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 Life Group Leaders Week 5. So I'm with all the wisdom for your love lives.
We're here at week 5 and I'm here with them appropriately. So our marriage pastor Linda Vino, are you doing it? I am here. I'm great.
I'm going to be here. I love that you're doing this week's topic. They're a really great series, right? Just looking at every stage of relationships.
So insightful. So insightful. So last week we had the intimacy and this week is conflict, which is a big part of the every relationship. And conflict resolution is huge in a marriage.
That's right. In your roles in marriage pastor, right? This is a written button. This is what you get to do to be with marriages in our community and beyond to equip them at every stage.
And so I'm glad that you're here in this conversation with us. How have you been enjoying the series? What have you been hearing from couples that you're with? I've heard nothing but great things.
People are so grateful for the series. And I think that no matter where you are in your stage of marriage or your relationship, it's such great information. It's good reminders. And it's just good information whether your marriage is thriving or struggling or you're in a relationship or not in a relationship.
It's just really, really valuable information. Yeah. And I love that. Practical.
I love that the Bible talks about it and anticipates conflict is a real thing, right? In every part of our life, if there's not this sort of a hallmark-y, unrealistic, unattainable view of relationships that's always just met with perfection, the Bible talks about that in every area of why. I thought we should be surprised. We'll be face-conquing, we'll be face-conquing.
Every series we do for marriages or pre-marriage has a section on conflict. One of the most important things in a marriage is learning how to manage conflict. How do you manage conflict? Yeah, so conflict is normal.
It's normal. There are certainly healthy and unhealthy ways. Right. Which we can deal with it before we do it.
We'll talk about that through some of the questions. But this week in your life groups, I mean you helped coach a lot of our married life groups. I do. Yeah, I mean I would help for many of them, but this wouldn't be like a out-of-step conversation in the group.
They're already bringing some things into their discussion. But what would you give just advice to life group leaders that are leading married to life groups? Where groups might be at different levels of comfortability, things they share and things they don't share? How would you coach our married life group leaders think about navigating a conversation with the last group, life group leaders first and foremost are not going to have all the answers and we don't expect them to have a perfect marriage.
That everybody is working through and if there is a couple that is struggling to do the work of sidelighting that conversation and making sure they reach out to us and get the help that they need if there is something happening. And I would even recommend profisting that before the conversation that the leaders are not experts on marriage. They're not coming in with a perfect marriage or understanding how to navigate every conversation or question. Let us do that.
We have people and resources that can help through that. Yeah, that's really good. And the fact that you're in a life group, that is incredible. Yeah, it's already such a win to be an encouragement with others.
That's a huge part of the passage. Do you see that interaction through others in the middle of some comfort but then within the passage? You do something to think about it. Probably the more visible things because it's an incredible vibrant event, marriage matters and you're not for an obvious place.
But it's certainly not the only part of what happens in marriage. We should talk a little bit about the resources for those that might be in conflict. Like where do we go? We need a crisis.
Right. We do have a team of people who can work with people who are in urgent situations with their marriages and then we have resources to either get them connected to relationship lifeline or with a marriage coach who can talk them through some of the issues. We also have recommendations for therapy or counselors that we have vetted and then always doing the hard work of strengthening your marriage and whether that means doing one of our courses we have how we love coming up at the end of March. Yeah, great.
There's a great resource. And oftentimes we notice that it's just little tweaks within your marriage that can make a huge difference. But a lot of times couples wait six years in a broken marriage before they ask for help. So I think anytime a life group leader can know that and preface that and allow couples to know what we offer here at Marriage Church is great.
And of course, you know, marriage matters may may hit the top of the surface, but it is just like the weekend message. It's great practical tools that you can implement into your marriage right away. That's great. Awesome.
Love it. Also, we jump in. Absolutely. We got a link in a questionnaire.
Do you tend to avoid conflict or take it head on? Avoid. Do you really? Yes.
I'm surprised by that. I thought maybe you were going to answer the other. Well, I have grown and matured. You've brought so much conflict to me.
I have. I do. Yes. But no, I'm a hedgehog and not a rhino for sure.
So using marriage course language. There you are. Yep. I am.
I'm going to turn this up similar to this to the countable charging out of storage, charging away from the storm. Yeah. The rhino would be the charge towards conflict. Yeah.
I'm going to hedgehog. I'm going to curl it up in the corner. It might be a little bit prickly, but I'm going to put it in the middle. Right.
So you're going to hedgehog. Yes, I'm going to hedgehog. Yeah. I think it does it.
It's circumstantial and it's seasonal. Sure. But yeah, I tend to be more of that. Let's just take this thing out.
Right. Let's take this out. And there's a health and an unhealthy side to both both sides of those. Great.
There's timing, discernment and everything else. I don't know. You have to talk about it. So the matter by which you bring things up to security for sure.
Right. But yeah, I tend to be the one that I push for that more in my relationship. So all right. Great.
So you're in the corner. I'm charging for it. But I'll get out of the corner and face it because I believe in a healthy relationship. Yeah.
Regardless. What draws you out for somebody who's like, oh man, I'm going to actually avoid conflict. I know for me, like sometimes I'm drawing somebody out. I can actually push somebody way more.
Right. What would you say for somebody's in a relationship? And they're like, maybe I'm the rhino. He or she's a hedgehog.
Give me some. What would I do to draw? Well, again, this is from our courses and things. So it's not putting blame on somebody but it's talking about the issue at hand.
And saying calm, I think timing is super, super important. Yeah. And voicing your expectations, I don't want to talk about this right now. I've got a lot going on.
But I would love to talk about this later tonight. Right. Let's get yellow, that. Yeah.
And the accusation in making it about the person but actually looking at what the issue is, something that you want to focus on the issue and not you did this, you did that. Yeah. If you're wondering like this language, the marriage was awesome. Right.
So we had a pre-marriage course which is five weeks. The marriage course was seven weeks we did both a couple of times a year. get ready to the pre-marriage scores up one day version of that April 27th. April 27th.
You've got young couples or young. Any couple of years. Any couple. That's fixed to be married.
The one day pre-marriage scores is on a Saturday. Yep. We're ready for awesome. All right.
We're not going to read the entirety of the passage today because it is quite long. We've got Kenton Bishore, our pastor-marist teaching at Irvine. We've got live teacher teaching across all of our other congregations. But the question is, what do you learn about relational conflict from the passage?
What do you learn from the passage? There's lots of things that you can see here. I think first off that there's an acknowledgement of relational conflict that is there. I think also there's a conversation about when expectations are met.
Yes. So chapter five or six. I opened to my love and turned away and gone away. My heart's saying because he had left.
And so there's this sense of a desire and a pursuit that's unmet. And we do bring a lot of our expectations into marriage. Sometimes those are unspoken. And when those unspoken expectations are not met, there can be reset met.
There can be, I think, a really helpful line of the story I'm telling myself right now. Like how I'm seeing this interpreting this. It may not be true, but this is the story that I'm tempted to believe about this because this was not met or this expectation was not met. So I think in the passage is really tackles it head on.
Well, also that he he lead from conflict. Right. And that's devastating in a relationship. That's right.
Avoiding. Avoiding the conversation. Yeah. Yeah.
I think also throughout you're going to see some man in the women going back and forth. And then there is this interjection of the young woman in verse nine. Yeah. I think there's something in that where within wisdom, within wisdom, there's encouragement that comes from others.
Not obviously you've got to be wise and you're not bringing everybody in into one of your marital conflict because that would be really unwise and unhealthy to have voices from the outside there speaking in speaking into that. But I think there is a sense that we talk about life with life groups that there's no you low you trust in. They got your back. And it's not like a triangulation of you're running and just telling problems.
And you know, but there's like a sense that we're in it together even with others when it's appropriate. I think there's something in there. I agree. It's also not talking about your spouse while they're sitting next to you in life room.
Right. Right. Yeah. You might be a little bit of a verbal processor that is not the time to do it.
Yeah. And just again, making that clear that they're talking about the issue of conflict and the passage as opposed to what is currently taking place in their marriage. Yeah. That's right.
Yeah. And there's something in the interplay back and forth of the young woman reminding the woman about actually the beauty of the other that's not just running towards putting something on blast, being an echo chamber. But there's a reminding of the good quality. There's a reminding of what goodness is there.
So all that's in the passage. So there's conflicts. There's an avoidance. There's a pursuit.
There's encouragement from others. But I think the principal thing is we can learn that it is real. We already know about the Bible. Right.
Right. And it's healthy. Yeah. Yeah.
It's great. Look at questions here. What does it look like when conflict and relationship is handled well? What does it look like when it's not where have you seen it?
And just a word of caution here. This is the look out question. So what do we mean by look out? It's not quite yet the time where we're looking at your own personal stories.
But you're looking at principles that you've seen in other relationships, things that you've encouraged by with others, maybe things that have been a cautionary tale from others. And it's not like this is a gossip about this isn't it. We're just trying to see how this looks out when it's done in a healthy way, when it's an unhealthy way for others. I don't think there's any problem with talking about people's family of origin, like how was conflict handled in your family?
That's a great one. Right. Yeah. Or how have you seen it in your family members?
Yeah. Things like that. Because typically we don't know everybody's family members. Yeah.
So that's a good one. Or just how has conflict been handled in your workplace or things that you've seen. And it doesn't have to be a marital conflict. It could just be any relational conflict.
That's really good. You should have wrote this question. That's a great thing. I think there's something to talk about, just talk about how your family view and handle conflict.
Right. How you were raised, how your family handled conflict. Yeah. Just get to talk about it.
Just get to talk about it. Right. Yeah. That's really good.
Great. Look at how they're been reoccurring themes in your relational conflicts. What have you learned? How have you grown?
Second question. Are there current relational struggles that you know or that you need to engage? Well, we'd like to do so in a healthy way and trust God in that area again. Stay positive.
Yeah. Yeah. There's got to be discernment and wisdom within the group. This isn't attack mode.
This isn't voicing things that you likely have already already voiced. But again, going on the level of vulnerability that's already set within the group, which we hope is high and accountability of the trust, you can lead people through that discussion. And as you already know, I have to put it as we said that the model for it. Nobody's going to go there unless we go there, no other first.
So you want to invite people into that. And you might even want to preface it with, hey, this is it. You know, putting somebody on blast for things you haven't talked about. We've all got things.
And actually, we don't want to bring things up just to shame. Not to shame, but we want to learn from it. Yeah. And there's a lot of single people out there who are in life groups and single leaders.
So it's good to talk about it. If people are willing to talk about it, I would just start with the hedgehog versus rhino. And those are very self-explanatory or the, what was it, the bull versus the cow. Yeah.
Are you, no, I said, what did I say, bull? I was hoping to. Sure. It's a bit too rough.
Ready from the storm. I was just bringing that into it. But I think if you're not in a married life group, I think it might be easier for you to be vulnerable and share with things about how you handle conflict individually. Right.
Yeah. It's good. A couple of verses to close before that. I mean, really what we're saying here was being taught through the message.
Build love through conflict versus for taking love because of conflict. Every conflict is an opportunity to build your relationship and make it stronger rather than avoiding it and running away when surprise, surprise, your relationship isn't perfect. And so we exit it and go to the next one and that thing repeats itself and the next one, so build love through conflict. So how can we do that?
Well, the scripture has a lot to say about it. You know, James 119, be quick to listen slow to speak, slowly get angry. It's practical and it's biblical, right? Ownership.
Yeah. I think when you can own your part of the conflict, even if it's two guys or two girls, when you can have self awareness and own your part of the conflict, I think that's great. Yeah. Even in your friendships.
Yes. Yes. Yes. There are going to be conflicts and friendships and in family and siblings and all of that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the Romans, five one, great, great verse, right?
Since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of the Christ our Lord has done for us. This recognition that we've been forgiven so much, that we were at conflict, that we were enemies and God didn't forsake, didn't run, but pursued us with His love and His grace. That's what we can do that. Yeah.
That's right. Awesome. Well, thanks for telling me anything else you want to say to all of our great life leaders. We've got so many of them, so many married life leaders, so they're coming out right now out of this transition of rooted, which is great.
We love having all our new leaders here. We got you. You know, I just really want to encourage you to reach out to your coaches. Yeah.
Reach out to the other members of your group to make sure that everyone has a part in leading through this discussion, always preface that, you know, your life group leader, but your life isn't perfect also. You said leading through vulnerability, but that we have resources. If you're in a married life group, we do have resources available for people and just letting them know that. Yeah.
That's great. And then of course, Easter just right around the corner. We didn't see that at the beginning. It is right here.
Yes. It's just going to be incredible celebrating that together with all of you. And life requires me to love. We would still love to have you not just to celebrate with us, but serve with us.
And so you'll have already received information about how you can serve during one of the services. Yeah. Do your life group leader, you know, for you to jump in, it's going to be beautiful. And then that's a great resource.
And I don't know how many go to spam or that that life group leader that come, you know, please, please, please read. It's very short. There are so many resources when you scroll down of ways that your life group could serve, just the resources for the series. So that's a valuable tool.
We only need to email you once a week and make sure you pop that up in a ticket. We're excited to jump into this discussion this week in our group and in the week after that we're heading down to Camp Hamilton. We're doing that. Oh, the server down the air.
So so many serve options for you to serve our community. Also the server, well, not the server, the church, particularly during these services. All right, guys. Thanks for your time.
We'll catch you on your next week.