The Meet Hope Podcast
The Meet Hope Podcast
85: How to Be Friends With God - With HOPE VBS Kids!
On this special shorter summer episode, we hear from a few kids who attended VBS back in early July to hear, "how do you be friends with God?" Find out what they have to say about being friends with God, what makes a good friend, and their favorite parts of VBS this year!
Thanks for being a part of the HOPE community as we continue conversations about faith and hope! You can learn more at meethope.org or find us on socials @meethopechurch. Join in for worship on Sundays at meethope.live! Have a question? Contact us at podcast@meethope.org.
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Do you guys know what a podcast is? Yeah, it's like a video, but without the video. Yeah, do you?
Speaker 2:remember? You came and did it with me last year. Do you remember? Yeah, doing a drama camp. We went to that room with the microphones. Yeah, doing a drama camp. Okay, so it's like it's only audio. It's like listening to music, but instead you listen to people's words.
Speaker 3:And here at church we do one where we record what people say and then we share it with other people so that they can know, like how VBS was. Does that sound good? Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope. Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online. We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others. Welcome to Hope.
Speaker 4:Hi everyone, welcome to the Meet Hope podcast. My name is Ashley Black, and this week we have a fun short episode for you. We did this last summer and we thought we would do it again this year, where we took some time to ask kids who attended VBS at Hope in the beginning of July a little bit about their time together. This year, the theme was what does it mean to be friends with God? And so, along with asking them what their favorite things were, we also asked them what that means.
Speaker 2:The two questions are what is your favorite part of VBS and what does it mean to be a friend with God? What is your favorite part of VBS?
Speaker 1:Learning about God yeah, awesome, thank you. Meeting new friends yeah, and playing games Awesome, thank you, do you?
Speaker 2:want to go. I'm still thinking, okay. You're still thinking, come here, matthew. Okay, what is your favorite part of EDS? Uh, snack, hi guys. Do you want to answer my questions? What was your favorite part?
Speaker 1:My favorite part is the crafts. Yeah, um snack, snack and art Awesome. I like doing the thing outside with pom-pom balls, playing outside.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you like BBS this week? Yes, what's been your favorite part of BBS? Snack Snack. What was your favorite snack?
Speaker 1:When we take a pretzel and cover it in icing and then put goldfish and sprinkles on it and then we eat it. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Spending time with God together.
Speaker 2:What's been your favorite part? Making these boats? Yeah, making boats Good job I like.
Speaker 1:KidVid. What do you do at KidVid? There was a seahorse race where you have to do the actions and then you see who wins. Yeah, that's awesome, and you did this craft.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:A fish craft. Yeah, a fish craft, yeah, and we finished it. I think that's awesome and we watched a video. My favorite part of VBS is Bible story time, because that's a chance where you get to learn more about God. What's your?
Speaker 3:favorite part.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite part of VBS? My favorite part of VBS is the music thing, because you do fun stuff and learn about God at the same time. I love that Music because we do some songs that are like about Jesus. What was your favorite part of VBS this week the art room.
Speaker 2:Why the art?
Speaker 1:room.
Speaker 2:Because I like to do crafts. Yeah, what was your favorite craft? The boat, the boat. So I was wondering if you guys could answer the question. So this week you've been talking about being friends with God, right, yeah? So how would you explain oh, thanks God. Oh, so how would you explain oh, thanks God. Oh, yeah, there you go, so you can think about it for a second. But how would you explain what does it mean to be friends with God?
Speaker 1:Like God helps you, like when you're hurt or sick. Yeah, that's a great answer.
Speaker 2:What would you guys say?
Speaker 1:Like he cares for us and like, no matter what we do, he still loves us. Yeah, that's a great one. What do you think you can pray to him and ask him for help and forgiveness.
Speaker 2:This week is about being friends with god. Right, that's like the theme. What would you say? What does that mean? To be friends with god, to be kind, to be kind what's one way we can be kind to others?
Speaker 1:by helping people if they fall down, I'll get hurt helping someone if they fall down. What does it mean to what's?
Speaker 2:one way we can be kind to others, helping someone if they fall down. What does it mean?
Speaker 1:to be a friend with God, to be a blessed person and be thankful of what God did. Being friends with Jesus is when you have a very good connection with Jesus.
Speaker 2:This week is about being friends with God.
Speaker 1:How would?
Speaker 2:you tell someone what does it mean to be friends with God? Being kind, being kind.
Speaker 1:How would you, how would you, okay, cut? It's like you can talk to him and ask him for help. Yeah, that's great Thank you.
Speaker 4:Something that happens at VBS every day is kids learn a key phrase to carry with them throughout the week and beyond. A few that they had this year were God is a friend who is real, god is a friend you can trust and God is a friend forever. And every time a kid hears that phrase, they're supposed to shout thanks God.
Speaker 1:So, knowing that we asked them, what would you say? A good friend is I like to share my lunch. You share your lunch. How would you? What do you think it means to be a good friend?
Speaker 2:Um, to not lie and to not hurt each other. Oh, okay, thank you. What does it mean to be a good friend? To share and be kind, great, good job. What does it mean to be a good friend? No one will forget you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no one will forget you. I love that. It means you help each other. You help each other, I love that.
Speaker 4:To wrap up, today we couldn't not ask our VBS directors their thoughts on some of these questions.
Speaker 5:My favorite part of VBS is getting to spend time with all of my dear friends here at Hope. I feel like we never see each other enough during the regular year and then this time together forces us to be in the same place and talk and laugh and spend time together and support each other, so I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 2:What does it mean to be a friend with God? Ms Caitlin, I'm so glad you asked.
Speaker 5:I think of God as someone who is always with me, always there. I can always speak freely because he already knows my thoughts before I think them, and it's a comforting place to be, to know that you can, you know, share your feelings and thoughts without judgment, without fear, and also you know the ultimate friend, because he can. Then, you know, make ways and do the impossible.
Speaker 6:So my favorite part of VBS is the energy that is created in the building. Like, every day is fun, every day is exciting and everyone wants to be here and I just I'm always so happy here and I love to see other people happy here, so that's what I love about it. And then, what was the one? The other question?
Speaker 2:Oh, what does it mean to be friends with?
Speaker 6:God. Oh. So to be friends with God it means just having like feeling the feeling of having someone with you at all times, like a partner, a guide, like a connection that you feel like from within, not necessarily on the outside. But one thing is like as I get deeper in my friendship with God, I realize I'm getting deeper in my outside friendships, so I feel like that connection is even more felt with that.
Speaker 7:My favorite part of VBS is seeing how quickly all of the kids and families and community comes together to raise our money and hit our goal for a common organization that we're raising the money for. I think it's cool to see them all come together and how quickly that all of that happens. What does it mean to be friends with God? I think it's just having someone. Being friends with God is just having someone always with you and having someone that you can talk to like a friend, I think is the biggest. It's not some big you know you have to use all this churchy language it's just talking to a friend.
Speaker 4:Thanks so much for listening to this fun and short episode today. We hope that it brought some joy to your summer and we encourage you to join in next week for our regularly scheduled podcast episodes and also, if you need a chance to catch up. This is a great week to also look back at our feed and see if there's an episode you missed that you might be interested in listening to. As always, please share our episodes with a friend if you feel like it might mean something to them. If you use Apple Podcasts, we'd love it if you would go into Apple Podcasts and give us a five-star rating so other people can find the Meet Hope Podcast as well. Other than that, if you have any questions or anything you would love to share with us, or if you're interested in maybe sharing your story of faith and hope, you can contact us at podcast at meethopeorg. We hope that you have a really great week.
Speaker 3:Thanks for being a part of the Hope Community as we continue our conversations about faith and hope. If you don't already, please join us for worship on Sundays or on demand. You can learn more at meethopeorg or find us on socials at Meet Hope Church.