The Youth Group Podcast

Hey there, podcast listeners and welcome to the Youth Group Podcast for a couple of youth leaders. Try to figure out how did youth, how, oh, how did do youth group better? It's the same place I stuffed up last week. My name is Tom French. I'm an author, I'm a speaker. I'm a youth leader right here in Melbourne, and today joining me all the way from Adelaide is.

Dad and youth minister and inventor of the toaster man who reckons he could survive against a gorilla, but maybe not beat a gorilla as long as there are 99 other men around to take the full force of the gorilla's punishment, and friend of the podcast, certainly in the top five and today the best friend.

How are you, Tim? I'm good. Thanks. I didn't even say your name. Oh, Tim. Tim. Blank. It, it was a big buildup. Really big buildup. You know, it's, I just kept going. Just got on a roll. Well, I decided, I decided you invented the toaster, and then I remember that you told me that you thought you could survive in a fight against a gorilla, perhaps.

Yeah. Yeah. I just, I can see it. Other people around? Absolutely. In a, in a group of a hundred. I reckon I've got a decent enough pace. I reckon the gorilla would just be exhausted by, by the time he'd kind of taken on the first 20, 25 guys, I reckon I could get away. I. Yeah. You know? Yeah. About average odds of survival, but yeah.

Yeah. See some of these hypotheticals of how would you survive this event or that event? Like how would you I didn't know. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about how I'd fight a gorilla I'd, I mean, I wouldn't. I, I would just run away and if there were nine, nine men and say, Hey, we're gonna go fight a gorilla, I'd say, you, you can go find another man to join your poss.

I, I mean, I guess maybe if it was the gorilla was threatening our families, perhaps I might fight the gorilla. But yeah, I'd be timid anyway in these hypotheticals. Usually, I, I think to myself, what, what, in that situation, I don't know that I. I, I don't wanna avoid as much possible. Like when the zombie apocalypse, I'd be like, I'd be happy to die pretty early on.

I don't need to survive that. Yeah. Yeah. There are better things on the other side of the apocalypse. That's true. Although do. Like, is the soul removed from the body when you become a zombie? So like, you know what, what goes on there? Sorry, this is completely off track. This sounds like a topic for a different podcast, but like, oh yeah.

This could be questions you're not asking shit. Can, can a is is a zombie able to be saved? It really depends what zombie lawyer you're in really, isn't it? Yeah. Like, but I think most of the time the idea is that the zombie is a reanimated corpse, but not. Person. You know how like it's always like the mom comes back to life or something and is gonna eat, eat the kid, and then the, the mentor's like.

Shoot her, and they're like, I can't, it is like, she's not your mom. And then, and then either they do or they get bitten by their mom and then it's like, oh no. Like you have to become a zombie now. So, but then you have to hide it for a while that you've been bitten until they find out and then, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly. Think that you're immune and then you're not actually immune and all sort of stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I'm not sure why we're here discussing. How are you, Tim? Yeah. Tracking pretty well. Tracking pretty well. Um, You know, good kind of Monday coming outta meetings and spending time reflecting on youth group stuff.

Yeah. Great. Well, pretty nice. How about you, Tom? How are you doing? I'm doing pretty well, A bit sleepy, but that's okay. These are the things that happen. As we will discuss. I was on camp on the weekend and then I came home to a baby who decided he doesn't wanna sleep in his bed. That, yeah. That, that didn't help, but I'm awake.

Yeah. Yeah. I was on a tram today and falling asleep and I was like, when I get home I could have a nap, but I didn't. So here we are. Yeah. Now, I don't know if, I mean this is possibly stealing from what we're about to talk about at some point. Yeah. Youth group from what happened. But on my youth camp earlier this year, I opened a a note.

That said why being a youth leader on a camp and telling kids to go to sleep is like being a parent of preschoolers and telling kids to go to sleep. Oh, yeah. Do you feel like that that is a good comparison? I, I don't know, like that's, it felt like a valid comparison to me.

I mean, I had kids getting up, going, I left this in the other room. I had kids getting up saying, oh, I just need some water. I had kids getting up saying, why do I have to go to bed? I'm like, man, this is, this is pretty similar to a, some stock standard. What preschoolers say about bedtime sort of thing? I don't know, like what's, what's your take?

Well, I find, I found getting my youth group to bed much easier than getting at least my 4-year-old to bed The. And actually my 1-year-old, the one like the 1-year-old he puts up a bit of a fight, but he, he goes to sleep and you've gotta change his nappy. And I didn't, I don't have to change any nappies on youth camp, which is a plus.

And it's usually my wife who does most of the pudding to sleep with my 1-year-old because he is still breastfed and I.

But the 4-year-old, she finds a lot of excuses. Now that she's toilet trained, spends a lot of time sitting on the toilet and it's like you, that's the kind of thing, like you can't be like, I'm gonna cut the five and then I'm gonna pick you up. Like, it's like you just have to wait till they're ready to get off.

Otherwise it gets messy and to force kids to. Toilet quicker is probably not a great, gonna be great for them anyway. Point is, yeah, the teenagers are much easier. I just feel like go to bed, they go into their ribs and I'll be like, and then I'd knock on the door, your lights out.

And they're like, yeah. I'm like, great. And then whatever happens in there after that, I'm like, well, the lights are out. It's up to them. Like, child safety means I can't go in there. So there you go. Off they go. And at one point on the Saturday night of camp, I decide I. Went into my room with the other leaders and I was like, I hope they can find us if something happens.

I'm pretty sure I said that to one of the leaders and he was like, yeah, we'll be all right. And then we just turned off the light and then immediately I was a knock on the door and I was one of the, one of our youth, and I was like, hello? And they're like, oh, this kid's hurt his hamstring like.

Go bed.

And so we went and talked to him and he was like, like, what happened to your hamstring? It's like, well, when I bend my leg like this, my hamstring hurts. I'm like, well, well, don't bend your leg like that if any other ways. Does it hurt? No. Okay, well go to sleep. Then We lie down 10, 10 minutes later. Knock on the door.

So and so's vomited. Oh my goodness.

It, it was a little bit maybe like, like toddlers, but um, yeah, like amongst the 30 youth, there was one vomiting, one and yeah, I guess one in every 30 nights one of our kids doesn't vomit, so. I dunno if it's easy or not. There you go. Thanks. Do you have any other reflections on that one because I just overtook over your, your note then.

Did you have any problems with youth being sad about which dormer they were in, or, you know, wanting to sleep next to their buddies? No. No. Well, yes, but what happened when we first arrived at, at V-C-Y-C-I, we we're going deep into my, sorry. So let's my reflect time. Let's pause that then. Let's rewind.

No, no, I wanna, now we're here. Let's just talk about it. And then we can come back to it later. But when we arrived, I looked at the list. They, they give you the list of where everyone's sleeping, and I looked at the list and three of my leaders are listed as being in year seven. And it's like, it's like they're in year seven.

There's two 19-year-old females and one 24-year-old male and they're in a, in a room with other year seven kids. And I was like, I'm not sure this is acceptable. We might need to change this. So we shifted them around and then during that. Process. They said, the people were like, it doesn't matter where you, you sleep, they can just sleep wherever.

So we said, okay, not wherever, but like in any of your rooms that you've got, they can reshuffle. So we were like, all right, you find your rooms, you just let us know what room you're in. And so then I think the girls took that to the extreme. They just picked up mattresses and moved them out of one room into another.

So there was a room of five beds where there were eight of them sleeping. And then, and then I found out. They all ended up in one bed or something, and I was like, I, I don't know how that happened. I don't know what the policy is on that, but I found out at the end of the camp and so I was like, well, that's a thing that happened and we'll just leave, leave that.

So, yeah, so they weren't, they weren't upset about it because we just let them do, do their thing. So.

Yeah, so do you, you had to upset youth because they. They would put we, we didn't assign dormitories. We said, okay, you're free to choose, but maximum of six per dorm, you know, six beds. And yeah, somehow, yeah, there was one guy's dorm that ended up with like 10 or 11 in there. What they put one extra mattress in, but all ended up like spooning each other.

It was a really weird scenario, like these senior guys who were just like, guys, come on. You can cuddle tomorrow. Just, just go to your own bed and sleep there. But yeah. Yeah. One of the things I've noticed actually about young people, I feel like I might've already mentioned this, but teenagers these days particularly guys seem to be more physically affectionate just in, just as friends than certainly guys in my generation are.

Which I, I really like, like on camp there was a lot of guys hugging each other and they had their arms around each other and, yeah, there's just this freedom for people to be in contact with each other physically and not worried that it would give the wrong signals.

Like women have been good at that for a long time and mm, young men are learning how to do it, and men my age will just be constantly starved of physical affection. And, and that, that will be bad. So there you go. There's another, there's a reflection on your spooning boys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true.

Maybe I should have praised them more for it. I think I didn't have a problem with the physical affection. I had a problem with the timing of it and the number of kids in the room. Yeah, yeah. There's always, there's always a calculation that goes on in your head of like, how much should I care about this?

I'm like, it's, it's technically against the rules. Do I need to, do, I wanna make a fuss about it. What, what, what would the, what, what's on the risk assessments? What, what are the parents gonna say if something goes wrong? What's, what's the legal case gonna be? It's just like all these things go through my head and normally I'm like, ah, it's fine.

If everyone's having a good time and is being kind to each other, I usually let it slide, but but maybe I shouldn't. I don't know. There are definitely things I pretend not to notice, and that is a thing that happens quite often in my parenting as well. It's like, oh, oh, I didn't, I didn't see that. Oh, well, if I saw it, I'd have to say something, but I didn't, so it doesn't matter.

Yeah. Anyway, we are, we are 13 minutes in and we haven't hit anything, but that we were planning to talk about. But before we get into the actual podcast, I do well, the, the actual podcast, the actual reflections on youth group. I do have an apology to make because last week, Tim, as you know I spoke about, limbo 'cause Alex was talking about her youth group doing limbo and I gave her this really interesting fact that Limbo had its roots in voodoo rituals and came from Haiti. Turns out that's not true. I re-listened to that podcast that I suggested. It's from a podcast called Every Little Thing, which was around for about five years, was a great podcast.

Then Spotify killed it off for no reason at all, and I'm still upset. But you can find the link to that episode in the last show. But it turns out I listened to that episode and limbo is not from Haiti, it's from Trinidad and Tobago. So that feels. Slightly racist to me that I said that, and I'm hoping it's like, just like offensive in the way that you call someone.

Like you offend someone from Canada by saying they're from the United States, or you offend someone from New Zealand by saying they're from Australia, or someone from Australia by saying they're from Great Britain. I hope it's that kind of offensive rather than just. Any worse kind of offensiveness. So that's, I'm hoping that's what's going on there.

'cause they're all in the same Caribbean islands, I think. I'm pretty sure. Now I'm worried that I'm, I'm gonna get that wrong too. And then I'm gonna have to do another apology next week. So anyway. And the limbo is not from a voodoo ritual, it's from a, a funeral dance that they used to do. And I, they used to do it from.

You start off low and then you go high with this idea of, I think being that they would dance for the soul to move from purgatory to heaven, which make, they didn't go into detail, but that makes me think it's like a Catholic thing. And uh while I'm not a purgatory guy, I don't think that's people to call.

I'm not, I feel like I'm, I'm much more on good terms with importing catho Catholic things, doing Catholic rituals than doing voodoo rituals. Yeah. So there you go. So I, I apologize to all the people of Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago. And anyone else who was upset that I got and limb just, I guess, limbo enthusiasts worldwide.

I apologize to all of you and you should go listen to that podcast 'cause it's a good one. There you go. There's my apology. And hopefully people will stop canceling me now. It's been a really rough week on the social media. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you know, are we, are we banned in Haiti now? Is that the, the consequence or, oh, we, yeah, I think And Trinidad and Tobago, yeah.

Yep. Yeah. All of them. I think the only person who actually knows is my brother-in-law who texted me about it, and I. He was very upset. Anyway, so there you go. Let's talk about youth group to a swing of controversial things. We've gotta talk about your youth group, Tim. So tell me how was youth group on Sunday?

Yeah, good, good. First of all, I would like to clarify that my youth group itself is not controversial. Okay. But the content we looked at may have been controversial. Well starting with the very uncontroversial part. Yes, our activity, so we're carrying on doing our different shops. So this week we had Woolies, and in true Woolies spirit made sure we had we used iHeartRadio to play Woolies Radio and get those important Woolies ads playing in between the various nineties, two thousands songs.

Oh, great. You can, you can listen to it outside of Woolies. You can, you can, if you really want your Woolies radio fix, you can listen to it. Yeah. Great OT leader occupational therapist leader brought along a game that she likes to use with some of her clients which was shopping list. Have you ever played that game?

Have you come across that one? No, I mean, I do shopping, but that's it. Pretty much the same thing. Yeah. You get given a trolley like a little trolley card and you get given a shopping list and you have to go and find all the items and put them in your trolley card that relate to it. And so just to add a twist we had them in groups.

We had all the shopping items upside down stream across the floor on the other end of the hall. And they, the leaders gave one member of the group the shopping item. The, that member had to draw it out, like Pictionary style mm-hmm. Until the other group members guessed what it was, and then they could all go and try and find it.

And the first group to complete their shopping list had to put their full list and trolley and shopping items into a miniature trolley and bring it to the OT leader. So, oh, great. Yeah. Shopping list , that all makes sense to me. Actually. That's, that's just. On, just on brand. So yeah, I, I like it.

It's good. Yeah. Yeah, it was very simple. It worked very well. Felt like a fun game. Yeah. So there's a lot of drawing and running and finding and putting in things. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Good. I like it. Yeah. I might, I may or may not steal that one. Yeah. Good, good. And then what happened did the controversy, is it next?

It is next, yeah. So we went straight from that activity. We're doing one Timothy this term and this week we had our BCM leader lead a panel discussion on one Timothy two, 11 to 15. So when I say a panel BCM Leader, quickly unpack those verses and pointed out parts that might seem controversial, parts that feel very controversial to us.

Just for anyone who might not know what those verses are, do you wanna give us a rundown of the verses? Yeah, sure. So. One Timothy two, 11 to 15. Paul writes, A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man.

She must be quiet for Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not the one deceived. It was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with propriety. So simple. Easy, easy. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty straightforward what Paul's saying.

So what BCM leader did. She didn't just say, here's the only way to interpret it. Rather, she kind of talked through it and said, there's lots of things that are gonna strike you immediately. First of all, though, I. Paul's command is that women should learn. It's very pro women learning in a way which the ancient culture wasn't so pro women learning.

Mm-hmm. But then talked through the remainder of the verses and raised all the different things that people could interpret it as. Yep. Finished off by pointing out that at verse 15, whatever it's saying, cannot be saying that you can be saved outside of Jesus. So women will be saved through childbearing, whatever that means. It can't mean you can be saved by having a baby if you don't believe in Jesus. Like, you can't, can't that. Yeah. Yeah. That's not how it works. Okay. I'll, I'll stop working on that then. So yeah, she, she kind of took through that and then I quickly got up and shared on behalf of kind of our church leadership, what.

Trinity Church Adelaide's position is like that we are a church that falls somewhere on the spectrum of egalitarians, a complementarian interpretation of scripture and practice. So e egalitarian being, every, everybody has equal roles to play. Men and women can do, or everything's open to all people, whatever gender you are.

Yeah. Complimentarian being that we have complimentary roles, but not the same roles. So there are some roles that are available to just men and some roles that are available to just women, but usually the ones available to just women are more biologically. Available to them as opposed to ones which men have, which are usually leadership based roles.

Yeah, yeah. Is that, does that feel like a summation of the positions? Yeah. Very helpful way of putting it. And especially the emphasis on the word role. I think like we yeah. BCM leader got up again after me to say very unequivocally. What's not up for grabs is equality in God's sight or equal value, equal worth.

Mm-hmm. Um, To go both. Egalitarians and complementarians should be able to affirm women and men are equally treasured, valued, loved, saved in Christ. It comes down to role, what we can do and yeah. Understanding of particularly this one Timothy two part, but you know, a few, few other verses across the course of scripture that.

lean one way or the other. Yeah, so I, I shared our church has a complimentarian leaning. It's, it's funny 'cause I feel like again said it's a spectrum. We're kind of closer to the midline than like reading some pretty far see complimentarians like very, very hardcore complimentarians. Yeah. I feel like I don't have as much in common with you as I do with some of the more moderate egalitarians.

Yeah, just that kind of funny position on the line. Yeah. So, so for your church, does that mean there's like the position of like, say senior minister is not open to women. What about preaching in church? Can women do that? So the official position of our. Church is that senior minister?

Yes. Is only for men preaching to a mixed congregation of adults on a Sunday. I think the official word is only men. Mm-hmm. You know, what, what that looks like going forward? I don't know in the longer term, but that's, that's certainly kind of the, the way that this verse is interpreted as like the one Timothy two 12.

Yep. It's fair to say that we, we've had some preaching over the last, you know, couple of years where there's been a man and a woman up the front. Yep. And it's not just married couple either, but two theologically trained pastors who work for our church co preaching or presenting or whatever the word you wanna use for it to our mixed adult congregation.

Yeah. Yeah. But by and large, yeah. You'd say. Qualified male who's preaching to the mixed congregation. Yep. But then I think you said last week or last time we chatted, you said like spaces like youth ministry and kids ministry, those spaces are open to women teaching and leading. Yep.

Yep. Great. So that's where your church sits, and then you had a, and you had a panel. Yes. So BCM leader then kinda got back up and introduced our panelists. So we had our membership pastor who's a woman I. Speaking on the panel and sharing kind of the, the complementarian understanding of one Timothy two and scripture.

Mm-hmm. And we had retired leader number one. I'm calling him retired leader one in case I have more in the future. But also to clarify, he is not former leader. 'cause when I say former leader, that sounds like he was stood down or um, died. Like he's, he's ceased being a leader in, in. Inappropriate circumstances or whatever it is.

So retired leader, inappropriate to die. Yeah. Yeah. Unceremoniously stood down or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So retired leader. Yep. Yep. Gloriously saw out seven years with his boys and saw 'em all the way through, through and honorable discharge. Yeah. Yeah. So he was kind of sitting on the egalitarian side and, and kinda sharing his views and how he's come to those views from scripture.

Okay. So That, that ran for about 40 minutes or so. So we had some set questions that BCM leader had kind of reflected on and discussed with them to talk on. We stole your idea for running a panel. So we had we had the Let 'em Cook card, which neither of them played, but we did have two rebuttal kind of cards and they both played them.

Yeah. I wanna come back and actually answer that. Yep, yep. Yeah, so about 20 minutes or so of them talking to their, their views and unpacking one Timothy two through complementarian versus egalitarian lens. And then about 20 minutes or so of questions that youth had asked. So somewhere asked last week they wrote down questions in a question box and other ones they asked live on the day.

Yeah. And how, what was the vibes from your youth on this? Kind of mix. So our younger ones, this was like the first time they'd ever heard about it or thought about it, especially our junior boys. Not, not been a big point that they've thought about too much before. You know, like one of my junior boys last week who wasn't there yesterday, but he said wait, is God sexist?

Like, that was his initial reaction to this passage. So it's like, oh good. You know, it's kind of rubs us the wrong way. So. Yep. Yeah. Whereas like our, our seniors, especially like our middle and senior girls, like really engaged, really, you know, thinking it through and yeah. Wrestling with it. And did you get angry thinking it through or just thinking it through?

I think a, a bit of angry thinking it through is probably fair to say. Yeah. Um. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I mean one of, one of my reflections, kind of just skiing forward to that was I think some of our youth, and particularly like thinking about some of the girls and why they had the reaction they did I think we didn't do much work on explaining our cultural context and how that's kind of influenced us here and now.

Mm-hmm. So some of our. I think their initial reaction was to go like this, this really grates on me. So they didn't, you know, the, the kind of frog and fish sort of metaphor. You don't ask a, you know, you put a frog in boiling water. You don't put a frog and boiling water. You put it in water, slowly boil it, and then it doesn't realize that it's gonna die.

Or, you know, the fish, you don't ask a fish what's water because they have no idea. Like I think our youth are very shaped by the cultural context they're in. And for a, a good number of them, this is probably their first time really having that confronted from the Bible. Like a, a kind of wait, the Bible says that like a kind of, you know, reaction and, and to go.

Yeah. I think I kind of wonder, would it been worthwhile priming that a bit more going, here's the cultural air we've breathed and how it shapes us so that when we come to this part of scripture it's, it's gonna really great on us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and like, it's interesting I think thinking about it because if you're thinking culturally for, for our young people, it's not often not even a question.

Like of course everyone can do everything and then they might not register. That verse is in the Bible or they might get to it. And then they go, what, what the heck is this? Or Yeah. Or people might say something like, about women in ministry and they don't register. Oh, that's a question about what ministries are open to women.

That, that's been my experience. And particularly in the context. I mean, we yeah, like if, if it's been brought up, it's just been blank stairs. From our, from our youth. But also the, I think the, like the cultural, like we have our, our secular culture, our, well maybe our, our wider culture that impacts on how we view the roles of men and women and what's, what men and women can and should be able to do.

And then there's the church culture that impacts us and particularly probably impacts us as leaders. A lot more so like ha having done a lot of ministry in Sydney, where particularly in Anglican circles, there's a lot of complementarianism and then moving down to Melbourne where everything's very egalitarian.

It's been interesting, like the question of how do you deal with these verses was a much bigger question when we're in Sydney. Mm-hmm. And then we get to Melbourne. It's been rarely talked about. It's what I've got here. Because it's like, it's not even, it's just like, oh, well we just, we just get on with things and everyone can do everything, and off we go.

That's just the way it works itself out, and I spent a lot of time wrestling with it in Sydney and then since coming here and doing youth ministry, where I haven't bothered to wrestle with it that much because I've been like, well. It's I, I'm pretty happy for men and women to do everything in youth ministry, and I'm not a senior minister.

I don't have to choose senior ministers. I do have to work with senior ministers who are men and who are women. And I have churches with a range of views in the youth group. So I'm like, oh, we'll just, we'll just leave that one, leave that one alone. And so it's been, it's been quite nice not having to deal with it.

But it means if I ever have to teach on one Timothy, two, then I'll have to have to figure it out all again. Yep, yep. Very fair. Yeah. , Was there fallout after the discussion? Not particularly. Like, I mean, one of the, the things that I feel a little bit comforted by is to go, for a lot of them, this, this was the first conversation they've had, but for all of them, it's not the last time they're gonna.

Wrestle with this or, or have this conversation. So, you know, in one sense if, you know, for any fallout, for any further conversations that need to happen, it's kinda like, well, our church is just about to start preaching through it. So most of our youth will get that on the Sunday. And we've also got these like deep dive nights or hot topics nights or whatever you wanna call them, where our network director will come and kind of talk through men and women in ministry and.

Yeah. Again, a chance to dive deeper into that. So yeah. Hopefully chances for that, like I, I chatted with a couple of our senior girls and I'll keep following up with them in the, the week ahead. Yeah. Just to, to hear how they're going wrestling through it. Yeah. Yeah. And being that you are a, in a Complementarian church, are there things that your church does to actively encourage women in ministry, that's a question only because I've, my experience is that when you say there are some roles that are not open to women, I. You have to work extra hard to make other roles available because it can seem like everything is closed off.

Mm mm And you wanna be, I think, proactively in encouraging women to know that they have a role and they have a voice and they're valuable members of the community. Because whatever message you're trying to give, the message that people can hear is we're, we're not as. Our voices aren't as important. Hmm.

Yeah. Oh. I mean, you know, I just talked about one of the panelists our membership pastor, who's Yep. You know, been on the STAR team for what, two, three years now. I'm trying to remember. But yeah, she's, she's been a great encouragement. One of my former ministry apprentices, yeah, had a, a male and a female ministry apprentice over the last couple of years.

And they're both at Bible college now, but again, she was very involved with the youth and spoke at our youth camp last year. Like she's, she's continued to have a big role with them. And then, yeah, across our church, our current staff team, we've only got one senior female staff member who's the membership pastor.

We've got. Six people at Bible college. Two of them are women who are like, kind of attached to our church. Yeah. In that sense across our network wide, like we've, we've had both men and women doing ministry apprenticeships or MTS on Eastern states. Yeah. And yeah, we've got, I think. Two women employed kind of full-time in other network churches at the moment, and a few women employed a little bit less than that in, in kind of ministry pastoring roles.

But yeah, our, our church is a weird beast because we're old and big and have lots of people. So we've, we've kind of been able to do some of that position specific stuff better. Yeah. Whereas there have been, you know, across our network when you've got a, a small church with 120 people or so and or less and yeah, only enough funds to employ one person that's gonna be a, a senior pastor and 'cause we're complimentarian, that's gonna be a male.

Yeah. Yeah. That makes it trickier. But, but you, what you are doing is encouraging women who you see with ministry gifts to. Get trained and to, to do the roles that they can like doing, like having them preach in at your youth group on camp and be ministry apprentices and go to Bible college and do all the rest.

Like do as much as they can. It seems like you are. Continue to encourage them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think the, you know, the positive side of Complementarianism, which Yeah, I try, I tried to make sure I said clearly about our church was the our approach to complementarianism means we think both men and women have.

Unneeded to understand the full kind of revelation of God. Like we, we can't do it just with men alone. We need men and women engaging with the scripture and helping to mutually edify and encourage and, and all those other big important things that we do with the scriptures. And that our church is poorer if we don't have both men and women involved in teaching God's word.

Yeah, yeah. To kind of go down that line, to go, that's, that's what our conviction of complementarianism means on the ground. Yeah. All right, well that's that sounds like an interesting afternoon. It'd be interesting to hear if anything else comes from, from that discussion. What, yeah. Did you have any other reflections that you wanted to share apart from like, setting the cultural context uh, from them?

Yeah. I mean, one more small thing if we were to do this again, was we had. Had sheets just for people to take notes. But it was kind of a hindsight thing going, we really should have had like a handy definitions chart at the top and like a Oh yeah, yeah. Couple of bible references from each of our panelists.

'cause we had them in advance. We could have just put them on the sheets so that the kids could go back and look 'em up for themselves and didn't have to go, wait, what did egalitarianism mean? Wait, what was complementarianism like? Yeah. Yeah. Having, having a printout, having something that they could take home or whatever.

That, that would've been good. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That, that was my week. How about you? You went to the KICK or VCYC, right? Yeah, Victoria Christian Youth Convention. So we went away for a whole weekend which was really fun. We got, we had 30 youth come along and nine liter, so it was a pretty good ratio.

Probably this to youth and I think one of the biggest groups I've taken away, mid two thousands I was, I had a youth group that was getting to a similar size, but our camps were always a bit smaller than. People who turned up to youth. So I was like, oh man, I've gotta take away a big bunch. Am I prepared?

And I, I kind of got there in the end. So we, we all went away. We got some, like, we got lifts up with parents and, and most, and leaders did a lot of driving. And then we made it up to camp. We sorted ourselves out. It was a bit tough 'cause we all arrived at different times and. Trying to talk to the group and tell them what's expected or where we're gonna meet or how it's all gonna work was tricky because we left at different times from different places in different cars, and we arrived at different times to the same place.

But trying to track people down was difficult. So it felt like it took at least until Saturday for us to find our feet. And one significant thing that happened on Friday is, we went and dropped our stuff in our rooms, and then the main meeting was starting pretty much as people were dropping their stuff in their rooms.

And so everyone kind of went into the auditorium and I pulled out my sheet to make sure that everyone was there. And I found every youth, except for the very last youth on the list, I just. Could not find him. And so I turned to one of the leaders like, can, can you see this kid? And he was like, no. He looked around, I couldn't see him.

And so then we walked through the auditorium, couldn't find him. We were kind of going up and down the aisles trying to look at every kid, couldn't find him. Went back to our youth group, was like, has anyone seen this kid? And they're like, no. What? And they all said to look worried. I was like holding off, telling them.

You know, if sometimes you can ask teenagers things or they can get a whiff that there might be some kind of crisis happening, and then it. Boil over very quickly. But they didn't, they didn't actually stress too much about it, which was nice. But still couldn't find them. So then I went and talked to one of the people on the leadership team from the Kick who who I'm friends with.

And I mean, he was just the person I ran into who was near the stage because I was like, where am I gonna find someone? And he was like, oh, well you probably can't announce it from stage. At the moment, but we can talk to the volunteer person. So he texted the volunteer person, she came and found us. She was like, who?

Who's this kid? And I showed her a picture, and showed her the hoodie he'd be wearing. And so then she called her volunteers and they just appeared out of nowhere. Like 20 people were like, alright, what are we doing? And then they searched the whole campsite with pictures of this kid, I'm starting to stress out.

I was like, what if we can't find him? What do we do? Like when do we call the police? And I've got pictures of me calling his parents. I can't find your child. And they start stressing out. Anyway, I was fairly sure he was in the auditorium somewhere, but we just couldn't find him until, until about an hour or so in maybe a bit over an hour.

one of our youth leaders was like, is that him over there? And then we had a look and it was, he just kind of walked in and sat down with a different group. And because he was the shortest kid, you know, his group, and he was wearing a hat so he couldn't see his hair. And so when they were standing up, we couldn't see him.

And when he was sitting down, he was kind of slouched in his seat wearing a hat, so it was very hard to find him. But we found him and I was very relieved. So at that point I was like, well, we've gotta get a better system for keeping track of youth. So that. That doesn't happen. 'Cause he didn't do anything wrong.

He didn't, he didn't even hear, I never told them, how do you go into the auditorium? Who should you sit with? So he just went in and sat down 'cause that's where it was meant to be. So we were a bit clearer on what the expectations were and it's a bit clearer with the leaders about who they should be keeping track of and with the youth about who.

Is keeping track of them. And then once that was done, it was just a really kind of fun weekend. There was the usual, there was a lot of singing. We had teaching from Sam Albury. If you know who Sam Albury is, then you'll know that there might be some controversy, but he actually didn't have much say, not like he is like.

He plays down the controversy as much as like, he's not a controversial guy. He's very gentle. But he is a man who is same sex attracted, but is has chosen to live a celibate life. 'cause he leaves. That's what the Bible teaches about how you should deal with your same sex attraction, which you.

Can imagine is somewhat controversial in our cultural moment. And so like that was re it was, I think he mentioned it once in one, one talk and just a little bit. But, and he didn't even talk about his own story. He just kind of said, this is why the Bible teaches that marriage is between a man and a.

But it meant that we were like, okay, well we should probably have this conversation with some of the youth. So we, we said to them, if you want to have a chat on Saturday night, we said we have some time altogether. And we kind of shared about how the camp had been. And what was really good was that the things that they were cheering about the camp was not, you know, this, here's the stuff that we found difficult or confusing, or.

Made us annoyed, but they were just hearing how they were sure of their faith, how they went to workshops, which, where they got taught the gospel and why they could be assured of their salvation. And how spending time with each other was really valuable and singing together was really valuable and all that stuff, which was great, which I, I really appreciated.

But we also had some space to have a conversation, so we had a conversation with a few, a few youth about how do you know particularly around the same sex attraction stuff how do you make decisions about what you think the Bible teaches and what should, should you do in response to that?

And we encourage them to not just go with what, either what people told them was true, whether Christians or not Christians, but to actually look at the Bible and. Try to be obedient to what the Bible teaches. And also and also to look for churches where they know that anybody is welcome, whatever their beliefs, whatever their sexual orientation.

Because we, 'cause Jesus loves and welcomes all people. So that was a good conversation to have. We might have to have, have it some more, but that's okay. That's one that we get, to, keep having and should keep having. Yeah, so it was really kind of fun weekend. Alex was there. So if you heard her talk on the podcast last week, she talked about how.

One of her leaders is very excited to see Sam Albury. And Alex turns out she got to do a Bible reading and, and Sam Albury complimented her on her Bible reading. So that was pretty exciting, I think for everyone, maybe except her leader who he told me that he was jealous of her. So yeah, but I didn't actually see, I saw Alex in passing, but I don't actually think we talked, even though we're co podcasts.

Hosts. Yeah, we just texted each other. She's Sam Albury's approval now. So maybe she's gonna launch off, do her own thing with Sam Albury now, you know, it's, I think she, yeah, I think she's probably was like, well, yeah, now that me and Sam are tight, we, I don't need to talk to the Plebs anymore. No. I mean, everything, I didn't, I didn't talk to Sam Bury at all, but everything I saw of him or heard about him was that he was a very.

Kind and humble man and yeah, definitely not, not a star. Which is. Which is what we like. Alex on the other hand now a huge star and no, she, she, it's just that like, the thing about these, you go away with these things where there's all these people, you know, who you're friends with and they're all running youth groups and you're like, you're like, oh, we could catch up.

And you never get to talk to each other at all. 'cause you spend your whole time chasing your youth around and trying to make things happen. And you see each other in passing maybe. And go, hi. Yeah, you don't get any substantial conversations at all. And if you do get them, you just hope that they're with your youth 'cause that's who you're there with.

So, yeah, I guess my reflection is it's good to go away together. Good to spend time singing together, praying together, having times where the Bible is taught, and having space to talk about things, which can be tricky. But even more importantly that the tricky things are not the main thing, which is what I keep trying to emphasize with our young people is like, I.

Whatever. The tricky thing is, like, not like I had a lot of conversations with some kids from different youth group after a seminar around about archeology and the Old Testament and violence in the Old Testament, and I just wanted to keep coming back to the fact that these are important things to discuss, but they're not the important thing.

Like the important thing is who is Jesus? Did he die and rise again? is he Lord? And if that's all true, then what do we do in response to that? And not let the lesser questions dictate our response to Jesus, but let our response to Jesus dictate how we respond to the lesser questions. And it's just nice to see that that was reflected in how the weekend went.

So I am thankful. So there you go. There's my reflections. I think. Do you have any questions? Yeah, sorry. You better not have any questions for me. Alright. Like, one last serious. One, one more reflecty. One the less serious one. Was this the launch weekend for your new hoodies? Oh yeah. The hoodies.

Yeah. We had the hoodies and they were a real hit, so it was really. Great to seeing them wearing the hoodies. And the girl who designed the hoodies she got one and then her parents got one to share between them, which is just really nice to see them being pleased for their daughter's hoodie.

Design success. Yeah, and it's a great hoodie. I really like it. And it was really fun seeing all our youth wearing the hoodies. And now we've got three years worth of hoodies, which means you can wear a different one on each day of VCYC.

So yeah, there you go. Yes. Yep. Yep. The hoodies, they're going well. They, they've launched well I saw here and I saw Alex's youth group with their beanies and they, they were pretty good beanies. I would. Yeah, I would say they looked, they was understated. They weren't, like, another youth group has some very bright beanies, but they're just very relaxed, kind of, you know, not too much attention grabbing beanies, which is kind of fits in with the vibe of their youth group.

They're not a, they're not a show youth group. They just get the job done, which. So it was a good beanie. Works for them. Yep, yep, yep. And the pompoms, they live up to the hype. That's, that's the big question. They're good pompoms. Yeah, they do have Nice, you know, so yeah, like pom understated pompoms too.

Like they're gray pompoms if I remember. So. Ooh. Looks comfy Soft pompoms. You know, a little bit, little bit fun as well, you know, so yeah, five stars for the dp, youth Beanies, man Beanies, the Sam Albury endorsement. It's, it's all coming up for DP Youth. Yeah. My other question, second question for, yeah.

Yeah. So last term, your group had, like, your church had a little getaway just as your church youth. Yeah. How would you compare like the kind of the vibe to between a individual youth group going getaway compared to the group going away together to a big thing like, you know, wins, losses.

Yeah, I was thinking about that, like the, I think the wins are going away when you go away to a big event like this. Like it's just a really kind of exciting event. And so in terms of like, how do you get ultimate mountaintop experience as a teenager, it's an event like generally. And, and I don't think there's anything wrong with these kind of.

Higher excitement events. As long as they're not the, what, you know, you're building your faith upon this, these experiences, but just, you know, these experiences that are really exciting are good to have, but because it's. Because you spend a lot of time kind of trying to fit in with this schedule that's been dictated to you by the event.

And there's like our girls made friends with some guys from another youth group, which was fun. Like I didn't, there wasn't, I wasn't worried about that, just having a good time. But you don't get to. Build that identity within your youth group as well as you do when it's just you. And so, yeah, when we all went away together, we, it was a much less kind of hyped up event deliberately, so but it was probably better at building our identity just as a group together in terms of, because we just hung out together and spent a lot of time doing low key stuff together.

But I think in terms of what builds identity, like having a shared experience that's exciting to some degree builds our identity outside of the event. Because we talk about, oh, at VCYC, this is that, this is great, this is great. So they have a shared experience of something that's really exciting as opposed to our youth camp, which is not super exciting.

We could hype that up a bit more, but I'm just not that kind of youth pastor. So yeah, maybe, maybe we'll get someone else on our team who loves to hype it up. The hype, the hype master. Maybe 9-year-old youth leader, maybe? I don't think he would classify himself as the hype master either. No, no, no.

None of us have, we don't have any particularly hypey youth leaders. Yeah. And that might be a reflection of the people who I pick to be youth leaders. I don't try and do that. Or maybe a reflection of our churches. I'm not sure. Anyway. Yeah. I'm not opposed to hype leaders. They just, maybe they're opposed to me.

We'll, we'll see. All right. It's been, it's been a very long podcast. It has. It Hass been, been so much controversy. And apologies. So we should probably wrap things up. What are you doing next week, Tim? Yep. So on Sunday, BCM leader is running us through our activity. This week's shop is Rebel Sport.

So Great. And because we don't have a talk, it's our chill out week, it's that kind of, you know, hang out in small groups sort of time of that term. Mm-hmm. It's most likely gonna be chair netball. I remember this chair. Netball? Yes. Chair netball. So an old favorite, old favorite. Indeed. So yeah, that'll be pretty good.

How about you, Tom? What's this week got in store for you? This week is a talent night or a variety night, I think is what someone suggests that we shouldn't call it talent night because it. Maybe implies competition or something. Or maybe I, maybe I call it a talent quest and so, or a talent show.

Anyway, whatever it was, they suggested a variety night and I was like, okay, we'll call it that. But I've been struggling to remember to call it that. And I'm not running it. I'll just have a leader who is in charge and so I'll, I'll just see what happens. So it'll be interesting. We're not entirely sure how many youth are going to bring along.

Some variety to show us. Um, I know one girl was suggesting she bring her flute and and another one. Another youth was like, can we do anything? I was like, yeah, anything. And he was like, okay. And, but I don't know what anything he wanted to show us was. And someone else was like, we should do a band.

And then another guy was like, nah. And so I, I don't know, we might just be one solo flute performance and then that would be the night we'll just send everyone home early. So we will have to make some plans for what we do if there's not a lot of, not a lot of, I was gonna say not a lot of talent on display.

Not a lot of variety, not a lot of variety shown to us. But it might mean that we pull out Ed so's idea of the testimony could be talent and testimony night or something of variety and I don't know, I don't know what the V word that. You could talk vocalizing your experiences night Anyway, so, so we'll see.

We'll see what happens. So you go, that's what's coming up for us. It'll be fun and you can all wait to see what happens. We're hitting about an hour, so it's definitely time to wrap this thing up. So unless there's anything else you wanna say, should I start the music? Start the music. Alright, well everyone, thanks for listening to the Youth Group podcast.

If you have any questions or suggestions or directions to Barry Treasure, remember to send them us. Ha to us. Ah hall, send 'em to us. hello@youthgrouppodcast.com. You can find all my books and my other podcasts and photos of me@tomfrench.com au. You can find Tim's other podcast, family Perspectives in all the usual podcast places.

Don't forget to leave us a rating and review because it helps you to find us. And uh, that's it from us. We'll see you next week. Keep loving Jesus and loving young people. Bye-bye. See ya. Nailed it again!