Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Well hello, life group leaders. We are excited to be with you again as we are continuing the fall series.
You are, this has been a fun series of looking at our true identity in the person of Jesus, the one that has been achieved and proclaimed about us, one that we do not have to manufacture or work towards, but instead it's the one that has been given to us for those of us who follow Jesus. And so this week we're gonna be talking about our identity as a servant. And so Jeremy, as we get going with this week's content, what's the big idea and the thing that our groups ought to be aiming at today? Yeah, so this week in talking about servant, I would say in our culture, this is gonna be a really countercultural message, but the fact isn't in any culture, in any time in human history, like to be a servant, like people wanna be in charge, right?
They wanna call the shots. And so to be a servant in any culture has always been kind of a lower status. But to think about it today, especially in our own culture, to look back at what the word says and what really biblical history throughout the history recorded in the Bible, God's people have constantly referred back to themselves and even to Christ himself as being a servant, servant, God, and servant one another and the people around them. So this week we really just wanna capture the essence of what does it mean to be a servant and what does it mean to be a willing and joyful servant?
Good words, right? And there is no greater why other than what Jesus said about himself, right? Mark 1045, that he did not come to this earth to be served but to serve others. And so for every one of us who considers ourselves a follower of Jesus, quite frankly, if you are not serving, you are not becoming more like him.
And so the encouragement for life group leaders and of course, all of us in our life groups, I should say the assumption is we're trying to become more like Jesus. And this is in my mind the most practical way for us to take an action step towards becoming more like him. It's to serve. Now, there's lots of ways that we can serve and I'm sure we'll get into some of that here today.
But Jeremy, are there specific things that our leaders can do in preparation for this week's discussion? Hopefully some of the groups, maybe individuals kind of took time while looking at different serve opportunities, worship services recently. Think about the ways that they have grown through serving and their own lives. Just think back on your own journey to see where God's really grown you and almost for sure there's going to be some of those most significant times that have come through acts of service.
And so just try to identify some of those in your own life. Yeah, the more personal stories that we have of either how we have grown in serving or even how others have served us, those kind of personal anecdotes, I do think add a great flavor color to our conversation. So it could be easy for us to keep this at like a surface level. Yeah, I serve.
I do this at church. I'm a part of this group over here. What could we do to really take this conversation deeper? Yeah, so I'll give a super quick example from my own life.
One of the most profound experiences in my life. I was a seminary student, young married man, and spent a Jan term in Jamaica of all places. But was in Kingston, was working with this orphanage and discussing cross-cultural ministry. And each day there's this one little boy that had really taken me and we really developed a friendship while we were there.
And near the end of my time there, he took me across the street to, and wanted to buy me like this little juice from this little, this little shop that's a little stand across the street from the orphanage. And at first my natural response was not to let him do that. And I was there to help him. And how could I let this little orphan boy buy me, this gift?
And as clearly as any time in my life, I felt the Holy Spirit just impress on me, accept this gift. And if I'm not willing to accept this gift and to let someone else serve me generously and bless me generously, then there's still part of me that sees me as kind of the hero and the savior. And he's a mission project and not a brother in Christ and a friend and a fellow image bearer of Christ. So yeah, like you said, even those times when we allow ourselves to be served can really, that can really shape the way we see God and see the world around us.
What a beautiful example. And I like the way that you turned it there at the end of just the fault or the glitch was in you of feeling like, no, I'm subtly maybe not even realizing it. We can walk around believing that we're better than or hero or savior when actually to serve and to be served is a beautiful recognition of who Jesus is and the importance of what it means to have pure relationships with every other person on earth. That's an amazing story Jeremy, thank you for that.
As we look at the leader guy for this week, is there anything in the content that can just guide us in a really healthy discussion about being a servant and really from within the content? Are there things that we should avoid pitfalls that we might need to be aware of? Sure, so first I would say what I love about this verse in first Peter that we're using for our outline in this series is that each week we're kind of, like if you imagine a diamond and you turn this diamond and it's multifaceted, right? There's no one angle captures the total picture and the total beauty in this case of who we are in Christ.
And so in the previous weeks, we've looked at being a child, being a priest, being a bride. And then to look at being a servant or some translations would say slave seems just jarring, right? Like how can I be both the bride of Christ or a child of God or a priest of God, but then also be a servant or a slave? And what I love about this text is we get this passage from Deuteronomy that just unlocks the biblical understanding of this language that is so common.
It's one of the main ways that the Apostle Paul himself identifies himself throughout his letters. Like in Romans, he uses this imagery of being a slave of sin and now a slave of Christ. And that's so hard for us to understand, but we see in Deuteronomy this picture of, there are all these kind of all the different laws in the Hebrew scripture were preventing people from falling into just these ongoing cycles of poverty or oppression and there was a constant reset in their culture financially, culturally, relationally. There was every seven years, there was a year of Jubilee.
Every, you know, on the 49, after 49 years, there was this great time of Pentecost, right? And so there's this constant reset and starting over. No matter how you had fallen into hard times, the idea of serving someone else was a way of really being provided for. But then it wasn't a perpetual condition.
And the Old Testament, but what we see in Deuteronomy is that sometimes someone would say, this family has been so good to me or for whatever reason, I'm choosing voluntarily, even though I have the right to be free, even though the law has made a way for me to be free, I am choosing to give my life to this family and to become part of this family and serve as a part of this household. And so that's such a different picture than what we probably think of, you know, especially as Americans and the form of slavery that was common here in our own land. But to see this picture of someone saying, I choose to be part of this family, even though I can be free. And that's what's happening to us as children of God, that yes, we're his child, yes, we're priests and the pride of Christ.
But then a part of our relationship is also this, I am submitting to the goodness of God and saying, I've joyfully, willingly give my life to be a part of this household. And whatever I can do to contribute to the greater good of this household, I do so joyfully. Wow. As Americans, rightfully so, our picture of slavery is one of imprisonment and just the most terrific things you can imagine, right?
And so for us to wrestle with that term and say, no, this is actually something that we choose as has been chosen by generations of Christians, to say, I'm going to attach myself to this family in such a way that says I am not greater than, I am not assuming a position of authority or leadership. But instead to say, I actually, the way I heard it from what you just said there, which is so well said, I don't even feel worthy enough of being anything other than a servant of this family. You know, I humbly accept and choose and desire to be a servant in the kingdom of God because it would be audacious for me to think I deserve anything more. Yeah, it really is a beautiful picture.
But what's so beautiful about that is that's how we could feel, even sort of like the particle son, right? Like I'm not worthy to be anything but a servant. But like we said at the beginning of this episode that this is a multifaceted picture. And yes, on the one hand, we do come and willingly serve because to serve as a part of the household of God, what could be better?
But at the same time, we are not just a servant. We are also a child and priest and bride and these other attributes that we'll look at. And one other thing I'd point out is that we constantly use the word Lord and it's a part of our discussion guide that Lord, when it's not used in all caps to mean the name of God, Yahweh, Lord was a common title at the time that would translate probably most closely as master. And so throughout scripture, the most common way to refer to God, the way people would often refer to Jesus when they weren't saying Rabbi was Lord and so master.
And so again, this idea of authority is just a picture of recognizing that God is, if he's all knowing, he's all wise, he's all powerful, he's all good, then we can willingly and joyfully trust his authority over our lives and everything around us. Beautiful. So as we've kind of, you know, move into this discussion guide, I know that in this week's message, there will be a very clear invitation to action, to move towards doing something. It's really common for us to talk about this in our life groups, it's a result of being enruded.
Like we don't just learn, we grow by doing. And that doesn't mean that we don't study God's word, of course we do, but we wanna practice it, right? We wanna put it into action because that's what we see, the church do in Acts chapter two. They immediately put things into action.
And so Jeremy based off of this week's discussion and we know that the direction of the message will be action, how can we shape a good healthy discussion about doing something with what we're learning? One thing we can do is just to point back to if anyone has any of those things that they're particularly passionate about or that they're already involved in, that they can help other people in the group become a part of, maybe they saw that this past weekend or they've been regularly involved in other things. And like we said, we want people to be involved in every part of our outreach strategy as Mariners to pray, to give, to go. But there are all kinds of opportunities to be personally involved in doing something.
And so listen to one another, have people share their experiences they've had or things that they're passionate about. And then also I love that even just this past week that we acknowledge people who serve our communities and first responders and things like that. So there's, I feel like over this past during the pandemic we've had this whole new appreciation as a culture for, man, this whole what we would call the service sector, so to speak, like they are what we would call essential work. Like we need these people.
This is actually a position that was so often overlooked that through circumstances we've realized, this is a great honor to serve one another and serve our community. So just listen to the experiences that people have had and kind of point out some opportunities that you can do things as a group. If you could do it as a group, the way it'll bring the people together in your group through that shared experiences is even greater than when you do it alone. That's right.
So like your leaders, we would love for you to be people of action. This week we have got lots of opportunities through our church teams. We did a big volunteer expo at the weekend. There's plenty of teams that you can serve with.
We are also heading into our whole outreach fall campaign season. And so there are going to be tons of opportunities for people to serve in the next several weeks. And so I would just say, if nothing else in this week's discussion, put an emphasis on action and say, we are going to serve. Whether that means we're gonna serve together as a group, or as individuals, we're gonna sign up for ministry teams.
We're gonna find an opportunity to serve our youth team, our outreach team, our high school team, whatever it is, that is what we're talking about. Not just studying, but actually doing. So with that being said, Jeremy, any final words for us for this week? I'm just excited to see what happens when all the people in these groups are mobilized and living out the character of Christ and their circles of influence.
That's exactly right. One of my favorite questions of church leaders is if your church went away tomorrow, would the community around you care? And it is such a motivating question for me to say, I sure hope so. I hope that the city cries out if our church disappeared, because of the amount of care, compassion, kindness, generosity, and service hours we put towards other people.
So like our leaders, help us with that effort. And if you need anything, as always reach out to us, we can get you connected to various ministry teams and our outreach ministry, if you're looking for specific opportunities. So with that, have a great week. We're praying for you.