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. Hello, Life Group leaders. Welcome back to the Life Group Leader podcast.
My name is Dallas. I get to host alongside my friend and group's pastor, Ken Hamilton. Welcome to the church. Hey everybody.
Thanks, Dallas. Good to be with you. We are looking at week four of this series that we're in, What Would Jesus Say? And this week we are talking about, What Would Jesus Say to the prostitute?
We're looking at Luke 36 through 50. I think this is gonna be a little bit of a PG-13 message. It's a PG-13 message, but it's still great. It's still the words of Jesus.
And we still need to dive in as a group together. And if any group is feeling that, oh man, this might be a little bit uncomfortable. I don't know how to go about that. That's why the lean in question, they're so, so important.
So we can jump into the lean in questions, get everybody talking and it kind of breaks the ice. So, Kim, I'm gonna ask you this lean in question. One's a time that you got more than you paid for. If you ever received something extra, like, yeah, I thought I was just getting this, but I got more.
One was a time you got that. Oh yeah, that's easy. The last time that we ordered food to pick up. Okay, from where?
Where do you order them? Where was it from? I think it was from Olive Garden maybe. And we got our order, but we fully got somebody else's order as well.
So we got dessert, we got like pasta, like our fridge was filled for a couple days. We had so much food. And I'm the rule follower. So I said, we can't eat this, you guys.
We have to call and take it back. So I did call in there. They're like, wait, people don't call for this kind of thing, but they said, just enjoy, you know, you got extra food on us. So yeah, it was amazing.
We were so excited to try all the food we got. That is fun. What a gift, right? Free food tastes better.
It does taste better. Yeah, how about you? My mind immediately went to food as well. Like Chick-fil-A when I ordered an eight count, but they throw a nine count in there.
That's the best. It's as if the person put them in there, just was looking at me and kind of like, I got you. I got you. We'll never know that person, but they got me.
They probably smiled when they gave you the sack, not even knowing. No, you didn't know. And the image that I had to, it's so great. It's so great.
That's awesome. But all throughout this message, the group's opening, opening up, and now you're in the scripture. And kind of all throughout, Pastor has this theme of two different people, compare and contrast, compare and contrast, compare and contrast. It's Simon and the woman, Simon and the woman, all throughout.
So really look at the differences. What do you observe about the posture of the woman? What do you observe about the posture of Simon? Are they different?
Jesus's response to both of them. This is a great place to, I guess people are observing, giving one word answer. I could tell me a little bit more. What does that say to you?
I mean, to you, really trying to pull things out of your group. This might be a really good week to practice that, to spend a little bit extra time to pull some things out. Any thoughts on that, Kim? You don't have to, but any thoughts on that idea?
I just love that idea. It's been pulling things out, because some people just sit back quietly, but they do have things to say. And when they're finally asked, the richness of what they add kind of blows the whole group away, and you never know, but just pulling things out of people. Because this, even if it was some other person, it wasn't a prostitute.
Maybe it was some other type of sin, but it's the posture of the person. So it's so easily applicable to so many of us. She knew she didn't fit in. She came with that posture, though, to Neil at his feet.
And there's just so much to pull out of this, that it would be really rich to try to get something out of everybody. Mm-hmm. Yeah. This is a great chance to call on somebody.
I'm thinking about re-read as I'm facilitating right now. I have, there's like 20 guys in my group. So I'm having to call on the quiet guy, Hey, Kyle, in the corner, would love to invite you to the conversation. What are you observing?
I think it's a really great week to do that. And then we kind of look out, we're looking out into our world. And how are the assignments in our world today? They miss Jesus.
How are we missing Jesus? What makes people feel like they're on the outside of receiving that grace, kind of like Simon is the outside looking in. So we want people to look out in their world and to try to identify that. Not necessarily like, Oh, hey, there's my coworker.
We're not trying to get to that point. Really helping them see the world. And then we turn it on ourselves. Let's look at our own life.
What has Jesus paid for us? What debt has he already paid that you still can't let go of? And I really think this could be a powerful conversation. Maybe a, I think there's some things that people just hold on to, even though it's already been paid for.
You're still holding on to the debt, even though someone's paid for it all. Like what are some ways that we could help shepherd our people in those conversations as maybe there's some emotions happening in our groups? Yeah, that's such a good question, right? Because it's much easier to talk about what's going on outside of us.
The last question is where the life change comes from. So leaning into that and not being afraid to sit in the silence for a minute, which we must have think before, or even if they have emotion and they want to talk through it, just being relaxed and letting that happen so that sometimes the words themselves bring people freedom, being able to voice it for the first time and talk through that encouraging them to maybe be praying over them at that very time. You know, as you share those kind of life changing aha moments that can come from a topic like this. Yeah, and even that idea of sitting in the silence, what you think is silent and you feel like you got to act, you're probably the first one in the room thinking that as we are, so then let it go a little bit more.
Like, world is the first one. So notice that to be hyper-focused on that. First imagine the people on the other side are just trying to gather their thoughts. So a little bit of silence is actually really, really great for the whole group.
Just lean into that a little bit. A little story when my husband and I started dating, I often just pause to think for a second before I talk, and he's the opposite. He just likes to talk and process. And he finally asks, he's like, why do you just sit in silence for a while?
And I said, I don't know, that's just me. I want to think about it for a second. And giving people that gift of time is so honoring and kind. When people just want to think, or if they're really pondering, should I share this?
This is risky. Should I step into the space and being willing to sit there with them? It's just beautiful. Yeah, don't be afraid of the silence and to race the silence.
Yeah, it's okay. So we hope this is a really great conversation for you. I do want to transition to a whole nother thing that's coming up. And that is our leader huddle.
It's happening on May 20th. We have the leader huddle where we're inviting all of you as life group leaders to show up because we love when all of our leaders, all of our life group leaders at Mariners Church come together. We absolutely love that. There's something special that happens in the room.
So May 20th, it's a Monday night. Make sure you were there. But Kim, I would love for you to give us like a little sneak peek. What is going to happen on that night?
Why should leaders show up? Why is it going to be so great? Why don't you need to mark it on my calendar right now? But number one, I'd say just being in a room with people that are unified to do exactly the same thing that you're doing every week, because we do it with our own groups.
And sometimes it feels like it's just us. It can be a little island because that's the only people we ever see is our own life group. And when we're all together, we get to share ideas. We get to celebrate things that work.
We get to talk about challenges we've had this past year. And it is so enriching to be able to have that time together. We will start with dinner because we want you to know we appreciate you and we want to spend time just eating and getting to know one another. Your coaches will be there.
We'll get to have some training. We're going to have some great spiritual development, talking through a passage of scripture together and applying that to what we're doing, which is so important, relying back on the Lord and always bringing it back to the Lord of God. Training will be how to gather people in your group, unify people in your group, bring them together, even if there might be someone that needs a little extra grace required in your group. Sometimes we have challenging people.
How do we bring them together to unify our group so that it's not, there's not clicks in it or there's not disagreements going on all the time? What's the thing that unifies us? It's the fact that we're here to become more like Christ. And to love each other more.
So that will be the training part. And then you get to plan the next 90 days with your coach around the dinner table. And we hope there's a lot of laughter and fun and just the joy being together. It's really going to be so great.
I hope you'll come. Yeah, these are, we've done a couple of these and we do a couple of year. So we did last year, this year, which is the first one of the year. And there is just something special that happens when all of our leaders are there.
So you're not going to want to miss it. And even for you as a life group leader, how many places do you walk into where you can say, oh yeah, you lead a life group. Like you do walk into your like office saying that. So we might give you a chance to rub shoulders with other people who lead a life group.
And you could be like, I'm dealing with that too. Or hey, I dealt with that six months ago. And here's what we did. So not only is it for you to take in and learn, but we hope with your voice in the room that you can give back to other leaders.
There's going to be an experience leaders that you might be able to help them. And you all have a voice. So when you are in there, your voice is super great for us to rely on them and you're not there. We are missing a piece of our family.
So I really hope that you sign up. I really hope that you were there. We'll take care of you. You're going to have fun.
May 20th, it's a Monday night. Hope to see you there for our leader hub. So great. Registration's open.
You can sign up to come and we look forward to seeing you guys. Awesome. Well, thank you guys for listening. Thank you, Kim, for joining us.
Hope to see you this weekend as we continue our series, what would you say and hope to see you at our leader hub coming up. Take care.