The Youth Group Podcast

Tom: Hey there, podcast listeners and welcome to the Youth Group Podcast, where a couple of youth group leaders try to figure out. How to do youth group better? My name is Tom. I'm an author and a speaker and a youth leader, and I'm here in Melbourne. And today joining me all the way from Sydney is Lauren Mahaffey.

She's a youth minister. She's a ocean pools connoisseur, and she is here to talk to us. How are you, Lauren?

Lauren: I am good. Thanks, Tom. How are you?

Tom: I am pretty good. Yes. I was just telling you before that I got my 360 degree feedback and the lowest, my lowest rating in my feedback was that I, I don't exercise, so that was entirely accurate. So that was

Lauren: That's so interesting that that's a factor in there. I guess the, it's trying to be very comprehensive by nature, but yeah, there you go. Well, of all things to not rate highly on, that's probably the most dispensable.

Tom: Yeah.

Lauren: done. You.

Tom: we don't see Jesus doing much exercise in, in the gospels, so

Lauren: that's true. He does retreat to quiet places a lot. I wonder if they're uphill sometimes. 'cause you know, he goes up on mountain sites quite a bit too, and so it's all that incidental exercise, you know, that's what it was about back in the day.

Tom: Yeah. That's, well, that's what I do. I do a lot of incidental exercise.

Lauren: Hmm hmm.

Tom: That's, that's my, my dream. I. Just to get fit by lifting small children a lot

Lauren: I mean that I, I feel like a lot of my friends who have little kids, they have their best upper body strength of anyone I know. So I think there's something to it,

Tom: yeah, I'm probably, probably the strongest I've ever been in my life because I never did weights before and now I lift two small weights every day. They're more than weights. They're, they're actual humans, but.

Lauren: yeah, yeah. You didn't just have children so that it was easier than going to the gym. 'Cause that would've No, no.

Tom: and it's, it's even harder to get out of your parenting contract than your gym contract. So,

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty, pretty tightly locked in one, isn't it?

Tom: and you just, you just went on a holiday where you went

Lauren: I did. Yes. Yeah, I went on a bit of a, took myself on a tour of ocean pools, from Sydney North up towards Byron Bay. So that was pretty cool. I just, I'm firmly of the opinion that an ocean pool is the best way to experience the ocean, because unless you're a surfer, you love the waves and that makes sense.

But sometimes I wanna be like up to my neck in beautiful salt water and feeling relaxed rather than getting pummeled by waves. And so it is just the best way to experience it. And I had that realization about a year ago and then yeah, when I was looking for just something different to do for a holiday yeah, booked this little converted van to sleep in and stop at all these different little towns that had nice ocean pools.

And I got home just in time to not get caught in the floods. It's been wild hearing about how that's gone. Mm-hmm.

Tom: Yeah, it's been huge. And well, I'm glad you've made it and I hope all our North Coast listeners are okay. I don't know how many of them we have, if we have any, if we have, if you are our listener, we hope you're okay. And if, if you're not, send us an email. We can't help you, but we'd hear, we'll listen to your story if

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah.

Tom: care,

Lauren: Mm. We could pray as well.

Tom: oh yeah. Okay, good. Yep. That's good. I'm glad you are

Lauren: The SES might not be doing that for you, so we can kind of collaborate there.

Tom: Yeah. Yes. ES can help you with tarps and stuff, and we can do some praying.

Lauren: Yep.

Tom: I actually, I actually have prayed for people who sent us emails.

Lauren: Yeah.

Tom: all by myself.

Lauren: Hmm.

Tom: and not even, 'cause I was gonna turn up on my 360 degree feedback. So that's, that shows you what a real Christian I actually am.

Lauren: True faithfulness where it's unseen, except by your podcast audience.

Tom: yeah.

We don't have that many listeners, so I think it's okay

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. It's not too braggy just yet. If we really have a surge of numbers, that might change.

Tom: Yeah, then I'll, then I'll stop talking about all my good deeds.

Lauren: Yeah. Good.

Tom: Um, Yeah. Well, let's talk about youth group and then I've got some emails to talk about and and that'll be our show. I think There's not too much going on. So how was youth group this your, is this your first youth group or your first podcast for the term?

Lauren: Yes. Yeah, that sounds like that sounds right. Yep. Yeah, I think I did one right at the end of last term.

Tom: yeah, so tell us what is, what's this term and what was last week?

Lauren: Well, this term we're doing a series on the Psalms and we actually kicked off the first week with a little workshop night where each leader or most of the leaders prepared like a 20 minute workshop on p some aspect of like how to read the Bible for yourself and different methods for doing that, or different resources that you can use.

And so that was a good, like, experiment with that format. 'Cause we hadn't done something like that on a Friday night. And so that was just a, you know, one-off really kickoff to the term having kind of two little elective time slots where kids could pick one out of three options in each slot.

To have a think about yeah, different methods for reading the Bible or some help to think about yeah, prayer in their own. Daily life. And so picked off with that. But then since then, we've just had a few talks from the Psalms and particularly trying to like, you know, we're only doing seven or eight talks in the series, so just trying to pick a handful that kind of cover.

The, like, range of emotional expression and experience of faith and of life with God. So that particularly over the term, we can just kind of show that yeah, life with God, it's, it makes sense of all seasons of life. Faith does it's not just something for the good times that kind of crumbles when life's hard.

But that there's yeah, these pockets of the Psalms that really give voice to those times when we yeah, feel most destabilized. And as, as well give voice to yeah, where to direct our joy and praise when we recognize the the good things we've been given.

Tom: That's good.

Lauren: Yeah, so that's kind of been the kickoff to the term.

We did have a visit from best friend of the podcast, Chris Morphy, in week two which was excellent. Yeah. He spoke on Psalm one to kick that series off and yeah, used slides in a really good, interesting way that I wouldn't mind trying to copy you sometime and just having a Guernsey with it because I don't.

Tend to use slides very often myself. But my, my boss here, the rector at our church is a real pro at slides that really add to the dimensions of the communication. And I feel like Chris did the same, but in a quite a different way. And so yeah, I'm just keen to like. Put a bit more energy and thought into how to use visuals Well, given that, yeah, you wanna harness the fact that.

Kids' attention spans are both like short, but also stimulated by visual input, I guess. And so, yeah, that, that gave me a little something to think about. Did I put slides together for my talk last Friday? No. But maybe next time, no. Hopefully next time. I think coming back from my holiday, I was just kind of ready to.

Get something together but not flush with extra time for yeah. Putting, putting slides together,

Tom: I always find. I find that slides like I, I like the idea of them, but I'm usually so late in my preparation, like it's all so last minute that I don't have time for slides. And then if I am doing a talk for a second time, then I have some space for slide creation. But yeah, if not yeah, unless it's like crucial to the talk that they need some visual.

Lauren: Hmm.

Tom: Information. The slides just don't happen as much as I would like them to.

Lauren: Yeah, yo. I think actually my hunch with watching how Chris' talk, how he used the slides and what I know to be true of the, my boss here at Summerhill is that they probably like, at very least thinking of the ideas for the slides, if not actually also putting them together along the way of the writing process.

And so that kind of, it would mean that it's it's not kind of this like optional extra add-on, but it's actually like they yeah. 'cause it's so easy to kind of like put it in the, not this time bucket when it's the last thing you do. Whereas I think, you know, Chris seemed to really use the slides as his prompt rather than speaking from a script.

And so that. I think it was a really effective way of being a bit more engaged with the kids and engaging them by just having like a simple word or phrase overlaid a, a relevant picture or something that tied kind of different ideas together. And then, yeah, I think what Steve does here is very effective in that he will kind of.

Use a lot of like graphic design techniques to kind of like put together something that visually communicates a concept as opposed to just like putting, like repeating the idea in words on a screen or yeah, just chucking up a photo of something only, but he'll kind of like add elements into an image so that it becomes like a visual analogy or something.

Tom: Yeah.

Lauren: I think in both cases there, like I know that, you know, my boss will kind of, if he needs a break from writing, he'll make a few slides for the bit that he just wrote or whatever, and just kind of like pop back and forth between the two modes of preparing. Anyway, that's a lot of waffle about slides really.

But I think there's, there's an art to doing it well and that is not an art I'm yet skilled in. But yeah, it was good to have Chris along and kick off the term some of the kids knew him from the school he teaches at or just other things nearby. So yeah, that was lovely for them to kind of be hearing from someone different that they're fond of for those who already knew him.

And yeah, we had some good chats after his talk. And then, yeah, I was away for one week. So one of the other leaders did talk on Psalm 23. And then this past Friday I was doing the talk on Psalm 42. Although I'll tell you about the other parts of youth group first since they came first the so, well, one thing that I've mentioned on this podcast before as like a cute vibe at our youth group has actually changed. So we often from like when we started doing youth group on Friday nights the kids got really into having tea at youth group and we'd buy like all these different flavors and they, it would just be like this long queue of kids wanting tea.

But we've just noticed in the last few months that there's like only a handful of them who are still into it and quite often. One of the, like year nine or 10 boys will just kind of sidle up after the tea's been served and ask if there's enough milk in him to just have a whole glass of milk. And so, which is fine, it makes sense, but yeah, I think we just decided uh, it was like appealing to a particular set of kids at a particular time.

But it's a lot of faff if only 10 of them are gonna want it. So switch to doing hot chocolate and that's a. Long preamble about something that's quite peripheral. Just to explain why I missed the first game. 'cause I was like making the hot chocolate and working out what's the ratio that works for making a big jug of this.

But they were pretty pumped about the hot chocolate. Yeah, so, so they did a, like a active game inside, at the hall. And then the second activity. It was just absolute. I have these moments often as a as the leader of the youth team where I'm just so grateful that there's people in the team who have the skills that I lack.

I. That people might think are like conventional of a youth leader or youth minister. So the guy who was MCing decided that the activity should be doing what he called a Psalm slam. And so he, had the kids break into groups and write a rap inspired by one of the Psalms. And then they had to come in and do like their little rap battle of it.

But the whole, like, I. The whole thing just really came together so well and would've been a total awkward flop if it weren't for like a few details. This leader thought to do. So, like he borrowed a smoke machine from a friend and we went into this like small dark kind of room at the back of the church hall.

And he had like a couple of colored lights in his smoke machine and then he had got. I got into chat GPT and asked it to write him a rap based on I think it was Psalm 23, and he kind of roped one of the other leaders into like, doing it with him, like a rap battle at the start. And they just really threw themselves into it.

And yeah, the kids were having a great time just finding it like. I think they were like, impressed, surprised, and just found it hilarious. So yeah, that was cool and just the kind of thing that I would, I'm like way too self-conscious of a person to pull that off. So yes, then the kids got way into it and, each did their wraps and there was like a couple, you know, for more reserved boys who just pulled out some very impressive little like just little rap moments that you wouldn't have expected from 'em. And yeah,

Tom: than chat? GPT?

Lauren: I think, I think in the end actually most groups just like worked out how to. They just used the psalm, but kind of set it to like, read it out to the rhythm of a rap rather than actually like rewriting something.

So yeah. I think chat PT did quite well. And I did put, 'cause my group wanted to do PSM 150 and I did put that into chat GPT, but in the end, I think the girls were just a bit more confident just doing the psalm because chat JT like really expanded it and wrote quite a long wrap. And. That just felt a bit overwhelming, I think.

So we went with just the farm itself. Yeah, so that was cool. And it was nice to see like there was a couple of visitors there and one boy who had returned after coming along the week before for his Christian studies assignment. There's a couple of Anglican schools around here who. Set an assignment for kids, I think usually in year nine where they have to visit a church or a youth group and then do a little report about it.

And yeah. So, you know, that happens each year and we've not often had a lot of return visitors, so it was exciting to see this one kid back last week. I think it was probably helped by the fact that. There's quite a number of boys from that school in his grade who, who are at our youth group. And so kind of coming along, having a fun night and seeing that so and so who he's friendly with is there, seemed to make it appealing enough.

So yeah, as we were doing the Psal Slam, it was just nice to see those kids. Yeah, feeling like seeing that they were included in groups and feeling at ease doing something that's a bit, kind of putting yourself out there. But that the group is very supportive and things like that. So yeah, seeing how that made it easy for those kids to feel like they could just get up and have a bit of fun with this whole activity.

Tom: Yeah, that sounds like a great activity. I would.

Lauren: it was, yeah, it

Tom: I would enjoy that.

Lauren: Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, so that was great. And then the had the hot chocolate and usually just before the talk we might get a kid to do an interview or Yeah. Some kind of little segment where there's like a prayer activity or something. And this time around we'd asked one of the kids, I think we've interviewed him, like just generally before. So the leader organizing it said, oh, is there maybe a, a Christian book you've read in the last little while that you would recommend to people? I. And I can ask you a few questions about that. And so again, best friend of the podcast, Chris Morphy, got a good look in there because this kid recommended one of his books.

Although I believe, I actually, I missed the first part of the interview because I was serving the last little bits of the hot chocolate. But I think it, it honestly, people are probably hearing this being like. Girl, it doesn't take that long to make hot chocolate. But it does when it's for 30 people.

Anyway.

Tom: yeah, I, it would take me a long time.

Lauren: Yeah. So I didn't catch what book it was, but I did hear him say, oh, by Chris Ew, who came the other week. But apparently he did recommend one of the ones that's meant to be out of print. But I think he had a copy, so he was like, happy to share it around. But yeah, it was good.

Just, I think we haven't done as much encouraging of kids to think about reading Christian books as a habit as probably would be good. So hopefully there might be some more opportunities to kind of recommend books to kids and then yeah, get some of them sharing with us how they found them.

Yeah.

Tom: Yeah, that's good. You, if you want, you know, give them chocolate, which is what we do for a book

Lauren: Yeah.

Tom: It, it doesn't work that well, but you could try it with

Lauren: I guess, yeah. We, we did, I stole your idea of fredos for kids who bring their Bible. We did that last term, but that does feel like bring, your Bible is much lower of an ask than reading a whole book. So I'd have to give them like a lot of chocolate properly for that to fly. Or it just wouldn't work very well.

Although you never know. Some kids, they'll do anything for free chocolate. Yeah.

Tom: Sometimes the motivation doesn't match up with the reward, and you can get a lot out of the youth for very little reward.

Lauren: That's right. That's right. Yeah. You don't wanna be like. Overdoing it with actually pretty measly motivators. Yeah. Yeah. So that was, that was a good little component in the night. And then yeah, for the talk, we were looking at Psalm 42 which yeah. Is a really it's a kind of key psalm that people point to when thinking about the Bible expressing.

That we can have questions, ask questions of God, that it's not a foreign thing for believers to feel distant from God or feel like a longing that their experience isn't matching up with what they know to be true about God. And so, yeah, I kind of wanted to highlight, you know, in that psalm, there's times where the writer speaks about, times in his past where he was able to go and, you know, worship with this big community of other believers. And yeah, now he's kind of isolated and, and wondering where God is. And so yeah, we talked a bit about just how God gives us community and kind of memory of other times in our faith life to help us when our faith feels hard.

And, you know, trying to give acknowledgement to the fact that all kinds of circumstances can put us in a situation of feeling a bit despondent. It's not just an isolated spiritual problem, but a lot of the time our circumstances or our mental health or relational situations can kind of interplay with all of that.

And then yeah, we looked at, there's kind of that refrain of like, why am I so downcast? You know, I will yet praise God. And yeah, just really tried to highlight how. It's, it's both interesting that there's this like posture of turning towards your struggles and saying, or turning towards your own soul really.

And like instructing your soul to like move away from this despondent headspace. And kind of anticipating like, I know a time will come where this won't feel so heavy. I will yet praise God. But then also that. You know, that happens twice in the Psalm, so it's not like you just arrive and fix your spiritual turmoil at some point, and then. That's that for the rest of your life. Like this is just kind of a rhythm that can crop up at certain junctures in our lives. And yeah, I also tried to highlight to them that you know, something that I found helpful when I've turned to this psm myself in times of real struggle was someone pointing out to me that the psalms are not.

They're very short pieces of writing, but they're not probably written over a short period of time. They're probably written over a period of, you know, days, weeks, months or at least to represent a period of time that is days, weeks, or months long. And so you know, it can be easy to read that Psalm and think.

Cool. Well, I'm still stuck in the despair. I can't just like snap my fingers and tell my soul not to be downcast. What's wrong in me? When actually, yeah, that wouldn't have been the, the psalmist's experience either. Yeah. So we just tried to kind of land it ultimately in that, yeah, we can have this kind of confident hope in some of the truths about Christ that we trust, even when our felt experience of that isn't the same or isn't as settled as it might have been at other times.

Tom: That's a such a like, important message. Particularly yeah, for, I mean, important for everyone, but particularly when you are a teenager and you've, you might have one view of your faith that you get when you are in Sunday school, like, kids church land, which probably people aren't trying to give you, but you can have the view of that it's, you know, everything's fairly good or everything's gonna be particularly one way or another.

And then to get a more nuanced and realistic view of faith and your mental health and your experiences and have it all weaved in with, yeah, scripture is, yeah, really important. I think that's great.

Lauren: Mm. Yeah. Well, I think like I mean in terms of a reflection from the night, I think one thing that I kind of noticed within myself as I was giving the talk was I. The feeling, like looking out at the crowd of them. I guess I had this instinctive like, oh, you're talking a lot about faith being hard and you know, here's these new Christians or kids who are considering whether they want to become a Christian or something.

You know, is that painting a more like, negative picture of the experience of that then it's helpful or making it sound like it's all struggle. But, in reality, like those times of struggle do crop up. And I think yeah, just like you were just describing, like I as a, as a young person, I think I experienced faith to be quite a simple.

Thing. And yeah, it's kind of only been in like more adult life that a song like this one has resonated at points. And so yeah, it was good to have just even as I felt that way just to kind of step back and see like, or maybe I'd have been better equipped to like. Ride through those times myself had I heard this message in advance and that you know, it's like so many things where we might worry that speaking about something negative or difficult or taboo to someone gives them the idea when really like the most of those things that we might think of in that category.

Actually it's a lot of relief when people hear someone. Talk about that thing so they know that it can be talked about. Because as well as so many young people don't experience faith as simple at that stage in their life as well, so, yeah.

Tom: Yeah, that's good.

Lauren: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. How about you? What was in store for your youth group last week?

Tom: Yeah. Well, i, I just actually, we didn't talk about when we have to finish by, but I need to be done in about nine minutes, so I'm gonna try and speed run this one so I can still get to the emails. But so what we were doing this

Lauren: sorry for all that waffling about slides, by the way. I wouldn't have done that if I

Tom: Now, if you've, you've, you've been listening to the podcast, you know, you know, there's a lot of waffling that happens, and so it's.

Lauren: just leaning into the format.

Tom: Yeah, I just didn't think to myself, oh, I've actually got a hard out that I need to, you know, stick to, anyway, it doesn't matter.

Lauren: Take it away.

Tom: I waffle about waffling. So we, it was our variety night, which was the talent night. And we had in the end. Three youth who said they wanted to do it.

So we were like, oh, I'm not quite sure what we're gonna do the rest of the time. But the leader who was planning it planned some talented activities for us to do after the talent show part of the night had happened, which was pretty great. So. We began the night with, like, we hung out. We were at a church that we, one of the churches that we liked were visiting on our tour of churches.

And in this new church that we, that we had a lot of hangout spaces which is pretty fun. We got together, we started the talent night and we had one kid who did a Hamilton. Version of Jesus' genealogy where he pretty much read the genealogy of Jesus to Hamilton, like to a karaoke track of Hamilton, and then sang a tiny bit about Jesus and then just kept going.

Just

Lauren: Yeah.

Tom: it was pretty fun. I quite enjoyed it. We had another kid. Two kids who like, were like, oh, we need some we need a volunteer. And they pointed at me and said, Tom, you're a volunteer. And then I, they made me come up on stage and they made me crawl up on stage on my hands and knees and then

Lauren: Oh

Tom: be on stage on my hands and knees.

I was like, this is very strange what's happening? And they got like two cups of water and then put them on my hands. So. I couldn't move my hands. And then they put two more cups of water on my back and then two more cups of water on my back, and then just walked off the stage and left me there. And that was their talent,

Lauren: Stitching you up was their talent.

Tom: Yeah, it was, it was quite funny.

Lauren: Yeah,

Tom: and then the the mc rescued me, but I think I, he should have left me for longer, I think. I think it would've been funnier if they just left me there for a while.

Lauren: Like bring on another act.

Tom: Yeah, so I was just stuck there in the

Lauren: perform around you? Yeah.

Tom: And then we had, so one, one girl who decided to enter during the show, so then she got up to tell some dad jokes, but she forgot the jokes while she was up on stage.

So that was pretty fun. I quite enjoyed that. And, and and then finally we had a girl get up and play her flute, which was lovely. And, and then they all got apprised, but the flute and the Hamilton wrap were in first place together, which I think was appropriate 'cause they put in more effort than the others.

And when that was done, it was time for the, the rest of our talent, which was making art, which was, we made cocoa where we put, like Vaseline and toothpaste and lip balm and glue from the glue stick on a piece of paper, and then took it outside and then covered it in cocoa, and then blew the cocoa off and looked at the picture that appeared underneath, which was pretty fun.

And they'd, they'd all done bible stories. I, I, they just had to do Bible stories and I missed that instruction. Or they're just a very holy bunch of young people, but. It was actually like when I heard the activity, I was like, oh yeah, that'll be fun. But when I saw the activity I was like, that was actually really cool.

'cause like seeing the pictures appear when the the cocoa got blown off, that was great. And but a trick would be he used like a, an actual blower, like a, like a hairdryer, but it wasn't hot. I don't know. It was, I dunno where he got it from, but

Lauren: Hmm.

Tom: I think it was like a. From a hardware store anyway, that was, use that rather than just blow it with your mouth.

'cause that's harder.

Lauren: That would like blow it off clean more than be tricky. Mm.

Tom: So it worked, it worked pretty well and we had to build a sculpture out of matchstick and, cotton wool balls, which no one did. So, I mean, everyone just had a pile of cotton wool balls and matchsticks. But it was funny. And then that was the end of the talents.

And we had we did some sharing about what happened at VCYC, just a little bit. We didn't. Go all the way into the talent and testimony night that we could have done inspired by Ed from Bathurst. But we got 'em to share a bit about what happened. Mostly they just shared stuff that they enjoyed and then one, I asked what they learned and no one shared anything except for one girl who said, I learned that Jesus is a better savior than I am sinner.

And I was like, that's great, and

Lauren: that

Tom: really all we need really. So we left it there. Then we had a talk from a, we have a brand new leader. Who has joined our church and she's got experience working in youth ministry. So I was like, do you wanna come and visit us and or maybe for your first night to and do the talk?

Which no one's ever done their first night doing a talk, except I think the first time I visited the youth group, I did a talk, but I wasn't gonna be a youth leader. I was just visiting. And so I was, it was great. And she did a really good job talking about the first two lines of the Lord's Prayer. And she taught us how to do it in sign language.

And she talked about how God is our good father, who we can come to at any time in contrast to our him earthly fathers who are sometimes not as good as they could be and never as good as God. And so it was a good, a really good talk. And then we went and hung out some more, which was just a nice night.

And we did everything on time, which I think is the second time in the history of the youth group that it's happened. But we finished with exactly the 15 minutes to go at the end that I was hoping for. So it was a nice week and I think my reflection was I think it's just sometimes just fun. To one, to not have to do much during the night, which I didn't have to do much, which I really enjoyed.

And, but also fun just to like, let the youth do stuff, particularly in the talent show and let them just have free reign and see what comes out. And the quality might not always be as high as you would hope for from like, if you're getting. More older people to do it, but everyone has a good time.

And I think next time we do a sh a variety talent night it'll be, there'll be more people who end up because they they saw it happen this night and wanted to keep going. So there, yeah, there's my reflections and we gotta do some emails and then we, yeah. Unless you have any questions you wanna ask about the night.

Lauren: Oh, I'm just keen to hear this correspondence we've received.

Tom: So, well, we have two, two emails. So the first is from two weeks ago. This is from a man named John, who also is my. Brother-in-law. So he wrote and he said, Nick Kechum Nick, you are trying to recall the name of one of the most iconic anime protagonists of all time, the literal face of a multi-billion dollar franchise.

And you came out with Nick Kechum, not even vaguely similar, vaguely similar variant like Max or Zach, but Nick Ash Chu. Catchum has a dawned TV screens, lunchboxes, birthday cakes, TV shirts, practically our eyeballs since the late nineties. His name deserves some respect. Next, you'll start preaching about Jason Christ. So there you go.

Lauren: Someone goes full, just ham on outrage about something silly. That was excellent.

Tom: Yeah. Well, I, my apologies to, to you,

Lauren: Maybe it's not silly. Actually, I shouldn't say that.

Tom: I apologize to all Pokemon fans worldwide that I got the Pokemon man's name wrong. I'll forever remember. His name is Ash Ketchum. So yes. And then we have our last one. And this last one is an email from the same person, John, my brother-in-law. And this one is going to lead us into the end of the show actually. And so. I'll, I'll just, I'll just read it to you and then you'll hear, hear about it. You'll figure it out. So here's his. What do you call it? The subject for the email is longtime listener first time complainer, which is blatantly not true 'cause he just complained

Lauren: Yeah.

Tom: Ash Ketchum.

So, but I asked him about it and he said he, he realized that, but he thought it was a good, a good line, so he left it in there, which is true. It's is a good,

Lauren: Yeah, you can't waste it.

Tom: Yeah. So he said, alright, fine. You asked for it. I have some constructive feedback, so I'm, I'm pleased that he is been listening enough to.

Use our email address, which is hello@youthgrouppodcast.com. If you wanna send us an email. He said, can you please make the music start louder when you say, okay, I'm starting the music. There's a big buildup to starting the music, and then it starts so quietly that you just hear silence for five seconds.

By the time you hear it, you're basically out of breath and it's. It's at odds with the accompaniment, which is just getting started. See the attached example from Louis Thoreau's podcast to better articulate my point, which I won't play you, but you know, the music just starts and then he talks, but, and then he says, but it's very well time when it suddenly cuts out.

And you have the last word, well before Chris has the last word. Thank you for your consideration. So I appreciate another important email from you, John dealing with the big issues and, I promise to fix that. What I'm gonna do now, I'm gonna start the music and Lauren, what you are gonna hear is the old music. But what our listeners are gonna hear is the new music. I was gonna prepare it, but I, you know, I can't prepare slides for the actual talk I do at Youth Group. I'm not gonna get the music done in time for this.

Lauren: it's a youth ministry podcast, like we are, we're doing things at the last minute, so,

Tom: But what you hear and what our listeners at home will hear are completely different.

So I'm gonna start the music and hopefully if I've done it right, then it's gonna sound exactly like you want, John, and you can just, you could, you could just send encouraging emails from now on. No.

Lauren: or become a second time complainer.

Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever is fine. I like, just love it that people send emails. So like the, the inbox has been heating up so much lately.

I love it. Keep sending us emails. All right. Yeah. Let's start this music. There you go. I pressed the button. The music has begun. Now it sounds really loud. And so I'm gonna say thanks everyone for listening to the Youth Group podcast. You have any questions, suggestions, and directions to Buried Treasure?

I think I've already said that one. Remember to send them to us. hello@youthgrouppodcast.com. And if you can find all my books, you can find them at my website, tom french.com au. Lauren, you don't have a website or a podcast apart from this one, do you?

Lauren: No, I don't.

Tom: No. Okay. Well, don't forget to leave us a reigning review and keep loving Jesus and loving young people, people, people.

See you next time.

Lauren: Bye.

Tom: Are you happy, John? I.