The Youth Group Podcast

Tom (00:15)
Hey there, podcast listeners and welcome to the Youth Group Podcast, the podcast where some youth leaders try and figure out how to do youth group better. My name is Tom French. I'm coming to you all the way from overcast Melbourne. I'm a youth minister and also a man who ate some tuna today. And with me is Alex and she is also in Melbourne.

And she's in a dance studio. Are you in a dance studio right now? Is that right?

Alex (00:46)
Yeah,

this is from lunch break recordings.

Tom (00:49)
Fantastic.

Lunch break. Well, it's good to have you here. And how are you today, Alex?

Alex (01:00)
Yeah, I'm not too bad. We're feeling the one, what, we've got a week and half left of term, so I'm feeling that a little bit, but keen to be here.

Tom (01:07)
Yes.

yeah. Do you have a dance class on after this?

Alex (01:14)
Yeah, I have two classes tonight. No, three classes tonight. Yeah. I'm teaching kind of an under 13s age jazz, lyrical and contemporary.

Tom (01:16)
Two classes, what are you teaching? Three! What are you teaching tonight?

Great. Are they all under 13s or just under 13s jazz? Okay, great. Yep. Excellent. Now we've got that covered. We've got to get on with this because I have limited time today. I've got a hard out unless my son doesn't wake up from his nap while we're recording. So anyway, we will get going and see if we can get this done in about 20 minutes. It's going to be great. So...

Alex (01:34)
Yeah, they're all the same age tonight. Yeah. Yeah.

my show.

Tom (02:01)
Yeah, and everyone will be like, so why do you need to talk for twice that long? You can do it in 20 minutes. So Alex, let's talk about youth group. What did you do at youth group this week? hear it was exciting.

Alex (02:08)
Mmm.

Yeah, so we kept making our way through Luke. We talked about Jesus in Luke 6 and what it looks like to be following him and trusting in him, the usual message. And then we did Lego Masters.

Tom (02:42)
Can you refresh me with what actually happens in Luke six?

Alex (02:46)
Yeah, so let me bring up the six together because I wasn't, this is classic youth leader, I wasn't in the talk because I was cleaning up pasta. But we were looking at the passage that talks about loving your enemies. What does it look like to love our enemies?

Tom (03:02)
You

Alex (03:14)
Well, it's important to know that we're first loved by God and we're really, we're against God and we're his enemies and we're loved even though we're sinners. So it's not actually an issue of do, if someone punches me, how much am I allowed to punch them back? And a bit more of we should be radical, forgiving people radically because we've been radically forgiven first.

Tom (03:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Alex (03:41)
So yes, when it says love your enemies, turn the other cheek. We're not getting into semantics too much.

Tom (03:49)
Yeah, unless you are that TikTok that I saw recently that was reinterpreting this as a, I can't even remember what it was, but I was just like, I feel like you're overthinking this and trying to find an interesting take that will get you more engagement on the social medias. But I mean, maybe I'm wrong.

Alex (03:57)
it.

Yes, also.

Tom (04:16)
I wish I could remember what it was because then I could say it then we could all agree or disagree or get offended, but I can't. So and how do you find anything on TikTok again? It's impossible. It's just gone forever into the void. So anyway, that's what you're talking about. And you had some pasta.

Alex (04:21)
That's Add it in the chat box.

Thanks.

Tom (04:37)
What? Anything else happen to each group?

Alex (04:40)
Yeah, we did Lego Masters. So we had two teams and they had to make the best Lego creation. And our theme was linking into VCYC because our youth are very keen for VCYC. And more to the point, one of our youth leaders is very keen to meet Sam Albury, who's the speaker at VCYC this year. So they had to make an origin story.

Tom (04:43)
Lego.

Great.

Yeah. wow.

Alex (05:09)
because the theme for VcyC is origins. So I had to create an origin story out of Lego and then they got marked on like creativity and color and storytelling.

Tom (05:13)
Yes.

Yeah. and were they good, these creations? Did you? Yeah. Do you think?

Alex (05:27)
They were, yeah. Yeah, they did a very good job considering

they don't have the big actual Lego masters containers of every color. And also we didn't have eight hours, we had 45 minutes.

Tom (05:40)
Yeah, where did you get your Lego from?

Alex (05:43)
Our two leaders, our two male leaders, both had big tubs from childhood. So it was just like an assortment of random childhood Lego.

Tom (05:52)
Great. Did they also they could one Lego went to one team, one Lego went to another. Yeah, because you can't you don't want to mix your Lego sets up. That's so.

Alex (05:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Well, one of our

youth, we were like, oh, should we split them so there's no contamination? And then one of our youth overheard it and got really stressed like someone had some virus. And we were like, no, no, Lego contamination is all good. Nothing's contaminated.

Tom (06:16)
Yeah. So if you're to do

it, you need you need Lego for as many groups as you're going to have. Yeah. And do they enjoy doing this Lego Masters?

Alex (06:27)
Yes. Yeah.

They did, they got very competitive, which is not unusual for our youth group. But yeah, we had some really good stuff and they were all pretty engaged the whole time. We thought maybe they might get bored halfway through, but no, like pushing through to the end. Yeah, it was good.

Tom (06:40)
huh.

Yep.

Was there a race in the final 10 seconds to get things done like on the show?

Alex (06:56)
I think so. then we, which doesn't happen in Lego Masters because they have professionals and they can cut things and put things together in post. But we then made them carry it over to the judges table and there were some slight casualties. That was probably the most stressful part.

Tom (07:04)
Yeah.

no. You need

to you need one of the wheelies trolleys. Yeah. Great. But and but so your theme was related to what's coming up at BCYC, Victorian Christian Youth Convention, or rather than to your topic of Luke six and loving your enemies. Yeah. You could have smashed the Lego and then

Alex (07:27)
Yeah. Yes.

Yes. Yeah.

Tom (07:42)
May them love you.

Alex (07:44)
Yeah, well there is an episode of Lego Masters where they smash the creations and I did get to smash theirs at the end but I'm not sure whether there was then a forgiveness afterwards.

Tom (07:52)
Okay.

Having watched my young child play with creations that you have to build things, there's a lot of need for forgiveness when things get broken by another person when it's not part of the plan. yeah, that's with three and four year olds rather than with 13 and 14 year olds who are completely different. As we all know, there is no similarities.

Alex (08:10)
Yeah.

Cheers.

you

Tom (08:23)
between teenagers and kids that age. Good. And why did you have Paz Pazas dinner?

Alex (08:31)
Yeah, so we've been very lucky to have people at church come and bring us dinner. So it's a bit of a lucky dip as to what we get. Yeah.

Tom (08:41)
Yep.

Great. So it sounds like just a fairly run-of-the-mill youth group night. Any reflections coming out of the night?

Alex (08:46)
Yeah.

We had a lot of our youth away, but it was still more youth than we would have had normally last year. So that is great and that's exciting. And it was really nice to see youth of different kind of groups that wouldn't necessarily be grouped together for the night. And they worked really hard together and it was good.

Tom (08:59)
Great. That's pretty exciting.

They got on. How did you form the groups? you just force them together?

Alex (09:18)
Because of how we only had seven, so we did two groups, so we had a three and a four, and it was kind of really a three and then two twos. So the two groups of two went together. Yeah, so they weren't really the ones that we, it was our year six boys and our year nine girls. So it wasn't really the ones, but they got on well. Yeah.

Tom (09:27)
Right.

Yeah, that makes sense.

The natural companion, CSX boys and year nine girls. Always hanging out. Yeah, that sounds like a nice, just a nice week.

Alex (09:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, what

about you Tom? What did you do at Youth Group?

Tom (10:03)
We

were doing Jesus to Jesus Changes Everything series. We're doing Jesus Changes Friendship was our big idea. And we were at this hall, which was because we're testing out different places to go to for youth group. We're at this council hall, which I turned up to and then the code to get in didn't work. So I spent a long time on the phone to the council being like, how do I get into this place?

And eventually I got in and then once we were inside, it's been a long time trying to figure out how do you set up for youth group in a brand new space, which I'd gotten there early thinking about. was like, figure that out when I get there early, but I lost that time. so, so was a little bit of a hodgepodge of just like trying to like put tables places and put chairs places and just see, see what happens.

Alex (10:40)
Yeah, just a little bit.

Tom (10:58)
And there was no, like we didn't have a game because we were doing, it was a dinner night. So we don't do games on dinners night, dinner nights, unlike your group, which is very ambitious. and, so we were having pizza and one family was a generous, generously said they'd buy us all pizza. And I got a message during the week saying, for our youth group of about 40 youth.

Alex (11:02)
Mm.

Everything every time.

Tom (11:26)
And 10 liters, they were like, Oh, I'm thinking of ordering about 50 pizzas. was like, for 50 people. I was like, it's pro probably too much pizza. And so I was like, yeah, I was like, like my general rule is half a pizza per person. That's like some, some will eat less, some will eat more, but four pieces each that should work. So went back and I was like, maybe 25 to 30 would be max would be fine.

Alex (11:33)
That's a lot of pizza. Very generous.

Yeah.

Tom (11:57)
And then they wrote back and said, I was on the phone to the person at the pizza shop and she said that teenagers are very hungry. so I, so I should get 35 pizzas. So we got 35 pizzas for about 50 of us. And it was funny enough, too much, too much pizza didn't all get eaten, particularly because they're about three gluten free people in the youth group. And we got.

Alex (12:05)
What a good outtale from the pizza shop.

Tom (12:27)
1.3 pizzas each and they didn't taste that good. And one of our gluten free people doesn't eat much at all. And the other, think, just ignores the fact that they're gluten free. So it was pretty much four pizzas for me and I didn't eat them all. And there was still plenty of pizzas left over. So at the end of the night, if I could skip ahead, we were just sending kids out with whole pizzas. a kid would leave and I'd be like, where's your pizza? And they're like, what?

Alex (12:52)
you

Tom (12:56)
You need a pizza. And the first kid was like, okay. And went back and came back with a piece of pizza. It's like, no, not a piece of pizza. Go and get a whole pizza. And then the parents all kind of stood around after youth group eating pizza together out the front, which is kind of nice to see that happening. So we had pizza. And then we did some of our usual things, which are like we had a question box where

Alex (12:57)
You're not allowed to leave.

you

in.

Tom (13:25)
One question I got asked was like, if Doom, the video game has references to Christianity because there's demons in it. And I was like, I really don't know. I've got no idea. I have to get back to you on that one. And then there's more questions about video games and demon possession, which has been the real theme of our question box lately. And I'm not really up on

Alex (13:38)
Thank you.

research.

Yeah.

Tom (13:53)
demonology and possession and stuff. I might need to, to research it a bit for next time we have the question box. And then, yeah, we, I, we did quite a few different things. I had a lot of announcements to make, then eventually we made it to watching the video that I made, which is about friendship. And my main thing was saying that.

Alex (13:55)
Go to what's the Min-Chi card.

Tom (14:23)
Jesus allows us to be better friends. Like, because we're not in friendship for ourselves, we're in friendship for others. like Jesus talks about, greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for one's friends. And that we, so we give ourselves up for each other. And that leads to deeper friendships. And also that friendship...

like lasts and is more important than say marriage. So marriage, Jesus tells us, ends but friendship doesn't. Like there's nothing in the Bible which says when at the end of time when Jesus returns you'll no longer be friends with each other. Like we're to be in the same family forever. So like that was an interesting thing that occurred to me. was like well you're investing in something eternal when you're working on your Christian friendships rather than if you invest in your marriage which is just

Alex (15:15)
Thank

Tom (15:21)
Just a short term thing. Yeah. So that was kind of fun to be thinking about that. that was definitely most of my thinking was helped along by Rebecca McLaughlin's book on friendship and a sermon I listened to from her. So thank you. Thank you to Rebecca McLaughlin, who's I'm sure one of our loyal listeners. Yep.

Alex (15:22)
No, big deal.

He's Rebecca McCullough.

Tom (15:51)
Yeah,

she can just send us an email and say you're welcome if you're listening. Anyway, but you could get her book if you're interested in this called No Greater Love. And then we had small group discussions and it was interesting because actually, like the responses from the youth leaders was that the topic of friendship was one which everyone had something to say and think and talk about. And like when I first was like, we should talk about friendship.

Alex (15:55)
Thanks.

Tom (16:18)
I was like, oh yeah, it seems like it's important one, but it doesn't feel like it's top of the list that we talk about with youth. Like we're always like, oh, we've got to talk about sex and romance and like, if God is good, how can there be evil in the world? Like, but friendship, I mean, like it's such a big thing. Like I was on reflection, like most of the issues we talk about in small groups.

our friendship base, like when you talk about things that are happening at school, it's something to do with friendship normally. And I was like, well, why haven't we been talking about it more? We should have been talking about it more. So it's good. I'm glad we did it. And we will hopefully come back to it a few more times. And then that was, that was our night. There was a lot of tidying up and sending out pizzas and trying to figure out the council bin system and

Alex (17:10)
Yeah.

Tom (17:14)
I realized that the council was like, you need to replace all the bin liners in the bin. I'd forgotten to bring. I didn't bring any bin liners. I didn't realize that we needed them. Had to send out a lead to get bin liners. So there's a good tip for anyone using a council venue. Bring bin liners to youth group. Yeah, I think my reflection. Yeah, that was my reflection. Talk about friendships and more. It's important.

Alex (17:21)
Yeah, we did that.

Tom (17:44)
And that brings us to the end, think. What are you doing next week at Youth Group, Alex?

Alex (17:48)
You

We've got a normal night, we're moving on in Luke, so we're heading into week seven and we're going to plan for our whole church youth group next term.

Tom (17:58)
What? Amazing.

yes, I would like to hear more about whole church youth group next term. So let's do that. And my youth, we are on our last week of term because we don't go to the very end of the term. We what are we doing? We're doing Jesus Changes the Future. And we're to play a game. I don't know what the game is. The leader who's. Sorry.

Alex (18:11)
Yeah.

Yeah.

before Easter.

Good one before Easter.

Tom (18:35)
Yes, good one before Easter and well that's what I'm to talk about how the Easter changed the future and how we can live in hope and make decisions without anxiety because we know the future and the future is that Jesus is going to return in the year 2027 on April 12th so just be ready for that folks and

Alex (19:03)
not good at

Tom (19:04)
Lock it in and send me your money. And so we can start preparing for the return of Jesus. All right. That that is that brings the end. I've got some like two really quick plugs. If you if you're at all interested in hanging out with me in real life, I'm going to be speaking at the Grave Heights Easter Convention for youth. That's in Victoria at Belgrave Heights. And. Sorry, you'll be.

Alex (19:29)
with the adults. I'll be attending

as an adult. Maybe I'll just pretend to be young.

Tom (19:34)
Oh, well, you'll miss out on all my great talks. Yeah, come along. I'm going to

talk about Ephesians. Ephesians. then if that's for people who are in Victoria and for all of my New South Wales friends, I'll be at Soul Survivor on the week following Easter and speaking all week at Soul Survivor. So you can come along to that. Just go to soulsurvivor.org.au Try that. Just search Soul Survivor. All right.

Alex (20:00)
would.

Tom (20:03)
Gotta go, it's been fun. Let me press the button on the music and we'll see if I can get an outro happening. Yes, you've been listening to the Youth Group Podcast. If you've got any questions, make sure you send your questions to questions. No, hello. Hello at youthgrouppodcast.com. Alex, thanks for coming. Have you got a website?

Alex (20:23)
No worries.

Tom (20:27)
No, no website for Alex. And I'm not going to tell you mine. It's a secret. See you next week.

Alex (20:27)
I'm fine.

Tom (20:42)
Was that better than normal?

Alex (20:44)
Green hearts.

Tom (20:46)
You