The Youth Group Podcast

Tom: Hey there, podcast listeners and welcome to the Youth Group Podcast, where a couple of youth leaders try to figure out how to do youth group better. My name is Tom and I'm an author, a speaker, and a youth leader. Here in Melbourne and today joining me all the way from Adelaide is a father who likes to run around with his kids.

I like actually run, I think, not like just run around, like actually run and get fit and the play, go to playground and also be a youth pastor. And he also thinks the enclo source is the best dinosaur ever to exist. It's Tim bla. How are you Tim?

Tim: I am well, thanks Tom. I'm doing very well. Yeah. How are you going?

Tom: I'm good. I'm good. And so you had a encores discussion with your youth leaders last night. Is that, is that what, why I had to talk about the encores today.

Tim: That's it. That's it. That's where all the important questions come up in youth leaders meetings. We spent time talking about which dinosaur is best and it was, it was a choice, a limited choice between two.

There was the ankle source or, yeah. I can't remember the name of it, but a member of like the, the family that T-Rex belongs to. But the, the vegan, the Rex of the family. Rex

Tom: Rex family.

Tim: Yeah.

Tom: Ah, the vegan. Yeah, the, the, the troubled daughter of, that's it. Drex

Tim: family. Well, kind of joke. It's kinda like I mean, I know it's got bad reviews, but Shark Tail, like, it feels like the plot line of Shark Tail for that dinosaur where, you know, Lenny, the shark does not want to eat fish.

Sorry for the spoilers to our listeners out there. Yeah.

Tom: I actually haven't seen Shark Tail, so now, now I don't know whether I should watch it because the whole thing is spoiled. Is that the, is that the. Concede of the film or the ending of the film that it's

Tim: it's, it's early in the film where it's revealed that it happened.

Tom: So

Tim: it's, yeah, it's a premise. So that's like, yeah.

Tom: It's like, wouldn't it be exciting if there was a film at a shark that didn't wanna eat fish?

Tim: Yeah, exactly. And so how his family feels about that, that kind of thing, you know?

Tom: Yeah. Good. We actually, we have a vegan youth leader. She's not a dinosaur.

She's just a youth leader. I. And I remembered last week that she was vegan and so I felt very pleased with myself 'cause I had forgotten a few times that she has a dietary requirement and I just, yeah, just dropped the ball a few times. But last week I remembered and she realized that I remembered. So I felt like a pretty good person.

So that was a ministry win for me. Awesome. So there you go.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah. So is this where we find out what you actually cooked on Friday? Or is that like a

Tom: spoil? Oh, that'll come. That, that'll come up, but I won't, I won't, I won't tell you now otherwise. Well, what do we have to talk about when we actually talk about youth group?

But there was a vegan option in there. There is a vegan option available, or there wasn't a

Tim: vegan option, but you just remembered that she ate vegan only.

Tom: Look, let's, let's not, let's not get too far into, I, we don't want to spoil the whole thing early, otherwise our retention rates will drop right off.

Everyone will be like, I've heard what I came here for in this podcast, which is, what did the vegan eat? And then they'll switch off. I'm just disappointed that you only had two dinosaurs to choose from as the best dinosaur. Like, I don't know if you know, but there is more than two like. There's, there's a whole park in the Land of Jurassic that you can visit lots of different ones and probably die, but you can.

If you want to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim: So BCM leader brought, was the one who brought the debate to us. It seemed like it was a flow on from a debate she was having somewhere else. Yeah. And apparently us all answering ankle lasus was the wrong answer in her mind. So Anau is

Tom: gotta be better because it's got the, the excellent.

Bombing, knock a tail and exactly what does the, what does a vegan T-Rex have going for it? Except, I don't know, it's slightly alternative.

Tim: It's got long nails as well, like really long nails to long nail. Okay. Yeah. Good.

Tom: Like we, we kind of to the care Suzanne environment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Alright.

Yeah, this. Okay. That's fine. It's just, it seems like you're upset about

Tim: this, like

Tom: I am a little bit upset. Well, there's just so many other good dinosaurs and I don't even know all the dinosaurs. I just know there are better ones than those. Like the AU is, it's pretty cool, but it's not. I like, I think they're probably cooler ones out there.

Although, you know, the pterodactyl is not a dinosaur. That's what I learned. Yeah. It's a different animal. A bird, not a bird, but you know, it doesn't fit in the dinosaur category. It fits in some other ancient animal category. So there you go. Alright, let's, this is a good podcast. So everyone wants to know what we dunno about dinosaurs.

So should we get on with, get on with our youth group talk.

Tim: Yeah, sure, sure.

Tom: Youth group. So tell me about your youth group.

Tim: Easy done. So on Sunday we had our youth group as per usual. This term with our activities, we've been doing different shops, like visiting stacks of them.

And Sunday gone past, we had settled on Chemist Warehouse and stats leader. Stats leader, no, he did something else. Physicist leader was the one who ran this game. And he called it the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme game. Oh,

Tom: nice. Yeah. Did you, did you have a big sign that said the cheapest pharmacy in Australia or youth, maybe cheapest youth group in Australia and then have tiny little writing at the top says, is this we should have, I, I missed an opportunity there.

Tim: Pretty epic kind of game though. So everyone got assigned one of five different roles in it. Mm-hmm. Their roles were either a pharmaceutical lobbyist who was trying to increase the price of pharmaceuticals and of tariffs. A pharmaceutical shareholder who wanted to see the prices increase, but had no actual power to make them increase a.

Principle of pharmaceutical land who had the power to make tariffs and prices increase. And then Australian pharmaceutical residents who mm-hmm wanted the prices to stay low and tariffs to stay low, but had no power. And the Australian government who. Want the prices low and the tariffs low and had power.

So everyone was given five different cards which could either increase prices or increase tariffs or lower them. Yeah. And the residents and shareholders could do nothing but those cards except try to get them in the hands of their representatives to go and cash in. Yes, and the pharmacy teams wanted the tariffs and all that to go up as high as possible.

The other sub game that was in there though was mixed in with all those cards. Sub game within this game? Yeah. Yeah. Game. A sub game within a game. Yeah, so encourage more trading. We had uhhuh different pharmaceutical cards, so, you know, like Panadol and, and that kind of thing. And if you collected a hand of five of those cards, you could trade them in for a Kit Kat, because everyone goes to Chemist Warehouse for lollies and Kit Kats and things like that.

Oh yeah, that's true.

Tom: Is, hold on. So you, you were drug dealing to receive chocolate. As payment for the drugs within the scheme, which, which is the pharmaceutical benefit scheme. This is this, this is the nerdiest, most niche youth group game I've ever heard of. Perhaps. I mean, it does, there's, there's pretty nerdy ones around the bible, but I've never heard of a youth group game around the pharmaceutical industry and where you go tariffs and lobbyists.

That's so good. It was, I love that you, I love that you've picked this theme and it's led to these crazy games. It is great. I'm not, I don't know that, I don't know how many people are gonna hear this and go, we've gotta do that at our youth group, but it's pretty cool. I'm. I'm impressed you're doing it at yours.

Tim: Well, it was also very educational. Like we talked about, you know, the average price of buying a, a particular medicine in Australia and, and how much the pharmaceutical company gets, and then we compared it to some other nameless country that operates with the US dollars and how much it would cost there.

And Belize, all that based on, is it Belize?

Tom: I think they have a lot of US dollars in Belize.

Tim: Some nameless country that doesn't have a pharmaceutical benefit scheme and Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom: But plenty of people get benefits from the pharmaceuticals.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah. Being sold.

Tom: Yep. Good. That's really, that's wild.

That's, oh yeah. So good. And are, were you on theme? 'cause you are still in. Timothy, is that right?

Tim: Yep. Yep.

Tom: Is there somewhere about pharmacy in there? Is this the one where Paul says, drink a little bit of wine, it'll be good for your tummy?

Tim: Yep. Yep. Is this why you're on

Tom: that one? Is that the connection?

No,

Tim: it was not a direct connection, but I mean this week might have a little bit of a connection, but yeah. The, oh, is that this week's one coming up this week? We're s chapter five. Yeah. With the drink and wine. For your frequent, is your shop

Tom: gonna be Liquorland? No, it's gonna be Mackers. Mac is,

Tim: ah, people go, there is less about one, but possibly could be related to the frequent illnesses.

You know, who knows The

Tom: frequent. Yeah. Also, people do go to Macca drunk, so like, it's a, like, after a night out people can go to Maccas. I mean, it's, I mean, the kebab place is probably more likely I think, but, okay, good. Anyway, so just, just in case you, you need some help from me to, to brainstorm your connections with drinking and your shop.

So, okay, so you did the pharmaceutical benefits team, which scheme? Was it, did they have a good time? Did they enjoy the game?

Tim: I think so. I think so. Yeah, there was, there was a couple of others who were trying to collect Australian residency cards, so I'm not sure if they were kind of operating under as undercover people smugglers from Ukraine or something.

Trying to

Tom: Yeah. Collect

Tim: all these identity documents. That, that wasn't a part of the game as far as I could tell, but who knows? Might have been a game within the game.

Tom: Yeah. You think it's not gonna be part of the game, but then it becomes its own thing, like, yeah. You know, where when I don't, I'm sure there's like on, I have thoughts in my head about games where games have existed within, you know, like they're games which become gambling, like loot boxes

Tim: in,

Tom: Gaming, which is just a, you know, gambling, but it's like the original game.

Like, oh, we just wanna go and shoot people. It's like, oh no, actually we wanna collect loot boxes and make it into gambling for teenagers. So. The game with the game, you had a game that turned into people smuggling. Yeah. Yeah. Potentially potential PE people, at very least, maybe some identity fraud. Mm.

Available. I like it. I like it. And so, and when you announced that you're gonna play the pharmaceutical benefits game, did the, did the youth all cheer? Were they like, this is what I've been hoping for My entire, there was touch,

Tim: applause and you know, there was, there was cheering and swooning and, yeah. Yeah. People waving their handkerchiefs and throwing their hats in the air. Yeah, it was beautiful. Yeah.

Tom: Yeah. No, well, every, I mean, teenagers regularly say to me, why do we not have more pharmaceutical benefits scheme related entertainment for us? I. And

yeah, that's good. I know, I know I'm being silly, but I really think it's great. Like, like I really enjoy that you did this.

Tim: Oh yeah, yeah.

Tom: Crazy game. It's, that's good. Okay. Okay. So then after that, after you played this game, what happened?

Tim: So we jumped into our Bible talks where Bible talk where we got to one Timothy four and our OT leader gave that talk and did a, a pretty good job.

So one Timothy four kind of starts off with that whole passage about some kind of, you know, false teachings and, hypocritical Liars whose consciences have been seared. Mm-hmm. So the way she got us to start was put up a bunch of different news articles and had everyone stand up and do the real or fake, like, is this a real article or a fake article?

And yeah, most people last. Passed the first round, but struggled after that. Okay. Yeah. And then jumped from there into doing the talk proper, looking at one Timothy four, looking at the kind of fact that as Christians there is a fight to be had against false teaching against kind of.

Evil teaching because stakes are life and death. Yeah. And then from there she went into the how do we actually train ourselves for this battle? And that's kind of some of where one sympathy goes with the whole you know, physical training is of some benefit, God s of benefit for this life and the life to come.

All that kind of stuff. Yeah. So she did a really good job kind of unpacking that passage, helping us to think through how we train ourselves in godliness, that kind of. Would attentiveness was her way of describing it. Mm-hmm. And I thought that was pretty helpful. Yeah. And I think I youth did too.

Tom: Yeah. That's good. Did you talk about where young people would, might encounter false teaching these days? I.

Tim: We've touched on that a couple of times this term. I mean, one Timothy's filled with the, the kind of discussions of that. Yeah. But one of the things she did, and it was really sneaky in this is kind of a reflection thing as well was she put a bible verse up, but deliberately misquoted it like in the screen, like had the wrong text up.

And so I was taking notes down to give her a feedback. I'm like, hang on a second, that that's not right. Like there's something wrong with that verse. Like, I'm gonna have to bring this up with her later. And then like a minute later in the talk, she goes. You just saw me read this verse that has the wrong words in it.

Did you realize that? And like, you know, as a kind of gotcha slash you should, you know, you should be paying close attention to what people say and testing it against the Bible because you don't know if someone's going to get it wrong.

Tom: Oh, that's, I'm good. You noticed? Like that would've been embarrassing if you hadn't noticed.

Which I could easily see happening To me, I, I thought I remembered that differently. Or just don't even think about it. Just go straight at my head like, oh, good work. What a great talk, loving it.

Was it like, was it like wildly wrong or just slightly wrong? The verse

Tim: so had like four words added to it and they were all like negating it sort of thing. So saying right. Not, not and a couple of other things like that. And okay. Yeah. So she did another slide highlighting the differences to the original text.

Tom: Yeah, that's good. And, and where, where do you think teenagers engage with false or encounter false teaching these days?

Tim: I mean, all over the shop in one sense. Like a bunch of our, a bunch of our youth go to Christian schools and mm-hmm. Yeah, it kind of varies from school to school and not throwing them all under the bus, but there's some Christian schools which kind of have a christianize the kids with legalism rather than Yeah.

Convert the kids with the gospel. Yeah. And so, you know, if, if we're putting legalism is probably one of those really big false teaching things that's coming up in the church and Ephesus at that time. Yep. I think that's a space where it comes out. Yeah. I think also beyond that, like kind of the.

Whatever they're engaging with online. You've got different Christian Instagram reels and all that, that some of our youth will be kind of checking in on pretty regularly. And yeah, they'll kind of slip in and out of different things of whether it's kind of a legalism or a you know, avoid things, avoid any sort of contact with the world Yep.

Sort of stuff. Yeah. I don't think it's as big for our current youth, but there was a. A group that went through probably about three or four years ago who were really engaged in kind of yeah, some of this kind of miraculous healings. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Type stuff. And like really influenced to name drop, like Bethel kind of some of the stuff coming outta Bethel that's kind of really shaping them and what they expected out of church and, and all that.

Yep.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Which your church, not particularly Bethel. Like if I, if I've got the vibe right, I think that's great. It's like, you know, we're,

Tim: we're happy to sing a couple of the, the songs that are helpfully and well written. Yeah. But yeah, I think in terms of the, some of the theology that kind of comes out, just not quite on the same page there yes.

Fully believe that God can and does heal people but perhaps raise questions about how much that's to be expected here and now. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom: Yeah, that's good. I think that's that's good to think about. And yeah, also like, I think, 'cause my feeling about like when we talk about false teaching is we can often be like, oh, look at the, the liberals and the crazy thing liberals are saying, but like, the stuff you're highlighting is down the conservative end of false teaching generally.

Which is also like, like. We have to walk the line between going too far one way or too far the other because both of those cause problems. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I think like, like maybe, I guess I think about like the, the stuff that's in the US at the moment, particularly, which we get a bit of here, but like the Christian nationalism and the.

The manosphere stuff where, you know, the really masculine ideas about Christianity is like masculine, not proper masculinity, but yeah, very unhelpful ideas about masculinity and Christianity comes out and they're certainly not liberal. They're still not helpful. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah.

And do your, do your youth well before you started doing the series, do you think they thought much about false teaching or is it an, do you think it's, it was something that was, they're already thinking about?

Tim: I think not as much. I mean, yeah, certainly the younger ones not as, not as exposed to the, the ideas there necessarily.

Some of our older ones, like we'd have, you know, occasional conversations where they'd be like, oh, I went to my friend's youth group and, and this, this was set up the front, or. Whatever, or you know, I was at school and then the, the person who was speaking at Chapel said this. You know, can we, is that what we believe that, that kind of thing.

Yeah. Yeah. But for the most part, I mean, I don't think we've got like massively like, easy to detect false teaching. A lot of it's the subtle stuff and that's probably where mm-hmm. I think, yeah, the, the challenge to know your Bible well and read it closely and, and all that is kind of helpful. Like the, do you actually know what the Bible says?

Can you, could you correct or at least question what someone else says if Yeah. If they said something that just seems a little bit off.

Tom: Yeah.

Tim: Yep.

Tom: Yeah, that sounds good. That's interesting. And how, how did the you had small groups after that.

Tim: Yep, yep. So into small groups and looking through the passages once again.

They, they all went pretty well. I mean, some of the groups did their own thing as they normally do, like jumped off to talk about prayer or to spend some extra time praying as a group. I had 12 year, seven to nine boys hanging out with me and yeah, I think they engaged kind of well. Like they, they opened up and talked a little bit about the godliness stuff, especially like the, how do we train ourselves in godliness and what does that look like?

Yeah. Yeah, I didn't check what each of them wrote down, but we kind of finished it with the, what's one actual practical thing you're gonna do this week to be more godly? Like more God would attentive in Yep. Yeah. In what comes up in the week. Yeah.

Tom: Yeah. And what are your, what are your reflections coming outta the night?

Tim: Yeah, I think first of all, the, the tactic that my leader used, like I thought that was a really clever one. The misquote scripture on the screen and see if people pick up on it. And yeah, kind of just to, to do a, hang on a second. I'm like, oh, and you know, I'm giving her feedback later this week, but I wonder if she could have, yeah.

Possibly even. Work. Yeah. Done a little bit more with that, like, talked a little bit more about it just to go like, you thought you were safe here, but actually you're not, not quite like that level, but to go you know, the, the challenge she was making was, do you sit here and just kind of passively engage with what's being said or you actively listening and kind of.

Bible Open, which, yeah, I think it's something that we've kind of just started doing more this year, has been encouraging the youth to sit there with Bibles open during the talk. Yeah, we used to kind of have all the text on the screen, but I think it's actually been a good move, so thanks for that. Yeah.

Tom: And so you mean like for her to be saying you are not safe, not, maybe you're not safe here, but like you are. Like even here, there could be false teaching here. So we want you to pay attention to the Bible because we are not, we what we want to teach you what is true. Truth doesn't come from us.

It's, you'll find it in the Bible. And so keep checking up. On what you're hearing everywhere. Is that what you're saying? That Yeah,

Tim: yeah,

Tom: yeah, yeah. Very, very eloquently put yeah. Well that's 'cause I'm a professional communicator. Good. So that sounds, sounds, yeah, that sounds like a good idea and. We, I noticed like in our youth group on Friday night, we have bibles 'cause we, we were sitting in the church and there were pew bibles there.

And then as soon as the Bible reading finished, I heard a lot of bang as all this looks closed. I was like, guys, keep, keep 'em open. Why you don't, don't close them. This, the Bible reading is for the rest of the talk. It's not, it's not a, just a thing we do as a ritual before we talk about something completely different.

Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Any other, any other reflections from your, from your night?

Tim: Well, one of the things I did with my small group looking after the big crew of boys, which I hadn't done as much of lately, I was kind of like, oh, we're, we're just trying to get this stuff done. But I was, I intentionally started us with just a bit of an activity, get us moving. So we played golden Child which took all of what, 10 minutes maybe.

But. Where is Golden Child? It's kind of like a, a basketball one. So you've got two teams. One team is shooting hoops and the other team's trying to run a, a lap of the, the court, or in our case, the hall. Mm-hmm. And so the team shooting hoops. Every time they score a hoop, the person actively running has to stop wherever they are and the next person starts running.

And the last person on the team that's running is the golden child. And everyone they run past gets freed. Mm-hmm. And the aim is to get as many of your people as possible to do a home run. Like to make it back to, to the base. Yeah. And however many people get back. That's how many points your team scores.

Yeah. And then you swap sides,

Tom: right? So. Yeah. Okay. Yep. I think I got it. Good. I went, I don't need to get distracted by this game, but it sounds, sounds fun.

Tim: It's fine. It's good movement and it's pretty quick and easy to do. Like we've done it a few times on camps as well, like, just as one of the many things we could do when you've got a basketball court handy.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Which sometimes you do. I don't, but sometimes. I do, I'll keep it in mind. Good, good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So movement for boys. Good. Keep, keep, keep some help. Some focus sometimes. Sometimes.

Tim: Yeah. Good. Yeah. All all pretty good. And how about on your end? You had youth on Friday?

Tom: We had youth on Friday we did.

So for the night we. We're eating dinner together. So the youth arrived. We actually, were, the youth arrived very early this time, which was, they seemed, since we've changed the time of youth groups starting to half an hour later, our youth turn up about half an hour. Not half an hour, no, like 10 minutes early.

So we're in the middle of our leaders meeting. They all turned up, we're like, oh hell. Oh, youth. But we had, we hung out, then we had dinner together and dinner was not made by me. So wasn't a listener of the podcast either, I don't think. But if they're listening. Hello, hello Hannah and Tom. They, there was some parents who provided dinner for us, but they weren't, they, their kids didn't even come to youth group that night.

They had a different event on, but they were so kind. They provided dinner and then left to go to their own dinner somewhere else. But yeah, they provided soup and sausage rolls and bread and it was very yummy. I didn't eat the sausage rolls, but they s smelled amazing. And the youth liked them.

It was just a really, really nice dinner. And we didn't have our, excuse me, we didn't have our youth group auntie with us 'cause she had to be away. So we, the leaders did all the serving ourselves, which reminded me that it's great having a youth group auntie to help with all the serving and stuff and the cleanup and all of that which was, is really nice.

But we also realized that we just didn't have enough bowls or anything for anyone. 'cause we just have not been eating, excuse me, we haven't been eating dinner together that often this term. And. So I was like, oh my goodness, we just have to go and buy stuff. So he sent someone across the road to the shop, across the road to buy a bunch of disposable things.

Anyway, that was that was, that was dinner. And the vegan, she had some soup. And I did too. I think I had the same soup as her even. So I was vegan for the night. And although she probably had the bread and I didn't, so. I had a harder time. I had the hardest time, actually, I'm probably the most impressive person in terms of eating.

But it was nice sitting around and just eating together again. Like I'm reminded that it's nice to do and also reminded it's a lot of work and it takes a long time and yeah, I'm not always sure about. The benefits, but when they happen, they're good. We had some questions from our question box.

One was about whether Jesus dated and another one was about if, you know what happens if someone breaks up with you because they're, they're not Christian enough, or you are too Christian, like, 'cause you put Jesus first, I think is what they're saying. So you choose Jesus and then so they break up with you.

So they were interesting questions to talk about. I encourage them to be putting Jesus first and that someone breaks up with you 'cause you put Jesus first. And that's a really good thing to learn about yourself. And that's exactly where you wanna be, even though it's tough. And then I did a, I asked some questions about the youth and the use of ai.

Partly because I was preparing for youth group in term four, we're gonna talk about ai, but more because I'm gonna be talking about, we're gonna be talking about youth group, I'm sorry, youth and AI on the podcast soon. I was like, well, I should ask the youth exactly what they're doing with ai. And there were some really interesting things, which I, I will not get too far into except to say that there was, there was a lot more engagement with AI than I expected.

Like, I, I think there's more engagement with AI than probably with. Social media in our youth group. So that's that's been interesting. So I will enjoy discussing that. But it was just fun doing a poll with our youth about something that was a important topic, but not one that we were covering. We would regularly a youth group, and I thought, actually we might just do more polls to find out, because I was asking them like, who's used ai, what their feelings about AI are, how they've used it.

What, you know, what threats they see coming from out of ai. What opportunities they have. And I thought, you know, you could just ask about all sorts of different things that are gonna be relevant to 'em. Like we could ask them about social media. Social media, the social media ban. We could ask them about dating, we could ask them about, like stress and schoolwork and what their family does at home for discipleship or any of those, like all these things, which if you're just asking some questions, again to chuck their hands in the air, you're gonna learn some stuff about your youth group quickly. And we haven't done that very often.

Or maybe ever before this. And I thought we should do it more often 'cause it's just helps you learn about your group and it doesn't take very long and we all seem to enjoy doing it. Like they were quite responsive. And so that was good. That was a good experiment, I think. And then I. We, we went into the church, we had a talk, we was onto prayer 'cause we're still in our spiritual disciplines series.

And we had a youth leader who gave us a talk through pretty much all of Romans chapter eight. And he read the passage and well, he got a, one of the leaders to read the passage and then he kind of spoke, spoke about a little bit of it. And then there was a. Like, like he stopped and got a bit more of the passage read.

Then he talked about a bit that, and got a bit more of the passage read. And it was quite a long talk. But because it was split up across different, with the different readings, it felt like they had more digestible. 'cause there was lots of little chunks and it was someone else doing the reading rather than him doing the reading.

Like if he did all the readings, I think it would've been like a much longer talk than if was someone else coming up and breaking it up more. Yeah. So that was that was good. And he was talking about how Jesus interes for us and that when we pray. We we pray with the spirit helping us to pray and with Jesus bringing our prayers to the Father. And so then went straight from there into prayer empires.

And so prayer empires being the idea that, you know, each person has a prayer to pray for the whole year, and then as they get answered, they go find someone else to pray with and we. And we hit this stage a few weeks ago where we felt like we have to reset how we're doing it a bit because there were two, there were groups of people praying together, but they were just chatting and people weren't as focused.

And so this time we had a few answers to prayer again, which is great and kind of exciting just to see can the prayers continue to be answered. But then we got the youth leaders to go and sit with groups of youth who were praying together and encourage them to pray. And it felt like a much more focused time of prayer again, which was, it was a good kind of reset that we did.

And I got to sit with some boys and chat to them about their prayer points and chat to 'em about mine. And that was just really nice getting to do that. And yeah, like entering this kind of stage of prayer empires where it's a bit less isolated prayer and more group prayer together has, it's taken on a slightly different flavor, which is now that we're embracing it or we embraced a bit better this time, it was really good just to.

In that group, and then we were gonna do catch up in small groups, but I realized the time was had gotten away from us. So I just canned that and we went straight to, our dessert, which was Cole's chocolate mud cake. So nobody would be upset about that. Except for you. Except me. Who had the hardest time?

I was the, yeah. No, actually, I think our poor vegan leader, she didn't have anything to eat at all because she could, I got a gluten-free. Cupcake thing. And it still had plant not still had animal products in it. So she won, she won that that difficulty round. Yeah. And so I guess yeah, my reflections were, it was nice that we had.

Like a really clear way to apply what we would had heard and that it was already built into the fabric of what we're doing at youth group. So sometimes like trying to find a way to respond as a group to a talk can be tricky. 'cause it's like you are like, oh, we, we need to go. And I don't know. Tell our friends about Jesus, and you can't apply that straight away.

I mean, I guess you could, you know, if you've got a friend who's come to youth group, return to them and be like, all right, let's, lemme tell you about Jesus. But in general, you can't. Most of the things are like, all right, go away and what are you gonna do on Monday? Or what's gonna change when get home with your family?

But this was just nice having a thing with's like, we can do this and we can do it right now. Let's go and we already know how to do it. And it, but this can kind of reinvigorate why we do it. Yeah, so it felt pretty cohesive that part of the night. And the other thing that I reflected on was like just how unexciting our night was in terms of like, if you were to tell youth we're gonna have a really, we're gonna come to youth group, we're gonna eat some dinner, we're gonna answer some questions about from the Bible.

We're gonna. Do a survey about ai. We're gonna have a long Bible reading and talk about prayer, and then we're all gonna pray together. And then we're gonna eat some mud cake. Like if you are trying to do attractional youth ministry, like the mud cake is the bit that would be, would be exciting. And no one's gonna come to youth group just to eat some.

$5 mud cake. I don't know how much they are these days 'cause I'm outta touch with the people. But we won that for you as Prime Minister then. Are they four? They used to be $4. So I just increased the price in my head. 'cause I'm like, they can't still be $4 anyway. If, you know email us because I could not look that up myself.

That's impossible. We need you to email us and tell us the price because. Oh wool, these mud cake. Anyway, the point point is but it's not, it is really nice to be able to go, oh, all these youth are coming. And there was not a single complaint. Like no one was like, this is so boring. It's like, this is what we do.

We come to youth group, we hang out. I. We pray together, we talk about the Bible, we eat together. There's not an expectation that it's gotta be really exciting. Like, like there's no one saying, could we please play a pharmaceutical benefit scheme game unlike some crazy youth groups. Yeah, so I was, it was nice to reflect that that's how things work.

Nice that we can also do fun things as well, and I cannot wait to allow till we announce the pharmaceutical benefits event. Bring a friend night. To lobby. Yeah, there you go. That was, that was our, that was our week. And we have no emails not even spam emails to discuss. I did say I was gonna listen to Dave Phillips.

I. Suggestion and then I forgot. I haven't listened to it yet. So sorry about that, Dave. But I'll get to it and I will provide my review soon. Yep. So I guess that brings us to the end, except we've gotta know what's happening next week. And I think we are talking again next week, Tim. That's the plan.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah.

Tom: So tell us what's happening at Youth Group next week.

Tim: Yeah, sure. Before I do that, can I ask you a couple of questions? Oh.

Tom: Goodness

Tim: me. Sure. So first of all, a bit of a softball one for you. Speaking of prayer empires for all listeners who've been praying for you and your car situation, how's that all going?

I.

Tom: Oh, the car. Yeah. So I'm sure you're all been praying for my car. It's been, it's been interesting like buying a car online. Well, not online, but yes, using our online connections to buy cars has been tricky. Particularly the car we're trying to buy is a car that is not a car that is originally for sale in Australia.

Like it's only, they only sell it in Japan. And then people import it over here, and I think most of the people import it are like individuals who are like, here's a way to make some money. And so they import the car over. And so you get, you're dealing with a lot of weird. Maybe not weird, but a lot of people who behave and think about making deals differently to, to me, so I've had like quite a, people are like, oh, I'd like, I'm interested in your car.

And then it just hasn't, there's like strange things have happened. So let me, one guy I emailed, I messaged and said, I'd like to, I'd be interested in test driving your car. And he was said yes. Okay. And then he says, if you're serious and ready to leave a deposit, then after that I'm more than happy to let you test drive.

And I said a refundable deposit, and he said, sorry, I'm not a dealership offering test drives and trials for cars to see if people wanna decide and buy, et cetera, et cetera. If you were to come and drive it and pay the deposit and I refunded it, it would purely be a waste of time, a waste of each other's time.

Don't take anything the wrong way. Then he sends a whole nother message telling me that if I went to a dealership, they probably wouldn't be happy for me to test drive if I wasn't serious either. And I was like, I'm pretty sure they like you to test drive their car 'cause then they can sell you a car.

But anyway, I didn't say that to him. I just said, okay, no worries. I hope you find someone to buy the car. And then he writes, the last thing he says is, I hope I find serious people, not people fishing around, wasting people's time. So I'm like, I don't know that you're gonna find a buyer with that attitude, mate, but that's okay.

But another guy, I was, and I put an offer on his car and then it's, and he was like, oh, actually I'm not ready to sell it yet. So like, man, we just went through this whole process and now you tell me you're not ready. Another car had been up for like. Like 12 weeks or something online. And so I went and test driver like, this is good.

I'll, I'll buy this one. So I messaged the guy after and was like, oh, I, I'd love to just get inspected. Then I'm, I'll make, we can chat about prices. And he was like, just after you left, someone came in and put a deposit on the car. I'm like, what? How does that happen? You, it was like 12 weeks. No one had any interest in the car, but then the car is still up on Facebook marketplace at this, this was a dealership.

And I was like, I was like how is it? Still up? Is it still available? Did I get scammed somehow? I could not work out. Like, I dunno, why if the car is still there and for sale, why did he not wanna sell it to me? I don't know. I don't know. I don't understand. Anyway, point is, it's for serious people,

Tim: not for time wasters.

It's for, yeah, I was,

Tom: I mean, he was happy to give me a test drive and. Yeah, the guy who I went in the test drive with was the guy who cleans their cars, who is not a car salesman, but just in the car. Every time he'd see something, he'd be like, that's really good. He'd be like, oh, it's got lane assist.

That's really good. And then he'd be like, he'd be like, oh, oh, look at the upholstery. It's really nice. It's like, oh, it's a hybrid. That's really nice. And then it, and I was like, and he was like. He was like, I've got a hybrid. I hate it. He was like, he was like, it's the worst car. It's got no power. I was like, he used to drive like a, like a V six Falcon and then it got stripped for parts and he has to drive a Hyundai Hyundai hybrid and he is very unhappy about it.

But he told me that my hybrid that I wanted to buy was very good. Anyway, this is a long story, but I think I have two cars that are possible to buy now and it's looking pretty good. So by next week, Tim, I might have a, a new Toyota hybrid to, that comes from Japan and I might even, we might even give it a Japanese name.

As long as we can find a way to do that, that's not racist. Mario, is that a Japanese name? He comes from? The land of Nintendo. Alright yeah, other questions. Thanks for that long question. Feel free to pray for us or praise the Lord for cars and that we're doing fine without one as well.

Tim: Well one I was gonna ask about was you mentioned how a leader do the reading.

Like what do you guys normally do for your Bible readings? What's the, the usual go-to.

Tom: We change it up. Sometimes we get a youth to read. We are not that thoughtful about, about it in like, we don't line up a youth beforehand to read, which would be probably a good idea and they could go and practice it and stuff.

Someone is just like, we're got a reading. Who wants to read it and then someone will read it. Or a leader reads or like, or the person doing the talk does the reading. Yeah, but thank, now that you've asked the question, I'm like, maybe we, we should probably think more about that. So I appreciate the question.

I'm going to, I'm gonna take that under advisement. Good. Good to hear.

Tim: I guess the other one you mentioned that you moved your youth group time half an hour later and you have youth rocking up 10 minutes early. Yes. So did you just shuffle it like, you know, it's a two hour program or whatever and you moved it to starting later, or have you shortened the program?

Yes. Or Yep.

Tom: Yep. Yeah. So LA between last year and this year, I don't know if we talked about it on the podcast, maybe we didn't. But we moved our youth group time from six 30 to seven because a lot of people were traveling a long way to get to youth group and traffic. We just thought traffic would be half an hour less bad if we moved it by half an hour.

And it's it's worked out okay except that it's meant that the parents of year sixes are a bit stressed. But yeah, everything just shifted by half an hour later. Yeah, I get home later now, but otherwise it's, it's okay. I feel a bit more guilty about doing leaders meetings 'cause they run even later.

But the youth, the youth leaders don't stress about it that much, I don't think. But I do. So there you go. Yeah.

Tim: Yeah. Oh, no. Good. Good to hear. We have to. We haven't played too much with our timings for the last couple years, since we moved an hour earlier. But we, because we're Sunday afternoons. Yeah. But our problem has been consistent that we have youth rocking up like half an hour early, 40 minutes early sort of thing.

Tom: Yeah.

Tim: And hang around. Which,

Tom: what do, what do you do with them? Do you let them just, do you have stuff for them to do?

Tim: They kind of stand around, like they'll play ball games or table tennis or table soccer. Yeah. Or sit down. We've got a few who just come and do homework while they wait. Oh. And just read a book.

Great. Got a bunch who use their phones and game and we're questioning what we do about that in the future, but for now, we're letting it slide. Yes.

Tom: Yeah, we, we. I think we've got to, if it keeps happening, we'll have to think about it a bit more. Like we certainly like the idea of people coming early and hanging out.

We just don't have to figure out a way to provide the space for that to happen and us still to be able to do a leaders meeting. 'Cause I don't wanna have to ask the leaders to come earlier again so they can supervise the hangout beforehand.

Tim: Mm-hmm.

Tom: Yeah. 'cause then you, they don't get any of the benefits of the later start time if they just have to come earlier.

But also, youth don't actually need supervision. All the time. Like at school, they have, I don't know, much less supervision than you get at youth group. Like they have such a huge leader to youth ratio because we are relational and school is different. But I tend to forget that and be like, oh man, if there's not one leader for every five youth, fires are gonna start or something.

And it's just not true. They are able to look after themselves and not die pretty well, so we can just let them do stuff and we don't, we can be like, oh, off you go. Yeah. Good. All right. Is it, do you have any more questions? No, let's talk this week. Okay. Let's talk about this week. What is happening at, at your youth group this Sunday?

Tim: So we're carrying on with our shopping. So this week our PhD leader is running the activity themed around Macs, Mac, McDonald's for our international listeners, Mickey D.

Tom: I don't know any other, any other slang terms from McDonald's in other parts of the world? Macker's, McDonald's and Mickey D's.

Golden arches. Yeah. Do they see that golden arches overseas?

Tim: Yeah,

Tom: maybe. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Keep going.

Tim: Yeah, although controversially, she never worked at Macker's as she was growing up. She's only ever worked at Hungry Jack's, so I don't know if that's gonna

Tom: impact the activity. But we'll, she'll just spend the whole time telling you the burgers are better elsewhere.

Tim: Yeah. So PhD leader doing that. And then our stats leader is back to lead us through one Timothy V. And that passage about widows and elders and brothers and sisters and slaves and masters and all that fun stuff.

Tom: Yeah.

Tim: And wine. That's good. And

Tom: wine. Yeah. Spend a lot of time on wine. I guess

Tim: that's, that's the major point.

Tom: How to fix your upset tummy kids. That's it.

Tim: Good. Yeah. Have you, Tom, what have you got this week?

Tom: We have a combined week, so 'cause it, you know, Alex's group was, taken the last week off, but they're back for the combined week in Soul. We so we're turning up at another church and there'll be a talk from the other church somewhere in the Apostles Creed I think.

'Cause that's what their youth group's going through. There's gonna be a game, gonna be some prayer. There's a testimony which I'm still trying to pin down which we said we'd do, and I have not found someone who can do it yet. So we'll see what happens there. And we got dessert, which is gonna be like 200 donuts.

We were like, we have to buy some donuts. And we realized, we're like, we've gotta provide dessert and like, what's gonna be easy? We donuts very easy. But then I thought, oh, we're gonna have to get a lot of donuts. Luckily one of my youth leaders said she would do it and she's also the treasurer of the church, so I don't even have to worry about how to get the money to her.

She will sort it all out herself. As long as this is not some kind of embezzlement scheme to. Enrich herself with donuts. We'll find that she bought 600 donuts and only 200 turned up and she sold the rest on the donut black market or something. I don't, not saying that that would happen, and I don't want to, you know, say that my leader would get into that kind of shenanigans.

But in another church with a, with less less reliable and. Integris leaders that could happen. I think the, the great donut. Embezzlement. So there you go. Yeah, that's what's coming up. I'm looking forward to it.

Tim: Will it be okay, like hanging out with DP youth? Like, I mean, you know, they're, they're pretty big now.

They've got big heads with Sam Albury double or even triple endorsing them. Is that the story? Like it's,

Tom: yeah. Yeah. I think they might've changed their name to Sam Allbury's or DPU or maybe Sam Albury presents DP Youth.

Tim: Endorsed by Sam Allbury.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. So I think they'll be okay. But we'll see.

We'll see what happens. Yeah, so that'd be fun hanging out with them and hanging out with this other church and then another church, and then so many churches. It's gonna be, it's gonna be nice, I think. And the youth asked for it that last time we hung out. They're like, let's do another one soon.

So they're getting what they asked for. Yeah. All right. Well, i'm going to, I'm just guessing that it's time for us to wrap up. So let me just say some things like thanks everyone for listening to the Youth Group Podcast, and if you have any questions, suggestions, or um, uh, you want to tell us how much uh, mud cake is, email us hello@youthgrouppodcast.com.

You can find all my books and other podcasts and nowadays photos of me@tomfrance.com au. You can find 10 other podcasts. Don't forget to leave. Review in your favorite post type loving Jesus, loving young people. See you later. Take care.