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. Eric, thank you again for joining us on the Life Group leader podcast, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
Ah, we were recording this before Thanksgiving, but it's wonderful to celebrate. It feels Christmas, man, it's a little chilly out today. That's true. It's Christmas lights already up.
They've been up since Labor Day. Does it feel like Christmas gets earlier every year, or do I just say that every year? So I feel like it's earlier, but then also as I say it, I feel like I'm becoming the old crumb on your right, is it really, or am I just becoming more and more aggravated with things in my life that I feel like I have to point it out? Yeah, I mean, there were Christmas lights where I went trick or treating with my kids on Halloween.
Yeah, see, that's, I mean, to me, that's so much earlier than the whole before Thanksgiving or whatever. It's October. Two months before. Yes, it's crazy.
Well, Merry Christmas. We are excited Life Group leaders to be kicking off a new series called The Beauty of Christmas. This is going to be a five week series that takes us right from Thanksgiving, the week and after Thanksgiving, all the way to Christmas even. So Eric, why don't you give us just an overview of the series and what's kind of the primary purpose with that?
What we're going to be doing with this one. Awesome. Before I hit that, I want to say welcome to all the new Life Group leaders. Yeah, great, great.
So Jack, we have like 15 new Life Group leaders? Yeah, well, we have 52 at Irvine and a good number at a bunch of a pie, 60, 65 new Life Group. So if you're one of the 60 to 65 new Life Group leaders, I'm so proud of you for being super responsible. You're already listening to a podcast.
Congrat, you're a new Life Group leader and you're already listening to a podcast on how to be a better Life Group leader. I mean, that's, you were just taking it so seriously. I'm really grateful for you and so excited that you were a shepherding group of people. Okay, so Christmas, it's an amazing time of year because the culture recognizes what we know.
So they may not know what they're recognizing, but the culture as a whole, the broader culture, is recognizing there's something special about the season, something sacred. We should slow down, we should pause, we should be in awe and wonder. And all of that is true. Sometimes people find lesser things to be in awe and wonder over rather than the real meaning of Christmas.
But still, I want to be glad that there's people in our culture that are saying, hey, this is an important time. I want to be filled with awe. You'll be at a restaurant and you'll hear songs about Jesus. Oh, holy night, we'll be playing at a bar.
Like this is a time where the message of Jesus enters into our world in surprising ways. Some people miss him just like people 2000 years ago missed him when he entered our world. But we do see rhythms of the story of the gospel in our culture right now. So because of that, it's such a great time for us to go back and look at the beauty of the incarnation of God entering our world.
So we talk about incarnation, that's God became flesh, God took on human skin. That's what incarnation means. Or you'll hear people talk about Christmas as the Advent season, which is the season of waiting. We were waiting for Jesus to arrive.
And so he arrived and we get to celebrate his arrival. So in the scripture, you know this, there's 66 different books. You see different vantage points of the miracle of Christmas. And this is a miracle.
God entering our world through the womb of a teenage virgin. And this is a miracle and it changes everything for us. So you see the prophecy in Isaiah announcing Jesus. And then there's four gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
So what we're gonna do in our Christmas series is look at the Christmas story through each of the five vantage points or views. Now it won't feel like it's the same sermon because even though it's the same account, because it's one account, it's an actual event that happened, each gospel writer has a slant. And you can kind of view it this way. There's an awesome play that happened in your favorite sporting event or for your favorite team.
You watch that play over and over again from multiple angles. So I love the 2011 Shot by Ray Allen that took the Miami Heat into overtime and in of being the Spurs. I've watched that play from up high, from the bench, from center chord, from the nosebleeds. I've watched it from all these angles.
And you see it's the same play. The truth of that play doesn't change, but you see different beauty in the play from all the different angles. So with Matthew, you see that Jesus is the promised one. With Luke, you see, wow, he's the one we are filled with all and wonder over.
With John, you see God became flesh and dwelt among us. He's the light into our darkness. With Mark, you see he's the new king. So every one of these gospel writers is riding with a different angle.
You get a better picture of the story when you see it from all different angles. If you'd like someone standing in front of an awesome work of art and wanting to watch it or look at it from different places, or stand in front of a sunset, and it looks different when you're down by the water, it looks different if you're in the mountains, you're seeing the same sunset, but each perspective adds color to it. So we're gonna look at the Christmas story from all the different angles that the scripture gives. We're not making up angles.
These are angles in the scripture, and it helps us appreciate and have our hearts filled with all four Christmas. It's beautiful. So a couple of months ago, you and I had a chance to go to Israel. Yes.
I'm so curious how having now been there. Then to the place where this story happened. How's that gonna inform your teaching? For sure on the Christmas, the 23rd and 24th, you have a bunch of services those days.
I have an illustration in there from Israel. When you're in Israel, it's beautiful, and you also realize that a bunch of people are missing Jesus now. They just see a bunch of tour buses, and to them it's like Christian tourists showing up. To them it might as well be Orlando or Anaheim.
It's like Disney World or Disneyland. And for us, it's the message that changed our whole lives. So you're there and Israel, I'm there, and you're seeing people miss Jesus, and then you realize 2000 years ago, people missed him too. And the reality of people missing him didn't change the reality that this is true.
And people missing him now doesn't change that this is still true and beautiful. Yeah, it's gonna be, it's such an important story, of course. It's this major, I mean, it's Jesus coming to earth, right? It's a beautiful story.
It's also in the calendar year, it's one of the weekends where we see a lot of guests. We see a ton of people show up for the first time. On the 23rd and 24th. Yeah, specifically correct.
Christmas Eve services for sure. And this series is designed that we're gonna see all of these unique vantage advantages. Yeah, there's all weeks you could be a great week to invite friends really. Exactly.
So there's something about the 23rd and 24th, where people are gonna come. The invite is easier to come to Christmas. It's so easy. I mean, it's not even fair how easy it is.
You don't even have to be a super strong Christian to invite someone to church at Christmas. I mean, they actually, or they might be confused why you don't invite them. Why do they go to church? And why do they ever invite me?
This is Christmas. I'd actually be interested in going to church. You know, my former life at LifeWay, Christian resources, we had a research arm. And one year it was a study released, like 80% of people would go to church with you at Christmas if you invited them.
That's crazy. That's a ton of people who were just waiting for us to invite them. Yeah. So there's a 3.2 million people in order to get 80% of them.
Yeah, I mean, what's the math on that? It's a lot of people. It's a lot. It's a lot.
It's a great anymore church. Yeah. But the beautiful thing is, I was actually talking with a woman in our church last Sunday, not it's two Sundays ago. And she grabbed me by the shoulders.
And she said, I just want you to know that on Christmas Eve, my kids are gonna come to church. Oh, come on. This is the service that they have said they will come to. So you get the picture that she's a mom who so badly wants her kids to come to church.
They were kids. She's praying for them. And this is the one they're gonna come. That's beautiful.
Those are the amazing people within our church. And then there are those great stories of people that are in our social clubs, their in our workplaces, their in our neighborhoods that are like, I totally would go to Christmas because that's just what we do. Yeah. Because it would be a non-strange thing for me to go to church at Christmas.
Yeah, that's right. And then when they get there, we have this amazing opportunity to show them the beauty of Jesus, what the church feels like to be the gathering place of believers. And then we're going to show them that next year we have some amazing things planned that are gonna open up some great conversations for people. It's exciting, man.
It's a great time. Would you pray for our leaders for this season? All that? Totally.
God, thanks for these Life Group leaders. I pray that you'd give them rest over the Christmas season, all in wonder for the goodness of you and how good you've been to them. I pray that as they shepherd their group, that you would give them your energy, your wisdom. I pray for their group, whatever the plans are over Christmas, whether they're doing a serve project together, having dinner together, that your presence would be experienced by the group together, that they would enjoy each other and enjoy you.
And thanks for Christmas. Thank you, Jesus, that this is true. In your name, I pray. Amen.