Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This week the conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practice the spiritual rhythms and changes the world together. Hey, Life Group leaders, welcome back to our Life Group Leader podcast. My name is Dallas.
I get to be a young adult's pastor and I'm here with Linda. And I get to be the marriage pastor. Hey, here we are. Hey, I thought we did this a couple of weeks ago together.
I think we did. We're running back. That's great. There's so much happening in our church right now.
There is. There's a lot. I'm excited. It's all really, really good stuff.
It feels like it's all happening within a matter of a couple of weeks. I think it is. Because it is happening. There's always things happening.
So we wanted to take some time and yes, we, we have a Brown Church this weekend. Yes, you might be having group this week. Awesome. But we also want to prepare you for what's happening over the span of the next couple of weeks because there is so much and it's all really good.
So for example, this week, we're finishing our series, Stories Jesus Hold Series on the Parables. Yep. Last parable that Eric is going to talk about. Teach.
I have really enjoyed this series. I've thought differently about parables. I've never realized that the parables so much Jesus talked about the ending. Yes.
Talk about it. Like that it blew my mind. So not punch you in the face, but kind of calling you to take action. And he said, I really need that.
I said, that's great. That's great. Yeah. It's just been such a great series and I'm reading my Bible in a different way.
I always appreciate when I can go to church and I come back and I have my quiet time and my time with the Lord is different. So like just for you guys, as leaders lean in, like churches, all impactful. But this is Palm Sunday. Yes.
So Palm Sunday weekend. Palm Sunday weekend, which is there's kids wire. There's petting zoo, all kinds of things on Saturday night. Because if you're not coming on Saturday night, you're missing so many things.
Wow. Okay. Do another plug for Saturday night. Yeah.
I mean, I think if you have young families, if you happen to be in a married couples group and you have young kids or just, you know, any of the grand parenting weekend Saturday nights, the place. So right. And if you're a young adult, then they would love to have you serve on Saturday nights. You came to church on Thursday night.
Right. So come and serve on Saturday night. So I'm excited in for the parents. It's so easy to show up on Saturday and the food options are there and the food options that my kids enjoy.
Yes. I mean, it's just a one stop shop. Yeah. You go home, throw them in the bath really quick and then put them in bed and then you have Sunday.
Then you have Sunday all day. Yeah. Great plug for Saturday night, folks. Great plug.
But the week after normally what comes after Palm Sunday is holy week. Yes, sir. Yes. We're here this year.
We're going to do a Easter service on Thursday night and then we're going to do two good Friday services. Jesus is still alive. Five and seven. Yeah, you still alive.
Don't worry. He's still alive. He's not going back in the tomb. We're not rolling the stone over.
Jesus is still alive. And then we have services on Saturday, three on Saturday and a lot on Sunday. Oh, I can't even get 38 10 12 to lots of opportunities for you to get to church. But again, plug in the Saturday night.
Plug in Saturday night. Go for it. The Easter fest will be before the first service and after the last service, which is the third service, which is the third service. And Thursday night people, I just had this question on the patio.
The Thursday night service is identical to the weekend service. Yeah, it's still four young adults. It's still it's four young adults, but it's the same service on the weekend. So you don't need to come on Thursday and then also come on the weekend.
Unless you're providing a friend. Give both. Give both. Do both.
Come whenever they want to come. Yeah, I know on Thursday night, we have I didn't know that side card donuts has a trailer and they're going to be making fresh donuts right after service on Thursday. That is just a little plug for it. Is a very big reason to be here on Thursday night.
It's going to be great. It's going to be great. But it's also a great opportunity for you as a group to serve together. So when was the last time your group served?
I'm not talking like outreach serve, but inviting your group to serve because we're going to have tens of thousands of people showing up for Easter or Easter. Yeah. And we need all the volunteers. We do.
So we need you. It's a one time serve. We're not signing up. You're not like going to be on the schedule every week.
It's a one time serve. We have really specific roles and you get to make Mariners Church a place for people to belong. So I said to them just come in the first time and you show up on our campus. The first month I worked here, I parked in a different spot every time.
You get to be a place for this to belong. Yeah. I can really belong here. You can guide them.
You can help them. Like this could be the spark of their spiritual journey. Like we could see in June, the end of rooted baptisms because they showed up on Easter and they were served well and they felt comfortable here. So you could really play a role in someone's discipleship journey and just bringing joy.
You are leaders. You bring joy to our church. Right. And you could do that on Saturday night.
It's like, wow, I mean, this is the third month for Saturday night folks. I don't know if you're getting paid by somewhere into a Saturday night, but folks, it's here. But right after Easter, we're jumping into a brand new series. I'm really excited.
We're going to look at the book of Genesis. Oh, fun. We have a magazine for your groups to walk through. I love those magazines.
It's so good. So easy. Oh, they're great. You walk with it every week.
So encouraging your group, hey, get the magazine because then you have all the small group questions. We can have that. Sermonauts. Yeah.
Everything is in there and it's a book of Genesis. How cool was that? It's great. And there's so many great articles.
I love all the volunteer contributors. Yeah. Yeah. And all the pictures and all the drawings and seeing all the talent of our volunteers is so remarkable.
Yeah. And I got to listen to a couple of the message, I read through a couple of the messages for Genesis and it's it's so good. I don't know how we're getting a whole book in, but they're doing a great job of like the overarching massive story of Genesis each and every week and by such chunks. I don't know how we do it, but we're going to do it a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. And there's generations. A lot.
Generations and we're getting it in. But also right after Easter is rooted. Yeah. It is so rooted.
So just for you as leaders, like this is one way you can serve as our team is just praying for a team. There's a rooted is a big, big lift. People are registering. We're recruiting leaders right now.
So just praying for a team praying for our facilitators, praying for our staff team. This is, I would, I'm asking you for your prayers. Um, God does some really incredible work through rooted and we're going to say live changed. I point back to the end of June where that's our celebration and people are going to profess faith in Jesus, receive salvation, his grace and his forgiveness, which is tying it back into this week's message for the very first time, um, throughout rooted.
So if you guys could pray for us, pray for our facilitators, pray for the people who are signing out God's office, their hearts to say yes. Um, and then a couple more thing, another, another thing for you guys deep dive is happening April 30th. You can come with your group on campus. So it's Wednesday nights, you can be here as a group, deep dive image of God.
And that could be a really great opportunity for your group to maybe change up your pace, change up your curriculum. There's some great things happening on Wednesday nights with youth already being here. So if you are with a group with kids in junior high and high school, like your kids are already here. Why not come here as a group and study together?
Yeah. I grabbed some food, hang out in the cafe right before and then head over to deep dive. And then the final thing I have for you is our life group leader huddle. We're inviting all life group leaders.
I love those all life group leaders. April 27th, right after the 11th 30 service. We're going to feed you. It's so, it's so fun to talk to brand new leaders, maybe a brand new leader, right at a rooted, rooted, just ended and it starts again.
I know, but maybe you're a new leader and it's so fun for me to say you are a part of something bigger, bigger than yourself, that there are over 500 groups at our church. So getting all of us as leaders together and planning out the next session, praying into the next season as a church. It's so good. So many great resources and just rubbing shoulders with other leaders has such a huge impact.
And how many places can you go where you get to meet people who do the same thing as you're right, but lead a small group? Yeah. You might be one of the few people in your group or in your, in your work place that leads a group. Like I have the benefit of, I'm pretty confident most of my co-workers go to church.
Yes. That was a joke. All my co-workers go to church. I work here.
Every one of them. Yes. So we want to get that, we want to give that opportunity for you. But those are, those are all the announcements.
That's so much good stuff. That's like only two or three weeks. Like those are just the next two or three weeks. And we haven't even dove in.
Yeah. We've got discussion questions, discussion questions, the final, the final week story about fairness and grace. As I was looking through the questions, I thought, I thought the first question, like, I had a better one. I'm not saying that I'm better than the other people wrote it.
No, I think you had that one too. Talking about fairness and grace. Like when's the time you received grace that you shouldn't have, when you should never see grace or what's something that's unfair. Immediately, I thought of the Dodgers.
I really think it's unfair that their team just keeps getting better and better. This is from a broken and hurting New York Mets fan, but their team just gets better and better every single year. And I think it's so unfair. But at the same time, every team has the ability to do it.
And I'm not going to talk if you're a baseball fan because the Mets have a lot of money. So that was, well, the angels. So I was talking about, wow. So, but what was it?
Maybe the other thing about it. Yeah. My mom's Mustang tell the street and all of a sudden I saw the lights behind me, the cop lights. So I know this is hard for you to believe, but my first thought was I can out run this cop in my car.
I'm saying. Yeah. So I tried. Oh, you really tried.
I really tried. And my friend lived in the neighborhood and I pulled into her driveway and ran inside her front door and shut the door and he found me, but he didn't give me a ticket. You literally ran. I ran.
You were on the episode of cops. Yeah. I. I.
Yeah. Yeah. I floored it in my mom's Mustang and tried to get away from the cop because I was not going to get busted for speeding in my mom's car, but he let me go. I don't know why.
I don't know why, but he did only because of grace. It's not fair. That's because of grace. Yes.
So that could be a really fun question for you guys to look at together and then you're looking at the passage today. Read that passage. Matthew 21 through 16. Read the whole thing.
How could you summarize the story and just a sentence or two? It's a conflict. Things are unfair. Some people, everybody agreed upon a certain payment for the day.
Some people started the beginning. Some people came in the middle. Some people came in late, but everybody got the same payment. So that's the, I mean, if I could simplify it that much and then looking at, looking at what Jesus says in verse 16.
So you're just looking down, just interact with the passage. There's something about reading God's word and then you get to look out into our culture. I think this is a really great question. Why is our culture so concerned about fairness?
Everybody wants it to all be fair for everybody. Right. But I think even Eric says something in his message about we don't want God to be fair. No, no, we don't want him to be fair.
No. Yeah. But we want, we want everybody on this earth and this world to be fair. But the reality is we don't want God to be fair.
So it could be fun to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about it. Why do we feel that way? Yeah.
And what ways is God unfair to us? And it's really beautiful because we don't get what we deserve, not because, oh, God gave this person this and not me. That's not, that's not where the message is not where it's going. It's God so unfair because I am not getting what I deserve.
Right. Right. It's called mercy. Yeah.
And you're going to see that different. I don't get what I deserve. Yeah. Right.
And I think even Eric had a thing like fair, we get what we deserve mercy. We don't get what we deserve in grace. We get what we do not deserve. Right.
Right. Yeah. And then you're going to look in when are most tempted to forget about the wonderful and unfair grace and mercy of God. All the time.
When I most have it, when I see something that I think is unfair in this world, right? Is when I forget about how unfair God is. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. And sometimes I think, for me, it has to do with material things or people's jobs or situations or, you know, this, depending on what season you're in, right? Mm-hmm. And sometimes I think I was a, I was reading through Genesis, I'm going to teach on a Thursday night in Genesis.
So I was reading about the story of Isaac and Isaac had favor. So a guy gave him extra favor and like it's not favoritism, but with extra favor comes extra responsibility Sure, so with that favor and well We think that may be unfair like there really is another level of responsibility that you may not even understand right or see in other people Right and and there's a whole nother level of obedience with that yeah So that was just as I was digging in that was a really good reminder for me Mm-hmm because it's so easy to compare our lives to other people's sure lives It's yeah, I compare my behind the scenes to someone else's highlight reel Uh-huh like the other things that I'm walking through what was me but then I'm seeing someone post on Instagram And that is literally their highlight reel right best plays right and we can so quickly compare our behind the scenes to their highlight We all right yeah, and we do it all the time. Well, that's not fair So the last question is how can the unfair grace of God encourage us as we try to follow Jesus and the routine is of everyday life? I think that's just about we don't dissect anything we just follow Jesus right we just stay obedient to what God has called us to do and We cannot we put on blinders and just not think about what everybody else is doing stay in our lane and focus on him I do think even in your prayer time to a continual confession sure making profession We come up a lot to you.
Yes is it's so hard if I'm if I'm constantly confessing It's so hard for me to look at someone be like look at how I'm fair that is because I'm in constant confession look how I've messed up right? I'm not I don't deserve that. I'm not entitled to that because I'm constantly confessing to God right I don't even deserve what I already have yeah, right and he is gracious and just to forgive me Yeah, not just so true pinches such a big part that should be a part of everybody's day as they start I don't and that could be a great opportunity for you as a leader to lean into that in this in this discussion But a lot of great things happening. Yep.
Yep. We're thankful for you. We hope to see you at Easter With Friday good Friday all of it life people eat our huddle life people eat our huddle. We can't wait to see you And then what Saturday night Saturday night.
Oh, Mother's Day. Sorry. I thought this is another plug for Saturday night Oh, it's just like right when you get down with Easter. It's gonna be Mother's Day.
Yeah. Yeah, but yes Mother's Day Mother's Day is right there jump leaders We are we're so extremely grateful and thankful for you. Would you allow us to thank you and love you guys showing up to leader huddle? And that way it's a great way for us to yeah, you know We don't want to be there by ourselves.
Please come so thank you for all you do happy Easter and we can't wait too soon