The Youth Group Podcast

Tom French (00:12.174)
Hey there, podcast listeners and welcome to the Youth Group Podcast where a couple of youth leaders try to figure out how do you youth group better? I don't know, should I try that again? Or should we just keep going? What do you reckon? Keep going? Let's keep going. All right. My name is Tom French. I am an author, speaker, professional podcaster.

Alex (00:26.116)
Thank

Alex (00:30.422)
I'm sorry.

Tom French (00:40.558)
And I'm also a youth minister here in Melbourne. And joining me today, all the way from also Melbourne, is Alex, who is a dance teacher, a youth leader, and a cat mom and dog mom. I was about to say cat mom and dad. I was like, no, that's not right. You've got a dog and a cat called a pet parent. And a pet parent to Pippin and Percy.

Alex (00:59.159)
I think that's the wrong one.

parents.

Alex (01:08.716)
Pippin and Percy, yeah.

Tom French (01:10.252)
Yeah, that's good. I like that alliteration. How are you, Alex?

Alex (01:14.926)
I'm good, I'm good.

Tom French (01:18.152)
good. Me too. I'm really good. I just can't talk, but otherwise going real well.

Alex (01:22.404)
Strong stop for a podcast.

Tom French (01:25.198)
Yeah, yeah. I'm going to give you some really good news. think last week on the podcast, I talked about how my car got smashed into and I've been expecting them to write my car off and give me about $700 for it. And I just got a phone call from the assessor just before we came on. And the assessor was like, we're going to give you 10 times that amount. So I was like, the car's not worth that, I don't think.

Alex (01:33.785)
Hmm.

Alex (01:50.982)
Cool.

Take it.

Tom French (01:54.798)
But they say it is. say, am I allowed to publicly say that? I want to publicly say that I trust insurance companies a lot and that they know a lot more about cars than I do. And I'm very pleased that they have assessed my car well. And they've actually been pretty good. They've actually looked after us pretty well. I was being worried because I'm like, everyone, people don't seem to like him very much, but we've done OK. So anyway, there's.

Alex (02:03.62)
Mostly.

Alex (02:12.324)
you

Alex (02:20.016)
No.

Tom French (02:23.896)
There's the news and now everyone's going to start hitting me up for money, I think. There's going to be lots of emails. What was that?

Alex (02:27.406)
Yeah.

It's not like you a car with that money.

Tom French (02:36.206)
No, no, these days who needs cars when you got cash. So I think you could last in Uber for the rest of your life on the few thousand dollars. Look, we'd go UberX, we wouldn't go the fancy Uber, you know, we'd make it last.

Alex (02:41.497)
you

Alex (02:48.992)
or a week.

Alex (02:56.846)
and just no Saturday night travel.

Tom French (03:01.314)
Yeah, I got two small kids. That doesn't happen. Yeah, so have you come into any money recently, Alex?

Alex (03:03.37)
It's probably fun.

Alex (03:11.82)
No impact, I have been losing money.

Tom French (03:15.563)
what?

Alex (03:16.974)
Well, we're taking our youth on a camp this weekend and it's expensive to buy supplies.

Tom French (03:24.704)
yeah. Are you going to get the money back, or are you just a very kind person?

Alex (03:28.388)
I so. I don't think all of it, but some of it I'm hoping.

Tom French (03:35.522)
yeah, that is the way of youth ministry.

Alex (03:39.012)
Yes.

Tom French (03:43.244)
Yeah, I've been really like, I've tried as I've gotten older to be better at getting money back when I spend money. But even I still get to a point where I'm like, no, no, I feel like that's a bridge too far to ask them to pay for that thing. So I will just cover it and, and that's so like, sorry. Yeah.

Alex (03:49.474)
Yeah.

Alex (03:59.81)
Yeah, we've got some of that. Some of that and also some of just the hassle of it. At a certain point I'm like, is it worth it? Is it worth claiming this $20 receipt? No. I mean, they add up, but you know, at a certain point.

Tom French (04:10.061)
yeah.

Tom French (04:14.606)
They do add up. Yeah. Yeah. I used to leave it for like, because there's so much work, I'd leave it for a term and then I get like a huge payout. It was almost like your car got written off, but it was just for buying snacks for youth group. Yeah. So yeah, this weekend we're going to hire a car and my family has, we're like, well, this is...

Alex (04:23.47)
Yeah, you go on.

Alex (04:35.202)
Yeah, chips.

Tom French (04:44.312)
This is our gift to the youth that they can have a big car to go up in. I mean, I could ask for it. not... Yeah. Well, also I just really love hiring cars, which has been one of the fun things about having my car smashed. I get to drive a hire car around and it's like, this is so good. Yeah. See?

Alex (04:50.004)
That's a generous gift.

Alex (05:01.358)
That's true. Get to see all the new ones.

Tom French (05:06.412)
Yeah, you know how they say that God works all things for the good of those who love him. I think what they mean is when your car gets smashed into you, you get a hire car. I think that's the full extent of that passage. Yeah. I remembered something I didn't tell you also before we started recording is that we got an email at our email address. So we get to talk about that later.

Alex (05:12.836)
that's what we're talking about,

Alex (05:18.116)
That's That's what they're talking about. Yeah.

Alex (05:28.152)
Good.

Alex (05:32.354)
No way! That is insane.

Tom French (05:36.012)
I would have given you a heads up and then you could have prepared for it, but I haven't. you don't get to. So, but why don't we talk about youth group? So how's Luke going at DP youth?

Alex (05:40.228)
on the fly.

Alex (05:44.813)
Mmm.

Alex (05:52.258)
Yeah, Luke's going good. We did a Luke 8 on Friday, the second part of Luke 8, the week before we did Jesus Comes the Storm. This week we did The Bleeding Woman and Jairus' Daughter. And I'm biased because it's one of my favourite passages and because I led the study, but I thought it was pretty good.

Tom French (06:11.822)
Great. What was, did you have a, have a related game to Bleeding Women or Dead Children?

Alex (06:19.396)
No, it was DP Youth's third birthday, so we had party games and party food.

Tom French (06:30.435)
great. What were the highlight party games?

Alex (06:35.46)
We played limbo. Some of our youth were very impressive at limbo, like very, very skilled. We played...

Tom French (06:45.976)
Did you know, just on limbo, really, really important. watched or listened, I think I listened to a podcast episode all about limbo, the game, and that it has its roots in, I think, voodoo rituals. no, didn't like, but then it became a party game, but it was a party game that was like appropriated by, you know, white people as

Alex (06:56.388)
Woo!

Alex (07:04.492)
I wish I knew that a week ago.

Alex (07:15.244)
And then, still not good, but also somehow better as well.

Tom French (07:15.958)
as we love to do.

Yeah, we appropriated the party game and not the voodoo. Yeah, so it was pretty fascinating. And then I felt conflicted about limbo. Like, should we play limbo or should we just play limbo and thank the people of... I think it was from like Haiti or something. Yeah, thank the people who did it or...

Alex (07:25.4)
Thank

Alex (07:47.652)
Excellent.

Tom French (07:49.644)
Yeah. Or be thankful that, you know, that thing about like, reject, redeem or recycle. Yeah. But you know, there's not, there's some things are in culture where like, no, we don't, we reject that. And other things like, no, we can redeem that. And I feel like there's a third R1, but I don't remember what it is. So, but, I feel like, I feel like you can take the voodoo out of limbo and.

Alex (07:58.308)
Reuse.

Alex (08:18.328)
Good.

Tom French (08:20.298)
and use it for the glory of Jesus, I think. Yeah. Anyway, so that's important for you to hear. And if I can find that podcast episode, I'll link to it in the show notes. Anyway, keep going. else did you play? Did you also get out the Ouija board or something?

Alex (08:32.993)
you

Alex (08:39.14)
Finally enough, we played musical chairs. Good one.

Tom French (08:46.446)
Oh, that's a bad, really bad, one. That's not, I know. I don't know anything about mythical chairs.

Alex (08:49.048)
Yeah, yeah. And then we hung up some string and hung some donuts from it and did the donut eating one. We've got to eat the donut off the string without using your hands. Good one. Yeah.

Tom French (08:58.766)
yeah.

Yes. Yeah. If you're playing it in the nineties, then you would have had two people competing to eat the same donut. Yeah. Because you do anything just to make it, you know, to heighten the sexual tension within your youth group. So.

Alex (09:12.548)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (09:20.228)
Yeah, lot of the eating games, if youth group are not great, this one feels okay. But even that being said, some of our competitors put the whole donut and string in their mouth and then spat the string out again. And that was, I was not a fan of A bit of like wet donut string, not good.

Tom French (09:28.558)
you

Tom French (09:40.782)
Hey.

Tom French (09:49.032)
Well, you got to do what you need to do to win. It's not about the flavor. Yeah. good. This sounds like a good party. So you did that. And then what happened next?

Alex (09:51.586)
That's it. They did me in the summer.

Alex (09:58.755)
Yeah.

Alex (10:04.6)
Well, we played, we did our study and we talked about BCYC this week and then we played some games and Limbo took a long time because they were very good at Limbo. then we...

Tom French (10:09.858)
Mm-hmm.

Tom French (10:15.434)
you did study first. Have you been doing this study first for a while? And I just haven't picked up on it because I'm not very good at listening to our show.

Alex (10:20.766)
yeah, I think we've been doing this year so far, we've been doing dinner straight into study because people are kind of seated and calm and kind of open. And then we hype it up from there. We found that we were getting a bit too rowdy in the study. If we did dinner, game, study, game, like they were just, it was hard to bring them back. and then also it gives you a bit more flexibility instead of sometimes the game runs long and then you run out of time for the study.

Tom French (10:29.312)
Yep. Yep.

Tom French (10:42.734)
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

Alex (10:51.19)
Yeah, so that's what we're trying at the moment because they're already sitting down and they're ready to go. Yeah, so yes, we did that and then played some games and then we had birthday cake and fairy bread to finish off the night.

Tom French (11:05.741)
Great. Did you sing Happy Birthday to yourselves as well? Yep.

Alex (11:09.57)
We did. We had three sparklers on the cake. The sparklers would not light at the same time. So we just cheered a really long time while we waited for them all. So that was good.

Tom French (11:19.906)
you

Tom French (11:23.854)
Great. That's good. And what was the big idea coming out of your study?

Alex (11:26.468)
Hmm.

Alex (11:32.716)
Hmm. We had a couple, so we had, well not really, we can't have that many big ideas. But it was to, yeah, are you willing to follow Jesus and accept Jesus even when it's costly to you and the timing is not what you think? Because we know that he will deliver far more than we could ever dream. A long one, but that's-

Tom French (12:01.591)
Yeah.

Alex (12:03.288)
the big idea.

Tom French (12:04.6)
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, like the really interesting thing about that passage is how timing just plays into it so much. Like you've got the age of the girl, the length of time that the woman's been believing, both 12 years, and the urgency of this child dying and Jesus taking his time before he goes to see her.

Alex (12:18.968)
Yeah, the 12.

Tom French (12:35.534)
taking the time to stop with the bleeding woman and yeah.

Alex (12:39.172)
But it was all better than they could have hoped. The woman wanted to slip away but Jesus called her out and she got a new life and Jairus tried to rush Jesus but then he got a resurrection.

Tom French (12:50.252)
Yep.

Tom French (12:57.346)
Yeah.

That's that's that's better.

Alex (13:03.588)
It's a better understanding of who God is. He's not just a healer, He's Lord over death.

Tom French (13:08.641)
Yeah.

Tom French (13:12.992)
Yeah. And yeah, and a redeemer of people fully like he's a holistic redeemer. So he didn't just bring physical healing to the woman. He brought her social and emotional cleanliness healing. Like, you know, she was no longer unclean in the eyes of everyone around her.

Alex (13:23.757)
Mmm.

Alex (13:29.944)
Yeah. Yeah.

Alex (13:41.794)
And both of them were brought into family. Daughter and little girl. They're both brought into form with Jesus as well.

Tom French (13:46.722)
yeah, nice. Yeah.

Yeah, good. What a great passage. Yeah, it could always be your favorite.

Alex (13:53.378)
So good. Yeah.

Yeah, it's almost like I've got a print-up of it in my house.

Tom French (14:01.326)
And how did you find the youth responded to it?

Alex (14:06.724)
Yeah, I think pretty well. Yeah. I tried to kind of spend less time. I tried to kind of take their lead with the passage a bit more. Like I had my questions, but kind of went where they shaped it. And I think that was good. I think it was good to kind of reconsider some of their assumptions. Like they kind of assumed how people were feeling or what the situation was. For example, they were like, the woman must be really old. And was like,

Tom French (14:36.142)
Probably not.

Alex (14:36.548)
Probably not. Probably not. They were like, oh, okay. Yeah, I bet Jairus was so mad. And you're like, yeah, but he was also probably pretty sad and scared. I'm like, oh, true. So I think, yeah, it was good to see them kind of take it more than just a face value. I think that kind of got into their understanding, which was nice. Yeah.

Tom French (15:03.874)
Yeah, with that passage, my mother, when she used to do training with people in Kings Cross in Sydney, which was a place where there's a lot of homeless people and then a lot of sex workers and they're all kind of hanging out in the same space and she was working at a church there and she did training for a drop-in center there and she'd often do

use that passage and she'd read the passage to get people to act it out together and imagine there were different people in the passage and to think about what they're doing, like how they're feeling in that space as an onlooker, as Jairus or as the bleeding woman or as one of the disciples and yeah, to help them to think about what's going on for I think the people who they were serving there.

Alex (15:52.334)
Mm.

Tom French (16:01.288)
and so I stole that idea off of when we did a week on power at youth group, which may have been in the lifetime of this podcast. can't remember, but, we, yeah, we did that and it was really helpful just because yeah, the, the power dynamics in that passage are also like pretty fascinating because you've got like, I mean, Jesus talks about, know, if you felt power go out from him, but there's

Alex (16:06.084)
Thank

Tom French (16:27.924)
woman who is seeking Jesus's power and seeking to take it without asking for it. But she is powerless in that situation. And then you have Jairus's daughter who is obviously powerless and then Jairus who is socially powerful but has no power over death and then Jesus with all the power and then the people within the crowd who have the power to shun the woman and the disciples who are trying to assert

their power of the situation to be like no Jesus you weren't touched by it like so much. Sorry we could have just done the podcast episode on the passage. Anyway so yes it's great I love it. Yeah so anyway I think the reason why I was saying that was just because like the idea of like reassessing like getting young people to think about how people are feeling in the space and what's going on. Yeah I think it's really helpful.

Alex (17:00.834)
Yeah. She's still possessive.

Alex (17:23.021)
Mm.

Tom French (17:26.602)
And yeah, they get new insights into it. So that's good.

Sorry, I just talked. How do my youth group? Well, my last question for you is, do you have any other reflections from your night at youth group?

Alex (17:33.092)
How did your youth group go?

Alex (17:47.719)
I'm, yeah, I'm thankful to God for three years of the youth group and for how we've grown them. And I'm really thankful for how, yeah, recently we've seen some really big, particularly in some of our older youth, some really big shifts and some like confidence in their faith and some depth that we didn't see before. So I'm really thankful for that. In like a bigger three year reflection. But yeah, that's really lovely to see.

Tom French (17:52.43)
Mmm.

Tom French (18:10.147)
Yeah.

Tom French (18:17.772)
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, and I think like reflecting on your group having left our group to go and start and yeah, Raoul group. Yeah, and like what we talked about at the time when you left is that we were like, it would cost us all to do this. Like the kingdom costs us, but in the end, it's a price that's worth paying.

Alex (18:26.572)
Mm. The rival group.

Tom French (18:48.182)
And for us, like we lost some people, lost having some good leaders and there were some good relationships with your crew. But what you have gained is like there, I assume there are people coming to your youth group who would never have come to our youth group because of the dynamics. Yeah. Yes, distance. Yeah, distance, dynamics, all that thing like.

Alex (18:56.548)
Yeah.

Alex (19:06.028)
Yeah.

Alex (19:09.772)
Yeah, also distance.

Tom French (19:17.742)
Yeah, so now we have like two youth groups, both doing like the same good work in different places with different young people. And yeah, how good that God is using us both. But also we want to be the best. we're hoping you can always come in second place to us in all things.

Alex (19:20.537)
Yeah.

Alex (19:31.362)
Yeah, definitely.

Alex (19:40.092)
We'll see, we'll see.

Alex (19:44.29)
We just got beanies as well as hoodies. So I don't know where that went.

Tom French (19:47.8)
no! I was thinking about beanies, but I didn't follow through. man.

Alex (19:54.372)
Not as good as the ones we might have seen at PCYC last year, but they're there. Yeah, they were great. We can't afford those.

Tom French (20:00.512)
Yeah, the Deep Creek beanies. had, they were, yeah, I think, cause Nick was on, on the show after last year and he, I think he said he had some leftovers, so you could probably get some of his maybe.

Alex (20:14.212)
I'm true. Just sharp the odd name with it.

Tom French (20:17.526)
Yeah, that's good. So what are your what are your beanies like?

Alex (20:21.827)
They're grey, but they've got the logo. So they're grey and black with the pom pom, important, pom pom, but with our DP Youth logo embroidered on it. So we don't have the big embed, but it's embroidered on the front.

Tom French (20:27.342)
We're the, gotta have a pom pom.

Tom French (20:33.565)
nice.

Tom French (20:38.818)
That's pretty good. How much does a beanie cost?

Alex (20:41.22)
I think we got 20 beanies and I think they're at like $25 beanie.

Tom French (20:52.15)
Okay, so that's expensive for a beanie, but good for the enjoyment of it. I think I spent a lot more money on a hat recently, so I could get one embroidered with a hat that says hat on it. So, you know, that's good. And what are your hoodies like?

Alex (20:59.638)
Yeah.

Alex (21:05.164)
Yeah.

Alex (21:13.796)
Our hoodies are the, we've had them for a while, so they're also black. No, we've got existing hoodies and now matching beans.

Tom French (21:18.278)
so you didn't get a new hoodie this year? Just the same?

Tom French (21:25.6)
Well, I'll have something to say about that when I talk about my youth group. there. Like, actually, I don't have anything to say about hoodies yet. We'll talk about when we talk about next week. That's when I'm going to drop my my hoodie, my hoodie bomb. So this week, we were we're still on the move traveling around different spaces. So we're at a church in the local area that

Alex (21:30.072)
Go on Tom. That was yours.

Alex (21:42.121)
already.

Tom French (21:55.362)
doesn't, that isn't part of our youth group, but they have a good building that's kind of in the middle of where all our people are. We've been there before. We liked it. So we asked to come back and it's just a space where it's got like this really nice kind of glass kind of room at the front, which is like their lobby, which feels a little bit like if the Apple store was built at a church and it was built in the

late 90s, then that's what you get, which is not like not bad. It's just like a big glass box like some of these Apple stores are. And and then it's got this kind of big kind of grass space next to it. And so it's like a real kind of like glow up for our youth group because because as you know, previously you enter through a car park. We have some

Alex (22:50.638)
yet.

Tom French (22:52.448)
slightly dead grass we can play on, but it's not that easy to get to. Our main outdoor play area is just a car park. And you enter through this door, which is a glass door, but there's like some, you can see there's just not the same vibe. You've got some old blinds that are kind of sometimes up, sometimes half fallen down, greeting you as you walk in. And then you walk into a room. Like the place where we normally have youth groups.

Alex (23:06.66)
the same.

Alex (23:17.316)
Thank

Tom French (23:21.992)
is like, it actually works, has worked really well for us. And I would only, the only reason why I'm considering moving is because of where everyone lives, not because the space isn't good for us. it, like we are really happy with it, but being at this place where you rock up and you can see there's a bunch of youth inside having a good time. And there's a, yeah, when there's like a bit of grass next to it where they're playing sport together and it's like, this looks like a fun place to be.

Alex (23:40.344)
Yeah, it's appealing.

Tom French (23:49.998)
Unless you're an introvert and then you're like, oh no, this is terrible. I don't want to be here. But yeah, so we were there. The other thing that we found was that last time we were there, the biggest issue was they didn't have any way that we could talk. Like we didn't have a, I mean, they didn't have a PA system. So I was thinking about hiring one and then I found out I could buy like a

Alex (23:50.146)
I can't believe it.

Alex (24:10.468)
you

Yeah.

Tom French (24:19.278)
Bluetooth speaker with a microphone for the cost of hiring one twice. And I was like, well, let's do that. It's not very good. It doesn't sound great. Like people, there are multiple youth leaders who are like, can we fix the sound? I'm like, no, it's like, it's a really cheap system guys. So yeah, but it works. It does what it needs to do. And it's got some flashing lights on it. So that's really important too. That's what's going to bring in the youth.

Alex (24:24.579)
nice.

Yeah.

Alex (24:34.998)
It is what it is.

Alex (24:45.4)
like multi-helper.

Tom French (24:47.966)
Yeah, multicolored. They don't flash in time, but they just flash when there's music playing if you want. yeah, I mean, actually, if you ever want it for a dance concert, just let me know and you can have it. think it would.

Alex (24:50.436)
Mm.

We'll take it.

Alex (25:00.004)
We don't need the building speakers. We can take that.

Tom French (25:04.992)
Yeah, I mean, you could just use it for the lights if you want. Like the sound might not be good, but it's got one LED that changes color and flashes onto a speaker. Yeah. Anyway, that's not the most important thing that happened at Youth Group, but that's just hitting the scene. Yeah, the youth arrived and we hung out for a bit. And then we played a game which was called...

Alex (25:14.884)
That's pretty much all you need.

Alex (25:21.996)
Isn't that flexible?

Tom French (25:32.634)
It was a pun. It was like Celebrity Heads. But you were... But you were... were in duos. So you had like... Everyone had a pair that they had to find. like, I think I was a minion and I had to find Gru. And there was Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and there was the Pokemon guy, Nick... Nick Ketchum? Is that his name?

Alex (25:48.386)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (25:53.537)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (26:02.71)
No clue. I was not a Pokemon kid.

Tom French (26:03.438)
And yeah, I was not either, but I was pleased with myself when I read the name. was like, I know who that is, but I may have got the name wrong. If you have a problem, email us. Let me know the actual name of Mr. Pokemon. anyway, so we played that game and I'm very upset that I can't remember the pun. So I'll...

Alex (26:11.169)
Yeah.

Tom French (26:31.15)
I'll get to it at some point and you'll be really pleased when you find the pun. Yeah. no, actually, I found the text. is called paradox. Yeah. See, because you got to find pairs. don't think it's it's not a paradox at all, but it's just it it just found the what's the word that sounds like it could have the word pair in it. Yeah. Anyway, we played paradox and that was pretty, pretty fun. It was really good at getting like the different

Alex (26:33.976)
Yeah, we'll wait for it.

Alex (26:40.068)
very nice.

Tom French (27:00.526)
youth talking to each other and pairing, you know, like a year seven boy up with a year 11 girl and or sometimes, sometimes they realized who they were paired up with and they're like, no, I just think I'll bow out. It was a bit too intimidating to go and talk to that person. But others, was good. And it was a good opportunity for me to just go around and talk to different youth.

Alex (27:02.115)
Again, that's.

Alex (27:19.429)
you

Tom French (27:30.482)
about who they were and who I was because I'm not always the best at figuring out how to talk to people, particularly teenagers, which is lucky that's not my job to do that. it was helpful having that that happening. So we did that. And then we were we we did some announcements. We answered some questions because I talked too long last week. I had a five minute timer on.

Alex (27:40.644)
Yeah.

Tom French (28:00.404)
And so that was good. talked about the question of, you have feelings for two people at the same time? It turns out we have a lot of questions about dating in there because of the leftover questions from our romance night. And they just all ended up in the question box. So it's going to become a romance term or gear, I think. Anyway, I said I told them that it was you can have feelings for two people at the same time, but you shouldn't act on them just one at a time. And if you're married,

Alex (28:05.732)
you

Tom French (28:29.908)
one for the rest of time, or at least till one of you dies and then you're free agent again. Yeah. And then we, we did prayer, prayer empires again, what we realized though, like, so we got our youth to talk about the prayers that they were praying, well, the prayer that had been answered. And this kid came up and talked about how he had been praying for some friends.

Alex (28:35.224)
until

Alex (28:50.712)
Thank

Tom French (28:58.39)
at school and these prayers have been answered, so that was great. And then because you've got to go join up with other people when your prayer has been answered, I said, you've got to go find someone to pray with now. If you want this kid to pray with you, you should try and get him so you've got his prayer power available. And it was just a silly joke. But then when I said, was like, I don't know, I probably shouldn't have said that. And then in leaders meeting,

Alex (29:16.932)
Thank

Alex (29:24.46)
Yeah.

Tom French (29:27.05)
one of the leaders brought it up and they're like very carefully. They're like, I don't want to make this a thing, but

Alex (29:33.662)
But this kid does not have special access to God.

Tom French (29:37.518)
Yeah, and the leader was concerned that we didn't want to gamify prayer or say that some people are more powerful than others.

Alex (29:46.052)
You level up your praying power.

Tom French (29:51.31)
Yeah, which is entirely, entirely correct. And so was very thankful that he brought it up. Yeah, which is, if I can preempt my reflections, one of my reflections is that I'm pleased we have leaders who will speak up if they think there's a thing. And I'm pleased that we have a culture where that is possible.

Alex (30:11.876)
Yeah.

Tom French (30:21.172)
And I would like to interrogate my practice to figure out how I've done that and how we can keep doing that. And if there's better ways, more ways to do that, because it's always like always when particularly when youth leaders bring up things that they disagree with me on when the usually not always, but usually good stuff comes out of that because because it's big enough that they've

taken the time to be like, yeah, I want to, I want to say something contrary to what's happening or what has happened. And it's, yeah, it's pretty helpful for us and helpful for me. And it's been two weeks in a row that I've had leaders kind of call me out one way or another, and it's been helpful. thanks leaders. And then we did, after praying,

Yeah, which we kind of reflected on our prayer that there's because there's some answered prayers and some youth now, some youth just aren't praying the prayer that they stuck on the board they're to pray for every week. They just chat to each other. We're trying to figure out how we kind of keep this year long prayer adventure alive and helpful. So we're going to try and get people to start talking about the prayers. They're still praying and get

leaders to go and sit with youth who are not praying, even though we want to model praying ourselves, we might model it with other people who are maybe struggling to do it by themselves. Yeah, there you go. That's a thing that happened. And then after that, then we'd had, this is, think the last thing that we did was we did, we did some small group check-ins, which was just how you go in and pray for each other. And then we did Bible workshops because we are on our

You know, what are the things you do to follow Jesus and going to help you keep following Jesus? And one of those things is regular Bible reading. We wanted to help them with that. And so we have one workshop, was on Bible journaling, which one of our leaders ran, which I saw they just kept going once youth group was over. They just kind of kept journaling and coloring and painting. And I don't know if there was actual painting. It looked like paint. had some, they had some washer tape going on.

Alex (32:39.812)
Right.

Alex (32:48.068)
Right?

Tom French (32:49.646)
and they were reflecting on Genesis. That was really nice to see them practically engaging with how do they read their Bible. Another group did text interrogation, which I heard was good, but I didn't see that. And I did an overview of the Bible in 20 minutes, because I figure if you know the story of the Bible, will help you read any part of the Bible better.

I asked them how well they thought they knew the Bible beforehand and then at the end asked if what I did changed how they saw the Bible and if they knew it better than before or as about as well as before and they all said about as well as before. So that was disappointing. I was pleased to give them some new information. On the other hand, they all turns out they found out they already knew the story of the Bible and there was no

Alex (33:34.84)
you

Tom French (33:45.888)
surprises in there for them. I guess that's probably better. Just not as good for my ego. Yeah.

Alex (33:52.482)
It could be that they, in the process of your workshop, realised they didn't know something and then you taught it. So they are at, they thought they knew however much and then you brought the back.

Tom French (34:02.558)
yeah. They thought they knew a lot, but it turns out they did it, but now they do know a lot. Yeah. I think that's probably what happened. Yes. Yeah. I like that interpretation. Yeah. And then that was the end of our night and I've already done my reflections during the middle of it, but it was, it was good night. Yeah. Now, before we get onto what's happening,

Alex (34:10.712)
I think so, yeah.

Alex (34:15.14)
Yeah.

Alex (34:24.302)
Good.

Alex (34:29.796)
Thanks

Tom French (34:31.496)
later next week, let me get this email that we have. So what happened is after I put out my call for anyone who wanted to talk about AI with me, I got an email from a friend of the podcast, Ed Sodin, who, not an email, I got a Facebook message from him about saying, I'll chat to about AI. And which was great, but I was disappointed that he didn't email me. So I

The first thing I did in response to him was I berated him for not emailing us. Because, you know. Yeah, so then it turns out we got an email from a friend of the podcast, Ed Sodin. Yeah. And so here's what he has to say. It's quite a long one. So let's break it up because he's got, he says.

Alex (35:00.9)
Thank you.

Alex (35:07.652)
Who's this from Tom?

Alex (35:15.649)
No.

Tom French (35:25.492)
Hello, fellow youth leaders. Love hearing all your great ideas and I've got a question and an idea for you. So let's go with the question first and then the idea will come second. The idea actually is a good one for you and me because it involves what do you do after you've just gotten back from a big weekend away with your youth. So the question is, in the Mike McGarry episode, I found it helpful discussing the value of curriculum versus term by term, year by year plan.

I had a follow-up question for the pod. What do you think about following the same curriculum or books of the Bible as your wider church family compared with coming up with your own plan or topics? Which is a good question. Now, you haven't had any time to prepare, but do you have any thoughts? Off the bat, Alex. Great.

Alex (36:08.448)
is a good question.

Alex (36:14.498)
Yes, I think that there's benefit to it, but that's our junior youth program at church does that. So we have kids program up to grade five and then grade six, seven, eight do once a month they sit in on the sermon and they listen to the sermon and then they follow a similar program. And then they also do some things on like what is baptism and what is all what's up and what is for that.

but they generally go on a similar one. So that's probably, I think it's has that.

Tom French (36:49.938)
So, so for yours, it's like, for like three, three out of four weeks, they're not in the service, but they're doing often the same stuff that's happening in the service. And so then when they join in with the service, they're pretty much caught up to what's happening because they're within the series. Yep.

Alex (36:57.368)
Yeah.

Alex (37:05.4)
Yeah.

So we then don't necessarily do the same thing because we're like a separate own kind of youth group entity, I guess. Although sometimes it does, funnily enough, this term we've been doing Luke and church was doing Mark. So there were some times that we kind of like crossed over a little bit. So I think there's benefit to it as long as we're still keeping in mind the best age appropriate teaching for the youth.

Well, we still want to cover the whole Bible. For example, our church is doing Leviticus at the moment. And we're spending a while on Leviticus. And I'm not sure that with our youth being the ages and stages they are, Leviticus is the best book for us to go to at the moment. So like.

Tom French (37:46.094)
Mmm.

Tom French (37:53.912)
Especially if you're doing Leviticus in church on Sunday and you're doing it on Friday at Youth Group.

Alex (37:58.262)
Who's like a lot more of it? So it kind of depends on what you're in.

Tom French (38:05.344)
Yeah, that's a good reflection. Yeah, I have thought about this as well. like for us, because we're a combined youth group and we have a bunch of different churches, it's not really possible for us. Like we could pick one church and go with it, I guess. But

Alex (38:08.9)
Mm.

Alex (38:19.692)
Okay.

Tom French (38:29.838)
But what we have been thinking about, like I've been thinking about how do we do teaching in youth group with the understanding that all of our churches, I think all of our churches have an expectation or a hope or they're working towards having youth in the service most of the time. And in the service, they're going to be getting

Alex (38:51.684)
Yeah.

Tom French (38:58.87)
expository teaching most of the time. They're to be listening to sermons and hopefully having the Bible taught well. And as far as I know, that's what's happening, which is great. And so my I've been thinking about whether or not we really want to double up on that. Like, do we want to give the same kind of teaching you get in church at youth group, even if it's slightly more youthier? Or do we want to try and do things that you can't?

do in a church context, but you can do in a youth group context, which is why we've been doing like the workshops and we've been doing like we haven't gotten rid of Bible talks. So like last week we had a Bible talk. But we've been doing it within the context of thinking about, well, how do we, how do we put our Christian life into practice? And I mean, not like the Bible talks.

in church, they're that too. But yeah, we've been trying to say, well, what are the things that we we that are specifically able to do at youth? So like they're also doing like the video talks. But but listening like to the youth and saying, what is it that you really want to hear, which is this whole year has come out of a discussion we had at the end of last year about what they felt they needed for their growth? Not that I think you should always have your teaching plan dictated by the youth.

Alex (40:25.517)
Thank you.

Tom French (40:26.094)
But you really, I think you should be listening to what are the deficiencies that they see in how, in their understanding of Jesus and how to live for Jesus and trying to meet those deficiencies if you can. And so that's why this year is the way that it is, but I'm not, I don't think every year is going to be this way. Yeah, but I think like the positive, and I think something that like Jocelyn was talking about,

Alex (40:36.547)
Yeah.

Alex (40:47.406)
Yeah.

Tom French (40:55.412)
in her youth group that sometimes they fit in with the same teaching plan and you get a deeper connection to what's happening. And I used to, I think I did that in a previous church. We did like Bible study on Thursday on the passage that was going to be preached about on Sunday, because I figure you're going to pay more attention in the Bible study. And so I want them to go into the sermon going, I already know this.

Alex (41:03.385)
Yeah.

Alex (41:14.008)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (41:23.267)
Yeah.

Tom French (41:24.652)
And I think it works better going that way than going the other way, saying you do the sermon, which you may or may not listen to. And then you get to the Bible saying, you're like, I don't know, I wasn't paying that much attention. Like, I think that's the that's the way to do it if you're going to do it. Yeah, now that I've talked more, do have any further thoughts?

Alex (41:27.49)
Yeah.

Alex (41:40.002)
Yeah.

Alex (41:49.284)
I didn't think so.

Tom French (41:51.746)
Great. Well, there you go. Thank you. Thank you, Ed. I hope that that answers your question. And now you know all the most important things you need to know. But I think it's like it's definitely a good question to keep thinking about. And I think a good question not to be tied to one or the other, like because different youth are going to need different things, different seasons are going need different things.

Alex (41:53.206)
Thank

Alex (42:02.404)
it.

Alex (42:14.958)
Yeah.

Tom French (42:21.698)
different books are going to need different things. Yeah, one of the things I also think about now that I've even though I've finished talking about is that like people talk about how I think, tell me what's like song of songs. If you're a Jewish boy, I don't know what happened with the girls, but the boys weren't allowed to read it until at a certain age. Like it was just the sealed section of the Bible.

Alex (42:46.84)
in the magazines from the early 2000s.

Tom French (42:49.63)
Yeah, yes, like Dolly and girlfriend. All our Gen Z youth leaders are like, what the heck are you talking about? Anyway, like, not, don't think like all of the Bible is important to teach, but not all of the Bible is important to teach all the time to all the same people. And...

Alex (42:52.558)
Yeah.

Alex (42:59.647)
they told you that.

Alex (43:08.675)
Hmm.

Alex (43:12.888)
Yeah.

Tom French (43:16.8)
Which is why some youth groups are like, we're just going to work through the gospels all the time. Because that's what our youth need to hear and that helps them engage with Jesus because that's where they're at in their faith journey. And great, that might be the best thing to be doing. So, yeah, sticking with your church when it's helpful. Yeah, but, you know, don't be a slave to it. All right, you ready for the idea?

Alex (43:21.252)
Yeah.

Alex (43:43.607)
Sure am.

Tom French (43:45.134)
If you don't like it, you have to boo at the end, okay? Alright. Here is a youth night we tried recently that went well. It can work well, especially after a camp. We just got back from Kik, which is the bigger, noisier, New South Wales version of VKIK, which we're going to next this weekend. The theme night was called Trivia and Testimonies, and it's exactly what it sounds like.

Alex (43:47.716)
Okay.

Alex (44:04.6)
Yes.

Alex (44:12.964)
Hmm.

Tom French (44:13.13)
After we had welcomed everyone and had supper, we spent the night alternating between rounds of trivia and testimonies. I assume he doesn't have that in there, but I'm going to add it in. For the testimony segments, we mix it up by having one interview with an elderly couple from church about their life of faith, good for intergenerational connections, one testimony from a leader, and then a sharing time for youth. In the sharing time, we had a roving mic and got teens who went on camp.

to share about what they learn about God. Then we also asked an open question to the youth. So people who didn't come to kick didn't feel left out. And that was what difference does Jesus make in your life? It was super encouraging to hear teens share about their faith in a way that their peers could hear. Now, do you have a response? Are you gonna boo?

Alex (45:04.898)
No, I think it's a great idea.

Tom French (45:06.888)
All right, look, I've got the...

Alex (45:09.028)
You're welcome.

Tom French (45:13.198)
Alright, that's enough of that. So yeah, do reckon you can do it next week? After, or the week, in two weeks after you come back from the kick?

Alex (45:15.332)
you

Alex (45:24.42)
Probably not because I am a big planner and I already have my term planned and sent out so I'll probably stick with what we've got. But I might put it in for next year. Next year we might. Yeah.

Tom French (45:32.43)
Yeah. Yeah, like I, when I read it, I was like, man, I don't like, if I hadn't already planned what was happening, I would probably would do that idea. Like, cause I think it's a really good idea. And I really like often coming back from an event like that, you want to talk about it and share what happened. we, when my church used to go on like a big kind of week long event.

Alex (45:43.783)
Yeah.

Alex (45:54.656)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tom French (46:02.102)
On the Sunday afterwards, we'd share in church about, we just had a night of sharing what happened and what God had been doing. And youth would usually never speak, would stand up in church and speak about what was happening. Yeah, so having that, making, putting the trivia in at the same time, so it's not, it doesn't feel too heavy. I think that's really great idea. And bringing in an elderly couple, so it's not just focused on, you know, what happened.

Alex (46:15.075)
soon.

Tom French (46:31.598)
on the weekend. Yeah, all of that. It's all a good idea. I love it. Yeah, so there we go. And then I don't think there's much else to say from his email, but he said nice things and he was helpful. And then he said, in Christ, Ed from Bathurst. So thanks, Ed. That was a good email. And if anyone else wants to email us, remember,

Alex (46:32.578)
Yeah.

Alex (46:36.737)
Right.

Alex (46:52.829)
Thank you.

Tom French (46:59.544)
Hello@youthgrouppodcast.com. Now we have teased a little bit what's happening, what's coming up, but what is coming up this weekend, Alex?

Alex (47:08.876)
We are heading to Victorian Christian Youth Convention or VZYZ or The KIK.

Tom French (47:12.162)
Woohoo!

Yes, me too. Are you youth excited?

Alex (47:22.316)
Yeah, they've been keen for a long time. Yeah, they are ready.

Tom French (47:26.446)
And you've got a big group going.

Alex (47:30.156)
Yes, we have doubled the number we had last year. So that's very exciting, but also I'm little bit stressed. So we'll see.

Tom French (47:33.902)
That's impressive.

Because you guys are staying intense and doing your own catering. Yeah. Because you're a hardcore youth group.

Alex (47:42.276)
Yes, we camp and we self-care. Yeah.

Alex (47:50.744)
Yeah, well, we found that our youth didn't love the idea of being placed with random other youth. And the tense meant that they actually connected and bonded and like they stayed up late and they chatted and we just get more out of, out of the, they get more out of the experience and we kind of get to see more what they're taking in and jealous a group a bit more if they're all together instead of like it gets to.

I don't know, not all thoughts in the room.

Tom French (48:22.094)
Yeah, you're making me rethink my choices.

Alex (48:27.436)
It's a pretty good on-camping, it's a lot of work beforehand, but the pay-off's pretty good.

Tom French (48:32.398)
Yeah, see? Yep. So we're going and we're not camping. There is a, yeah, there's some nice accommodation there now and you don't get put in with randoms anymore, I don't think. Or maybe do if you're really small. Maybe, I'm not sure, but it didn't happen to us last year. But it definitely happened the year before, I think.

Alex (48:36.548)
You

Alex (48:47.308)
Ooh, I thought there was still a couple. Yeah.

Alex (48:59.522)
I was going to say, I feel like you had a bad experience and that also made me more, was like, nah, we'll stay with camping.

Tom French (49:05.206)
And we definitely have until they built this new accommodation. had many bad experiences with accommodation. Never enough bad experiences that I said, well, let's go in go intense. I think I've had the coldest night of my life in a tent at that campsite once. Yeah, the trick I learned, though, was because the because the cold comes up through the ground, put a do not underneath your air mattress.

Alex (49:10.775)
Yeah.

Alex (49:16.452)
You

It's pretty, it gets pretty cold, yeah.

Tom French (49:33.238)
and then put the air mattress down and then you have it and it's great. there you are. Yeah. I mean, you have to bring twice as many dunas, but it meant I didn't have any more cold nights, really cold nights after that. Anyway, that's yeah, we're going to the kick as well. We're excited. Kind of hear some talks from Ed Surrey about Genesis, which will be good. Not Ed Surrey. No, here's the other person. He spoke.

Alex (49:36.868)
There you go. I might need to take that on.

Alex (49:57.646)
Not at Surrey. That wolfberry's coming.

Tom French (50:01.959)
Ed Surrey was two years ago. Yeah, Sam Albury.

Alex (50:04.356)
This is like highlight of the year for my youth leaders, but particularly also the youth. They're like, Sam Albury is going to be there. Sam Albury is going to be there.

Tom French (50:07.779)
Yeah.

Tom French (50:12.884)
Ed Sam Albury. Yeah, not Ed. Sorry. It's just English men. They're all the same to me. He said sorry English or his last name, just English. No, I think he is English. I'm pretty sure. Anyway, Sam Albury is going to talk about Genesis. Yes, which would be good. And I, I, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. We're going to I'm looking forward to the road trip.

Alex (50:18.276)
I'm sorry.

Alex (50:23.748)
You

Alex (50:30.391)
Yeah.

Alex (50:34.54)
Mmm.

Alex (50:41.539)
Yeah.

Tom French (50:41.742)
Looking forward to, we're going to go out and have some meals together, not on site. Yep. And we're giving out a brand new 2025 hoodie for VCYC, which is pretty exciting because we are into fast fashion at our youth group and we get a new hoodie every year.

Alex (50:46.788)
Yeah.

Alex (50:52.612)
Hmm.

Alex (51:00.536)
I'll spin this thing. Ooh.

Tom French (51:04.11)
Yeah, but it's great because my wardrobe is...

Alex (51:06.948)
We're playing through simply, we've got the same one.

Tom French (51:11.022)
Yeah, that's true. We don't, we have now like three, gonna have three different hoodies in circulation and yeah, we're not going to be a particularly cohesive youth group in terms of our outfits anymore. But you know, that's what you got to do. This is what you got to do, stay fashionable, stay on trend. Yeah, so it's gonna be good. All right. Well, I think that brings us to the end.

Alex (51:17.941)
Yeah.

Alex (51:30.689)
Yeah.

Alex (51:34.499)
That's it.

Tom French (51:41.396)
So let me find the button I have to press and say the things. Unless there's anything else you want to say. You got any ads you want to give? No. OK. And you still don't have any social media for us to plug a new book coming out.

Alex (51:49.858)
Nothing. No, all good.

Go to VCYC.

Alex (52:01.336)
I mean, you can follow the DP Youth socials if you really want.

Tom French (52:05.538)
Gile, where's that DP youth? That DP youth?

Alex (52:08.1)
at the terrible press material you need.

Tom French (52:11.438)
Okay, down with the opportunity for youth. Okay, thanks for listening everyone. Oh, I didn't hear about that, but I'm just talking now because the music is happening. If you any questions, suggestions or things you want to say to us, email us. Hello Youth Group, by the skyline. You can find myself at tomfresh.com.au. Don't forget to leave us a rating and review on your podcast platform and we'll see you next time. Keep loving Jesus and loving young people. Bye.

Alex (52:12.087)
when they actually do.

Alex (52:34.688)
smash it.