-in application questions, in ways that we can think about our own personality and preferences and practices that, how do I express my love for God? How do I experience love from God? Maybe my personality gravitates towards journaling, or maybe I best experience God when I'm hiking, or I express through visual arts or whatever.
I'm a deep studyer. Personally, I'm a deep studyer. And so when I go down these trails, that is when I really experience God in some ways. But then we also want to do this collectively as a group, that I've encouraged groups to, if you're meeting in person, use Post-it notes or marker boards or whatever, maybe you could be typing on a computer and have a fire stick or Apple TV to kind of put it up on the screen.
But if you're meeting virtually, you can use the chat feature on the side just to kind of keep a running list of what are things that people do to show, to express, to kind of strengthen their love for God. And then also, what do they do to express love for one another? Like how do they show love for others? And how do they experience love?
And all of that ultimately will point us forward, where we want to kind of end this group time, is really by brainstorming. Just this week really is an opportunity to have a lot of fun and just creatively brainstorm. How can we serve our community? When we look out at the needs in our community, when we see the people around us, when we're talking about loving God and loving others, what does that really look like?
And what are some opportunities where we could tangibly meet some needs and do something as a group, or individually? And just springboarding off of people's own connections, off your kind of unique interests and circles of influence, and then opportunities even through the church itself, to kind of meet in some needs in more structured ways. Yeah, and this coming weekend, May 15 and 16, is Outreach Weekend, which there's no better opportunity for a life group to talk about this idea of serving the community, come to church together this weekend, either Saturday or Sunday, and you're going to see outreach on display. You're going to hear beautiful stories, you're going to see the activity of what we're already doing in our community, and there will be very tangible invitations for you as a group to sign up and serve together.
In fact, I love when our life groups, not only do you sign up and serve together, but you guys have a prayerful, considerate conversation about adopting a ministry, and saying that's going to be our focus for the next six or 12 months, whatever it is, and say, this is what we're going to do together, and every month or every quarter, you pray for that group, you go serve with that group, you write support letters or raise finances for that group, whatever it is, but you say we're going to focus our love in that direction, intentionally. So come on out to Outreach Weekend, make sure that you guys are all there this weekend, so that you can really get a glimpse of what is the opportunity right in front of you. You don't have to make it up or have a whiteboard session of how do we serve the community, we've got it right here for you, and so come on out to Outreach Weekend. So with that in mind, Jeremy, just as we are thinking about this whole thing, are there any potential pitfalls or rabbit trails, things that might get us into trouble in our group discussion?
I would just remind group leaders that so often in our Christian lives, and it would be easy in this conversation for us to get stuck on just the love guide part, and even the personal preference part, that our culture being a very individualistic culture, and we say things like spirituality is personal, and it is, but it's not private, but it's easy to get bogged down in the personal preference, and we even have some kind of questions that help people recognize. Okay, we're all wired a little differently. What are the ways that we do engage with God and with others to express love? But we don't want to miss the point that these questions and exercises for our group, and that most specifically that Jesus' own invitation didn't stop with just loving God, that the Christian life is just a disciple when we deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow him, that that's going to mean both loving God in a right relationship with him, and that's going to be expressed in the way that we love others.
And Jesus in this text really puts them side by side. You could read it as the greatest command one, and the second one and two. It could also kind of be read as like the greatest command, and then others just like it's sort of like number one, and also number one, loving God is loving people. You can't separate these two things.
Don't really love God if you're not loving people. That's excellent, Jeremy. Yeah, and I'm thinking back to last week's discussion about storing up our treasures in heaven, and how we can easily get focused on the what, as opposed to the why. And a similar thing can happen here when a group is trying to figure out how on earth are we going to serve our community.
Some people may go, well, I want to do this, and others would say, well, what about that? And we get stuck going, well, that doesn't really resonate with me. Don't worry about that stuff. Like, let's just throw out a bunch of ideas, and guess what?
Just pick one because it's the why far more than it's the what. Let's just get into the rhythm of serving our community as a group, as opposed to getting locked up thinking, well, that doesn't really resonate with me, and I don't really want to do that. Now, let's set that stuff aside and say, no, we want to serve Jesus with the best of our ability, and believing that Jesus has something for us out there that we could never fully experience in here. And so get on out and go serve the community together, because that's what Jesus followers do, right?
That's what it means to follow after Him is to become more like Him. And so we ought to do the things that He did, be with the people that He was with. So Jeremy, any last thoughts before we close out for this week? I'm just excited to see what God does as He kind of turns people's eyes up towards opportunities all around them.
And I just have no doubt that God's going to show some people some new ways to meet needs and show new people the love of Christ, so that they too can experience the joy of a faith family, like Mariners. Yeah, there's really nothing like a group that serves together, because the natural drift, I think we talked about this a few weeks ago, the natural drift of every life group has to slowly become a support group. We slowly turn inward, and it's okay. Like I understand that because when we show up, we come with all of who we are, and we want to talk through our struggles and talk through our, you know, the reality of our circumstance, but a healthy life group and what we see from Acts chapter two and what Jesus did with his disciples is not simply inward facing alone.
We have to be missional in our efforts as well. We have to get out there and be active. It's what's going to help your group become move from really passive to active. It's going to move us from apathetic to people who are passionate and compassionate.
And so let's see what it looks like for our group to try this together, because I believe that it's going to break the ceiling of your group and what you think is possible in your life group. So I mean, I'm kind of excited about this journey if you can't tell. I do. With that, Life group, we're grateful for you.
And if you need any help, shoot us an email on this. We'd be happy to connect you with the right people within our outreach ministry to find great recurring serve opportunities for you and your group. All right, have a great week, everyone. We'll talk to you soon.
Bye.