Leaders' Retreats, Poo Swords, and Prayer Empires
Hey there, podcast listeners, and welcome to the youth group podcast, the podcast where a bunch of youth leaders
Tom:try and figure out how to do youth group. My name is Tom, and I am a youth leader and, author and other things. And joining me all the way from Adelaide is Tim,
Tom:who is a youth pastor
Tom:and a dad and a, arsonist, I think, we learned last week on the podcast. So, how you going, Tim?
Tim:Yeah. Doing pretty well. Thanks, Tom. How are you going?
Tom:I'm pretty pretty good.
Tim:Yeah. Yeah. I'm pleased I didn't set anything on fire this week. You know, it's it's all all been pretty safe.
Tom:I wanted to set hearts on fire for Jesus.
Tim:There you go. Saved it.
Tom:Yeah. How's how how has your week been? You've had a big weekend.
Tim:Yeah. Yeah. That's been pretty good. Yeah. We had our youth group leaders retreat or weekend away or whatever you wanna call it.
Tim:And then we went straight from that back into youth group on Sunday afternoon. But yeah. No. It's it's overall been pretty pretty good week. Good time, tiring time, fun time.
Tom:Yeah. And, what's, how do you feel about going away on camp? Are you one of those people who loves going away? You you hate it? It's
Tim:Somewhere in the middle. I, I really love the time, with the team. Like, yeah, having the the leadership team away together, getting to kinda connect relationally, do food things together, fun things together, do deeper discipleship type stuff together too. But you mentioned I'm a dad. I do miss my family when I'm away.
Tim:It's I don't know. I don't know if that would ever stop happening, but certainly feeling feeling it when I'm away. But, yeah, while I'm there, just kind of investing that time in in the team really, really do, enjoy it. That's why we keep doing it every year. I'm convinced it's one of the key ways to keep growing my youth leadership team, both in our relationships with each other.
Tim:That gives us a chance to to pray meaningfully and not just a kind of two minute tacked on at the end of a meeting kind of thing.
Tom:Yeah. Have you have you always done a weekend away with your leaders?
Tim:Like Since yeah. Since I've been at, Trinity City, we've done it every year with the exception of 2020. Something else happened back then, I think. So we Yeah.
Tom:We don't remember what.
Tim:We sat in separate rooms and talked on Zoom, which was kinda like going away. Maybe I should have made everyone wear Hawaiian shirts or something just to get in the the travel spirit. But yeah. No. Since then, we've done it every year as a team.
Tim:And we kind of fluctuate when in the year it happens, but usually in the first half at least. Yeah. Kinda get that start of the year connecting as a team and and praying and just sharing life.
Tom:And and do you manage to get your whole team to come away with you?
Tim:This time around, we did. In the past, you know, someone's traveling or overseas or, you know, someone has something come up. But, yeah, this time around, all 12 of us were there, which was really cool. Really nice to all be there for the whole time.
Tom:Okay. So, you're you're on your weekend away. What's, the the best thing that you did for your leadership team to bond?
Tim:The the best serious thing we did was pray. The best non serious thing we did was, every year we try and do a gimmicky activity that's requires some level of preparation. This year, we did a game which I called Let Him Cook, But a member of church told me a much better title would have been, Recipe for Disaster. But either way, the way it worked was each of our leadership pairs, were given a recipe for dessert to cook. But the deal was, whenever you were cooking, one member of the pair could not touch the food or the preparation or anything.
Tim:They could only touch the person, and the other person, could touch the food but was not allowed to see. They had to be blindfolded.
Tom:Okay. Great. Yeah.
Tim:Yeah. Yeah. So it was it was a lot of fun. It took a lot more time and energy than we thought it would, but people really got into it. Like, my team won, so that was kinda nice.
Tim:But yeah. We we kind of threw ourselves in and, you know, seeing people try to crack eggs while blindfolded or, yeah. Couple of us had to do stuff with the oven, so that was kinda terrifying being blind and handling an oven. But yeah. No.
Tim:It all all worked out quite well and feel like we're a lot closer. Yeah. At least our co leaders, if nothing else.
Tom:And were you staying in, like, a like, a house or in a
Tim:Yeah. Yeah. We were at a, Airbnb that we got down in Gulba, which is on the coast of South Australia. It's pretty nice down there. Yeah.
Tim:It meant a good long Saturday afternoon of baking and screaming and terror. It was beautiful.
Tom:Oh, lovely. Okay. Next, logistics question. Do your leaders pay to go away?
Tim:It's varied over the years. Yeah. So this year, because we were in an Airbnb and it was a little bit more expensive, we, we kinda subsidized them, but still, you know, everyone chips in. We try to keep it as low as possible, like, under a hundred dollars. So, I think this year was 75.
Tim:Sometimes we've had, someone offered to kind of provide a house and we dump it for free or, you know, just a very small amount to cover food or, yeah. We've had a couple of church members in the past donate as well to kind of invest in the youth leadership team, which has been so generous and so kind. And, yeah. Yeah. So we we try to keep it low, and as always, the kind of case we kinda have is if cost is an issue, let us know.
Tim:Like, we'll figure something out.
Tom:And then after your weekend away, you went straight into youth group? Yeah. What what happened to youth group?
Tim:Well, at youth group, so this was our first proper week after having our kickoff pool party, which we talked about last week. So we had, you know, kinda everyone coming to church and getting used to being on our church side again, our leaders included, figuring out what do you do when you run youth group, how do we do this again. But, yeah, we so we had an activity run by our, southern leader I'm gonna call her just because she studies at a uni that's down south, so that works pretty easily. And, Southern Leader decided to run an activity called musical squares. It's kinda like musical chairs, except there's a line along the ground and there's a square, like, every, you know, few meters along there.
Tim:And when the music stops, if you are inside one of those squares, you're eliminated. Yeah. So we have musical squares, which overall ran pretty well. Like, the hard part of any elimination game that we do is having situations where, you know, youth are kind of sitting out or not involved, kind of twiddling their thumbs. I mean, you you kind of tell them to cheer on their teammates or choose someone they really wanna win, but doesn't always work.
Tim:Fortunately, musical squares was a quick enough game, like, with kind of rapid turnover that we we managed to pull through. And didn't seem like anyone was too bored. Everyone seemed pretty engaged in it, although, yeah, they kinda had people pushing them and shutting them and trying to stop them from getting to the other side of the square. Yeah. Which I guess you kind of expect.
Tim:And then instead of doing a talk this week, we had and and bible study, we had, one of our leaders who I'm going to call Bible College and Mustard Leader. There's probably a punchier way to say that. But she works for a group called Mustard, and that's why she's called Bible College and Mustard Leader because she goes to bible college and works for Mustard. She ran us through, a program called Kingdom Minded, which was essentially how do you be a Christian at school, helping youth think about their Christianity impacting their school life, like, whether they get involved with a Christian club or start a new Christian club at their school if it doesn't have one. Yeah.
Tim:It was pretty good. Like, it was her first time running this material. She's, yeah, keen to go around and visit youth groups and present it here in Adelaide. But she did a really good job with it. And one of the things that really jumped out to me was that she was able to, I guess, help our youth think about it.
Tim:Like, it's it's always a bit nerve wracking to get them sitting down and talking about being a Christian at school. But for a lot of them, like, it was actually a great ice breaker, just to chat with each other about their school life and who their teachers are and what's on at their school. For others, it was a chance to actually go, yeah. I'd really love there to be a Christian club at my school, but we haven't got one. What can I do to start one?
Tim:Which was really encouraging. She was blown away by how many of our youth kinda came up to talk to her about that afterwards. But, yeah, it worked really, really well. So, yeah, I felt really good about the mustard presentation.
Tom:You have started naming all your leaders. Are you gonna keep a, show bible to tell you what all you all your leaders' names are? The thing is you we've now introduced the southern leader and the bible college and mustard leader. And you've got 12 leaders, so that's a lot of names that you're gonna have to
Tim:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've got a list. I'll keep it. I might try and truncate them or, when their ages are a bit more distinguished, I'm not quite at the stage where I could refer to them by the ages in the various twenties.
Tim:But, you know, if if we get to it, at at this stage, I've got a list. I think I'll be okay.
Tom:Have you written your list down so you've got it ready to go? Was that your homework that you did? Yep. Yep. Yep.
Tom:I got
Tim:my list written down. I've I've done my homework. Yeah. I can shorten Bible college and must have leaded a BCM leader, but, that might be even more complicated.
Tom:VCM leader. This is gonna be so easy to follow. Can can you give me the whole list of leaders?
Tim:Alright. I've got PhD leader. I've talked about her before.
Tom:Great.
Tim:I've got OT leader as in occupational therapist. I've got stats leader, because he works for the ABS. I've got physicist leader because he's a physicist. I've got tall leader because he's tall, and I don't wanna talk about what his job is because, just in case there's enough identifiers out there. I've got unicorn leader who does both youth and kids ministry and has been doing youth for a long time and wants to keep doing it for a long time.
Tim:I've got drummer leader, because she plays the drums and no one else on our team can do that proficiently at the moment. I've got dentistry leader because she's studying dentistry. Told you about BCM, told you about Southern, and last of all, I've got Barossa Leader because he lives in the Barossa Valley.
Tom:That's great. It's it's feels like it'll be like watching one of these reality TV shows. I have no idea who these people are. Like, when you watch the bachelor and I don't know how often you watch the bachelor, but every everyone is just another blonde woman who who has is identifies, that they're an Instagram influencer or they're a nurse or I don't know who that is. And then you have few token people of various nationalities he can tell apart.
Tom:Anyway, I'll try and I I don't know what, I I I I'll I'll I'll do my best to try and follow what's going on with all your leaders. Sounds great. I might make up a few as we go. Anyway, do you have any reflections from, from your either your weekend or from your youth group on Sunday.
Tim:Yeah. I think on the leaders' weekend side, like, it I just came by really encouraged. I think it went pretty well. I guess my back of mind reflection is how do I, you know, keep adding kinda new things that we can do, for activities, but equally not not take away time from us to just chill out and just have downtime together. It's it's kind of that tricky one that yeah.
Tim:I mean, any camp, I guess, you're wrestling with the how much free time do you put in there, but, yeah, I think when you're a leadership team and you're hanging out a lot, it's kind of a, you know, do we set time up where it's like, we're not gonna put anything on here and just give people downtime to do what they want, or do we, yeah, kinda go, actually, you know what? Everyone's adults. They'll they'll kinda opt out if they need to have a nap or, you know, go for a walk or go to the bakery or something like that. Yeah. So I guess that's kind of amusing that I'll keep tinkering with in the future.
Tim:From youth, I think I was really surprised and encouraged by how well doing the mustard kinda kingdom minded stuff went. I'll the number of our youth that engaged with it, but also I had a few year sevens who were there for the first time and, like, just by them sharing what school they were at, the other ones were like, oh, you're at that school. Do you know this person? And and going, yeah. Let's actually create this icebreaker without me doing anything.
Tim:That was really helpful for them because I don't know if your experience of, your six and your seven boys is like this, but I found that it can be hard to get them to kinda talk to each other and share what they're thinking or or, you know, personal stuff. So, yeah, I think that was a a good encouragement. And last one for me was welcoming. But we always put a couple of our leaders onto the welcome table to do check-in and payments and name tags and all that stuff. I feel like I rip off whichever leader I put on with me because I'm always, like, running around doing other stuff.
Tim:So yeah. That's kind of my my reflections and
Tom:yeah.
Tim:Thankful that other leaders quickly jump in and help out if I need to run off and talk to a parent or set up a system. But, yeah, that's that's kind of my world.
Tom:Do, do you make sure you're anywhere in particular at the end of this group?
Tim:Yeah. I try to be both at the door to kinda catch parents because, like, we've got parents who do the the drop off from the car and don't come in to say hi, but will come in to do the pickup. But then we've also got parents who will do the, you know, drop off and walk in and wanna chat and talk about something, but then, you know, kind of just wait in the car park for pickup. So it's I feel like I need to kinda be close to the front for both. So I'm I end up informally welcoming most of the time, but that kind of formal, there's task that needs to be done of checking in, signing in.
Tim:I go, I wanna put myself on it because I know the youth, and it's a great kind of point of contact with them too. But equally, there's so many other things that need to be done that I get kinda called away.
Tom:Yeah. It's, yeah, I feel like it's so, like, helpful to be around, at the beginning and at the end. And particularly, I find at the end because there's less running around I need to be doing at the end, and so I try and be at the door and say goodbye to everyone by name and say talk to all the parents as many as I can. But yeah. Sometimes, like, I got caught, like, talking to one of the parents, and then another ex youth this week, which is all good, but then I missed a lot of the worldwide.
Tom:But I figure at least if I can get as many hellos and goodbyes in and use people's names, as I can, then I'll I'll be doing okay to help people to feel like they're seen and cared for at the youth group. That's a that's a that's a big weekend. Thanks for It is. It is. Telling us.
Tim:Yeah. No. And how about you, Tom? What what was your week like? What was your weekend like?
Tom:Oh, wow. How was your youth
Tim:on Friday?
Tom:Youth on Fridays. So I I think, I was recording a video. Like, I was filming a video during the week so that I could show it at youth group. So that that was, tricky because I filmed it on Wednesday, but then I was editing on Friday when we're having youth group. And it was, and then my computer was not behaving, which seems to be a theme at the moment.
Tom:What you won't hear in this podcast, hopefully, is but, has been an issue is that my computer, it keeps misbehaving. If you're hearing this at all, then you can thank the Lord that he has helped us through. Because, like, two hours before youth group, and I was, yeah, I gotta export the video then. And then as soon as I've got to export it, the exporting program decided not to be out And, yeah, I had to export in the car on the way to youth group. We got there, and and then I I was able to show it to everyone at youth group who made it.
Tom:But what the night was was, we had dinner together, and we we were out I think I said we I thought we were gonna be big, and we are big this year. We had 42 youth, which is, a lot more than like, last year, I think we topped out at our biggest week was maybe 35, maybe, and that was pretty rare. Most weeks were low thirties, high twenties. And so 42 was just a whole different kind of ballgame for us, and dinner took forever because we're not used to feeding that many youth, which then kinda threw the whole night out because we dinner happened, but then, The other thing we did is our birthday wheel, which we do every week for you to have birthdays. But because it was coming off the holidays and we were doing everyone had had a birthday since November, I think we have 12 youth lined up.
Tom:And a great thing happened was that one of the ideas, on the birthday wheel, actually, that came from our 29 year old youth leader, was, that there was an instant party. So you spin the birthday wheel, and and instead of getting just a present, you got an instant party where we threw out streamers, and everyone got given balloons. We blew up balloons, and we gave everyone party hats, and then we held up a sign that said happy birthday and sang happy birthday. And so we got instant party, and then a bunch of us ladies were running around handing out all the stuff yelling, instant party, instant party. And and then we threw streamers and had balloons and, sang happy birthday just as planned.
Tom:And it was pretty exciting, and it felt like one of those spontaneous moments that, will will be remembered for at least weeks to come. So that that was pretty pretty fun, except then that we had balloons, hanging around youth group for the rest of youth group, and they were very good at distracting, any of the youth. And particularly, there was one girl in my small group who collected a bunch of balloons and then called them all her children and wouldn't let anyone, anyone disrespect her to, which has, made life a bit more tricky for us. But still, the end of the party was a success, and I might not trade it, even with those balloons. And then the another 11 people got given gifts, which was fun.
Tom:Yeah. We answered some questions because with our question box. And then we got to this thing which I've been excited about. I don't know if I've talked about it on the podcast, but we had a I had an idea, which I called one prayer together, but then, people gave me a better name, which is prayer empires named after the game empires. If you know that game, this is, we're we're doing a prayer version of that game.
Tom:And the way it works is, everybody in the youth group writes down one prayer that they wanna pray and ask God that he would answer. So I explained there's different ways to pray, and one of the ways we pray is we ask God for things. And everyone wrote down one prayer on a post it note and then wrote their name, and then they stuck the post it they prayed for it, and they stuck it on the wall. And the idea is that each week, we're gonna have this prayer empires segment where we'll stop and we'll ask anyone if their prayer has been answered this week. And if their prayer has been answered, then we thank God for it.
Tom:We celebrate that he's answered their prayer. And then if your prayer has been answered, you go and find someone else's prayer, and you, decide to join them in praying for that thing. And so then, when that prayer gets answered, then those two people will go find another prayer and start praying with that person for their thing. So, hopefully, by the end of the year, we have, lots of prayers answered and a few big prayers that a bunch of the youth group is gathering around and praying for. And the idea is that it's a faith building exercise and a way to celebrate that God does answer prayer and to, you know, be mindful of what God is doing in our youth group, which yeah, it for me is pretty slightly daunting and, slightly nerve wracking, I think, because, I mean, like, I believe in the power of prayer, but now I have to actually commit a whole youth group to believing in the power of prayer.
Tom:And I'd I I remember once my I used to pray as a as a kid that I would meet a particular athlete that I saw on TV at the Commonwealth Games. And my parents were like, oh, no. Poor Tom. His faith is gonna be ruined because he will never meet her. And then I met her.
Tom:Like, God answered that prayer, and my parents are like, oh, wow. And now I feel like I'm in my parents' shoes. I'm like, oh, these kids, they're praying these prayers. And what if God doesn't answer them? Will it ruin their faith?
Tom:And etcetera, remind myself that actually I'm not responsible for whether God answers prayers or not. That is God's responsibility. And my responsibility is just to pray and encourage people to put their trust in Jesus and see what he does. So that's that's, both exciting and nerve wracking at the same time. I'm hoping that we'll be able to talk about it throughout the year and share some good news.
Tom:And then, yeah, then we watched a video, the one that I'd edited, and, I it was all about how Jesus changes everything. And, because the idea of this term is just, like, looking at how the gospel impacts how we do different things. And that we've just established an idea that, you know, if Jesus really is God and savior, then he needs to make a difference in your life, not just a small difference, but a huge difference to everything. And so it was a fairly silly video, but hopefully got the point across. Then we moved in small groups and spent a little bit of time in small groups.
Tom:But because of the way the night went, there wasn't heaps of time at the end. And then almost every small group finished late, and because we've changed our use group run time, instead of going from 06:30 to 08:30, we now go from seven to nine. We had a bunch of parents there right on 9PM, and our year six group was going late, and people were like, it's it's time to go. And I was starting to feel stressed about the fact that we were not getting out of there as quick as possible. So it was a slightly stressful end, because I just hadn't thought through the fact that the time change would change people's behavior much.
Tom:Because, generally, when we finish at 08:30, the the youth would just hang around and play and chat, and parents would turn up late because they knew that the kids would be playing and hanging out with each other. But the 09:00 ending, changed a lot of things. So it might, you know, relax a bit throughout the year, but I also need to work hard with my crew in finishing on time and making use available to be taken home when their parents wanna take them home. Yeah. So that was that was my time.
Tom:I think my reflections, I have scattered on in there, but you can ask me all your insightful questions now.
Tim:Oh, all the insightful questions. No. That sounds really encouraging, especially the unprepared pause. But I go, like, for a two hour program, that's that's a fair bit to squeeze in as well. Like, you know, you got dinner in there.
Tim:You got the birthday wheel. I mean, you're probably not gonna have 12 birthdays every week, but still
Tom:Hopefully, we don't don't grow that much that quickly.
Tim:Yeah. Yeah. Our first question actually was gonna be about the growth because you're, you're a youth group of four churches or five churches.
Tom:Is that Yeah. Like, officially, there are four, I think there are officially four on board. I have another one that's coming on board, another one who isn't officially, but they're seeing quite a few kids. And then we've got youth from, like, three or four other churches who come along. Here, there's just one or two of them coming.
Tom:So I don't even know what those numbers are, but yes.
Tim:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So a fair few churches around, like, I don't know. Do you like, a few years back or last year or whenever it was, one of the churches that was a part of your youth group started its own thing, as kind of a a break off.
Tim:Do you kinda have a, internal, I don't know, countdown or timeline where you go, the second this church has this many youth, we we say, you guys should really think about doing your own. Mhmm. Not because you don't wanna be a big youth group, but just, yeah. I don't know. Like, have you thought about that, or do you go, no, come to us, like, we'll be a mega youth group?
Tom:Yeah. No. Yeah. So the youth group that branched off was Alex from, DP Youth. So, you know, that's exciting.
Tom:One of our one of our new cohosts, but, we don't have a we don't have, like, a a trigger number. I regularly say that the most like, the best way to do youth group is one youth group for one church. But a combined youth group is better than no youth group. And so I keep encouraging the churches as much as I can to be thinking about that. And it actually came up in our, our latest meeting at the end.
Tom:Someone asked about that. And, and I said, well, yeah. Like, the ideal is probably that people use like, churches do start their own youth groups, but it's it's generally waiting till they feel like they've got the people to to go to start their own youth group. So my church, the church that I'm the youth minister at, we have enough youth and youth leaders to start our own youth group. Like, we have about 10 leaders.
Tom:We're providing eight of the leaders at the moment. So we could easily do it, but we know that if we did that, then either everyone would have to come with us, and then we'd just be running the same youth group but under a different name. Or we would be just leaving a lot of churches high and dry. But, there's another church which has got quite a few youth coming who could start their own youth group, but they're just trying to raise up the number of leaders at the moment. And then the other churches are just kinda thinking through, well, what do they do, and what can they do?
Tom:So, yeah, that's, like, the long term goal, but it's it's just, like, giving the churches the time and space to be able to do that. I think the danger is that if we get too big, it'll just be a lot harder to extricate yourself from the youth group. Because, like, going from a really big exciting kind of youth group, like, just exciting because there's so many there to a much smaller youth group. And from all these relationships that you might have built every number of years to a group where those relationships aren't there, could be tricky. But I think it will be partly about easing, like, easing a church out if they if we do it.
Tom:But but also one of the things I'm doing, which, like, in a few weeks, we've got a church night, which is a night where youth, from the various churches will do something together just in their own church groups. And, if that's when they do that, the idea is that it will be building those relationships just within the church, and I wanna be doing what I can to continue to do that kind of stuff so that when it is time to leave, they don't feel like they don't know the youth in their own church very well so that they're ready for that transfer. Yeah. There you go. There's a long answer to your insightful question.
Tim:Oh, it's a
Tom:Thank you, Tim.
Tim:It's good to hear. Like yeah. I think one of the spaces that we've kinda thought about, and we probably shouldn't chat about this for too long, but, with that historically was to go, what would it look like if each individual church at least took responsibility for kind of the the discipleship group side of, of youth ministry, like, to encourage them, like, I don't know. We found some of our churches in our network, but you kinda have the the grown ups going, oh, no. I can't be a youth leader because I don't drink Red Bull, and I'm not in my twenties, and I can't play the fun games.
Tim:But if you said, what would you think about having, you know, six to 10 teenagers come and sit in your lounge room every fortnight, for, you know, hour, and, yeah, and you chat and you do bible study and have snacks and all that, they were like, oh, yeah. We could do that. Which, yeah, it's been so cool to see. Like, it's and still keeping them coming to, like, the bigger youthy thing with the 20 year olds who drink Red Bull and do kick flips on their skateboards and use hula hoops and all that other stuff that yeah. You just described me and Tim.
Tim:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I can see that.
Tom:Cut. That's why Didn't know you described you knew me so well. Yeah. Yeah. I I think, like, that I've definitely thought about, you know, whether we move in that kind of direction.
Tom:And, yeah, I I think it's just for me, it's just about knowing when to push change and when to, sit back and wait for the change to be like, to be so ready for the change that it has to happen as opposed to we might not be quite there, but we're gonna push it and stretch a bit. And it's, like, just the trickiness of, like, what you can do in your own church is different from what you can expect other churches to do that aren't
Tim:Mhmm.
Tom:That you have zero authority over. But you are providing a valuable service to, yeah. So it's a continual, thing that I think and pray about, and and I'll I'll know the answer to when I release my book on how to run a combined youth group somewhere at the end of this year or next year. I don't we'll see. Yeah.
Tom:Which I think should bring us to the end. So but before we talk about what's happening next week at youth group, I'm gonna give a quick plug just so that all those people who switch off when we finish talking about what's youth happens at youth group next week, don't miss this plug. I don't I don't know if people do. I have no idea what our retention stats are because I don't no one tells me these things. But, coming up, in just over a month, on the March 15 is the Ridley Children's and Youth Ministry Training Day, which I am presenting it, and I'm also on the organizing committee for, except I've done a terrible job on the organizing committee.
Tom:So I publicly apologize to my the rest of the organizer committee for being so slack. You know you know what I'm talking about. But, I will be there, doing a session on why you should teach the weird and difficult parts of the Bible to teenagers. There's stuff on, like, how to like, the basics of youth ministry, stuff on how to do church for neurodivergent, youth. There's, there's a a key key what do you call it?
Tom:Keynotes. I was gonna say keystone, but keynote speaker is Christina Kettleton, who is a youth ministry gun. And I she might listen to the podcast. Hello, Christina, if you do. She might have switched off since Chris left because I know, you know, she really liked Chris.
Tom:But, anyway, yeah. Just come on. If you wanna join us, you can join us in person at Ridley on the March 15, or you can join us online, which means everyone in the world can join us. Just go to Ridley.edu.au and go to the bottom of the page, the events part, and then you can click on the link to the thing. And, Tim, do you wanna, endorse my endorsement of the training day?
Tim:It seems like a good endorsement. Now, honestly, as an Adelanian, we don't have an equivalent, that's kind of running here yet. Like, we we do our own in house kind of training, but I found this so helpful to, join in via livestream, all the way from Adelaide. So, yeah, can can recommend. And, Tom, you've thought about, like, weird parts of the bible before, so I feel like that'd be a good good one to go to.
Tom:Yeah. Buy my book. We include funny and new in all good, mediocre, and terrible bookstores. Okay. We're you've got a staff meeting in three minutes, Tim, so we gotta wrap this up.
Tom:Yeah. What are you doing next week, at youth group?
Tim:Yep. So this week, we kick off our series proper on Judges. So my physicist leader is doing a talk on the first three chapters of Judges. I've tried to encourage him to use the, the Eglon song. I don't know if you've come across this, but it's like the stabbed him in the belly and the poo came out song.
Tim:It's a great song. It's a banger.
Tom:I didn't know that song, but I should know it because, I wrote about a chapter about that in my book, Pretty Crude, Funny and Nude, available at all good and mediocre and terrible book stores.
Tim:Did you say your book
Tom:will be proven
Tim:funny and nude available at all good, average, mediocre, planned bookstores?
Tom:Yeah. These ones. Yeah. Yeah. You you should, you can sell that at your youth group if you want.
Tom:I'll allow it. Don't you know? I don't wanna force anything. Anyway, sorry. Keep going.
Tim:So, yeah, physicist leader doing their talk. And we're catching up to the talk about that, this week. And, outside of that, I'm running the activity this week because it's been a while since I've run one. And we're doing, like, survival slash elimination games. I'm tossing up between either dodgeball because the sling's fun about dodgeball or, we've enjoyed doing live action battleship in the past.
Tim:Like, we put up a couple of big dividers in the middle of the room, have the group split in half, and they set themselves up on chairs and take turns throwing lobbing balls over and try you know, if you get hit by the ball, you get eliminated. So, yeah, kinda keen on getting a battleship now, but I'll I'll keep thinking about it. How have you, Tom?
Tom:Can so, actually, while we're here, can I just make a quick suggestion? If you're doing egg on, can you do, sword fighting with pool noodles? And on the end of the pool noodle, you put Nutella. And so when you when they get you, there's the poo right there. And and, you know, it's a fun game, and it relates to the talk.
Tom:See? He's he's a lineman youth ministry expert.
Tim:Absolutely. I think we've got enough pool noodles left over. I could always go and buy some more. We'll see if we go with it. The downside of Nutella is just the, the the risk.
Tim:Maybe we use Vegemite. Yeah. Vegemite. Yeah. Less dietary issues.
Tom:Yeah. You you you don't wanna cause an anaphylactic shock from a pool noodle game. Yeah. Okay. Good.
Tom:That sounds like a good good good time. I wish you all the best as you think of your activity. At my my youth group, we are doing Jesus, Jesus changes how we care, and so we're thinking about what Jesus means to, how we, you know, do good works for others. Some people would call it social justice, but other people would say that's that's a Marxist ideology. And so, we won't be saying the words social justice.
Tom:We'll just be saying, we need to love people because that's what the Bible teaches us to do. So I'm shooting that video hopefully as soon as we finish this podcast, and I'll hopefully have it edited on Wednesday. That'll be beautiful. And, we're we're gonna play a game, which, our 29 year old youth leader is down to run. And, you might think I only have one youth leader, but I only have names for one youth leader.
Tom:So here's what I'd talk about. And, and then we'll have small groups, and we'll also do prayer empires, and we'll see how that goes. So that's it. Tim, I'm gonna let you go to your, you gotta stop me. Thank you for listening to the youth group podcast.
Tom:Make sure you like and subscribe. No. That's on YouTube. Make sure you, leave us a review. You know, give us some stars.
Tom:Share it with your friends, and come to come back next week when I'm back with someone else. I don't even remember. Someone will be here, and, we'll see you then. Send us an email.
Tom:Oh, you sent us an email. What is it?
Tom:Hello@youthgrouppodcast.com. Yeah. Okay. Now we're done.
Tim:Nailed it. See you.
Chris:Nailed it again.
