Join editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle for the fifth-ever Babylon Bee podcast. This week's main topic is youth groups. (3:38) Trump Enraged As Immigrant Child Asks Him For More Gruel (11:29) Story 2 Joe Biden Promises His Followers Eternal Life (16:40) Churchgoer Takes A Knee In Protest As Newfangled Chorus Added To Classic Hymn (24:46) Topic of the Week: Youth Group (44:12) Hate Mail - With dramatic reading by Dave DeAndrea! (49:12) Subscriber Exclusive Segment (52:08) 'Why Doesn't Our Church Have More Programs?' Asks Family That Never Volunteers For Anything (55:32) Crunched For Time, Pastor Pads Out Sermon With Random G.K. Chesterton Quotes (1:02:15) Questions this week: How do you deal with the issue that some people will think your stories are real? Why so many bass player jokes? Do you do satire of other religions? Who are the most easily offended in your experience? Conservatives? Progressives? Reformed folks? Prosperity? Become a paid subscriber! at https://babylonbee.com/plans
In a world of fake news, this is news you can trust.
News so real, you can't make it up.
You're listening to the Babylon Bee.
Here are your infallible hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
Yes, I'm Kyle Mann.
And I am Ethan Nicole.
And this is the Babylon Bee Podcast.
Thanks for joining us today.
We've got a lot of awesome stuff to talk about, some news, and a topic that we think you'll enjoy.
Yes.
As we do every week.
So this week I missed church.
What?
And you know that feeling of guilt and shame when you miss church.
It's just been pervasive.
So I needed to get that off my chest.
Well, luckily we're doing a podcast, which is just like going to church.
Yes.
So this counts.
When people call the Babylon Bee at Ministry, it kind of makes me nervous.
The Babylon.
Oh, yeah, we do get emails where people say, you know, like when people will subscribe, they'll say, I'm sending in money to support your ministry.
Yeah, that seems like.
I always feel like some Christians use the term ministry a little loosely.
Or I don't know.
I mean, everything's a ministry in some sense, I guess.
So I don't want to also completely.
Playing Fortnite, that's a ministry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Smoking cigars.
I wonder if there's anybody who's like a Second Life ministry person.
Like they do all their ministry in Second Life.
Is that still a thing?
I have no idea.
It's been around.
That's like a lot of this old.
It probably is still a thing, though.
I'm trying to use references that the kids will get with Fortnite, which is still pretty popular.
I don't know what the modern Second Life is.
Ethan's like, we're going to do a ministry in EverQuest.
Ethan, that's not a thing anymore.
I don't know what that is.
That was one of the first MMOs where you had a bunch of players online.
You should do a ministry in Grand Theft Auto.
Is there an online version of that?
I don't know.
There is now.
Yeah, there's Grand Theft Auto Online.
Grand Ministry Auto.
See, this is where Babylon B article ideas come from.
We could do an article about a guy who goes into Grand Theft Auto and tries to get all the...
To reach the lost.
To reach the people who are around him.
Rips people out of their car and tells them about Jesus.
Well, you know, no, because everybody's going around stealing cars.
Yeah.
And getting prostitutes and stuff.
He boldly stands in the road as a car's coming at him and he's like holding up his hands.
Or he like wakes.
I will sacrifice myself for your soul.
That game, you know, it has like ladies of the night in the alley and stuff.
He could like, he could like stand on top of the buildings and you'd be like Batman and he's waiting for the seeds.
He's waiting.
And he just leaps down there and starts beating them.
Just like Jesus.
Just like Jesus did.
So this week, as always, we cover the news by reading three Babylon B stories, discussing them a little bit.
It's like your ticket to stand around the water cooler with the Babylon B writers.
And then we have a topic of the week, and our topic this week is youth groups.
We're very excited about this.
That's a very fertile topic.
And I'm sure it's a topic we will revisit time and time again as long as this podcast keeps running.
Yeah.
Yeah, we figured this is part one of Paris.
6072.
All right, let's do it.
Let's go to our stories of the week.
Jumping right in.
Every week, there are stories.
These are some of them.
This week, the crisis at the southern border has flared up.
Now, you're going to be hearing this in a little bit of a delay because of our summer vacation recording schedule.
But probably there will still be a crisis at the border going on.
Some kind, yeah, because it's been going on for a while now.
It's been going on since the dawn of time.
This includes something timeless.
Yes.
Okay, so the story that we ran was, Trump enraged as immigrant child asks him for more gruel.
Please, sir.
Please.
May I have some more?
May I have some more?
What freaked me out about this one, and I don't know if there's somebody listening right now to the podcast who does not know the reference, but this is like such a solid, this is a reference to Oliver Twist.
From reading the comments, it seems like there's a lot of people who aren't not getting the reference.
I'm not super familiar with either Dickens or Oliver Twist.
That moment is so.
It's iconic.
Yeah, it's practically a meme, you know, with the kid standing there with the bull.
It's Oliver.
Yeah.
He gets dared because he's new and he goes and he asks for more because everybody's so hungry.
They were in the workhouse.
They're getting their little bit of gruel.
I saw somebody even say they didn't know what gruel was and everybody's like, yeah, I had to Google what's gruel.
This is like how far down the line, the road of privilege we've gone that people know what gruel is.
I feel like every cartoon growing up in Saturday morning, you know, there was like a scene where someone got put in jail and had to eat gruel.
What cartoons are you watching?
Are these your homeschool cartoons you were watching?
Wait, were you homeschooled?
No, I feel like this was a, I was not homeschooled, but I feel like this was a trope.
It's like that I assume you were.
It's always a trope, but the guy standing there by the prison cell doors and the, you know, the little bowl of gruel is slid under the door or whatever.
Like, that's a thing, right?
I guess.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know exactly where I learned the word gruel, but I assume my dad used it.
My dad's pretty old-fashioned, though.
He was born during World War II.
We already had our episode about your daddy.
Yeah.
Let me start again.
Yeah, you know, and what's interesting about this one is it's making kind of a big exaggeration of the cartoonish villain that a lot of people paint Trump to be.
Yeah, the reactions were so angry from the Trump lovers on this one, which I think they completely missed that we're mocking the cartoon, the liberal cartoon of Trump being like one of the oldest tropes in villain history.
The guy in Oliver Twist who's like, you want more?
And like, that's their literal vision of what Trump is.
And so people that get it seem to think it was hilarious.
Yeah.
But I would highly recommend.
I love Charles Dickens.
I have not read all his books.
I've read Oliver Twist twice.
I read it once myself.
And then I, this is a parenting tip, just a little tip.
I like reading books I lied to my kids.
I got my eight-year-old when he was eight to sit through me reading the entire book of Oliver Twist, and it's long.
The way that I did this is I paid him a page rate of reading that would lead up to getting a PlayStation 4.
Now, I had already planned on buying a PlayStation 4 because the 3 was getting pretty old.
So it was a purchase we were going to make.
I just worked in Oliver Twist into the deal.
And so I managed to read one of the great classics by one of the greatest authors of all time to my kids.
So use that if you want to.
Yeah, so our parenting advice here at the Babylon Bee is just blatant bribery, manipulation, deceit, whatever, you know, the ends justify the means.
Exactly.
I'm sure God does that to some extent.
Bribery.
Blatant there.
There you have it.
Yeah, you're going to get to be in heaven.
I don't know.
So I love this idea that Democrats and Republicans and people who are neither of those disagree on immigration policy.
But, you know, it's so often that we paint the other side as this villain.
You know, you hate children.
Why do you hate children?
Or the people who want a lot of immigrants to come in.
It's like, why do you hate America?
It seems like when people actually talk about this topic, that they're not that far apart.
That's probably true with a lot of things.
With most things.
Like, you have to create a cartoon version in order to have an argument.
And it seems like people want to argue or something because when you really talk about it, it's like almost pretty much everybody, unless you're really, really racist, is talking about illegal immigration.
Like, we just want some standards at the border.
Most people want that.
Any reasonable person, you don't just want people flooding in anywhere.
That's crazy.
So what you're saying is you don't want the immigrants to have more gruel?
No more gruel for you.
No more gruel for you.
Okay, so this is another Frank Fleming article.
And this one, yeah, that's Frank.
I have to read this paragraph.
Okay.
Because the kid comes up and asks for more, and Trump says, more?
You greedy little child.
This stuff costs two cents per bowl.
I should box your ears.
And then it's...
That's straight from the book.
And then it says...
It says Trump was then told that was illegal, which enraged him further.
Since as the freeder of the leader of the free world, he should be able to punch a child whenever I want.
Trump then proceeded to chase the small hungry child, but accidentally slipped and fell into the vat of gruel, becoming stuck.
The Secret Service had to carry him out.
Still stuck.
Still stuck in the vat.
And all the while he was yelling, I'll get you, kids.
I'll get you all.
I don't know if that's from Oliver Twist, but I don't remember that, but it sounds like something that happened in one of those old-fashioned.
think it's like a Cruella de Vil you know she falls into the I think that happened in the the Glenn Close one I don't remember that happened in the cartoon but yeah I love those movies where the bad guy really gets their comeuppance and very silly on like Like, I was watching Matilda because I just finished reading Matilda with my daughter, and we watched that.
And seeing the trunch bowl, they really embellish in the movie.
The trunch pull is the most horrible bad guy in any kids' literature, I think.
And to see her getting it, like, she gets food thrown at her.
She's falling down.
She's got lizards on her.
She's just for like a good 30 minutes at the end of the movie.
She's just getting it handed back to her.
That was a staple of every kid's movie that we ever saw.
The bad guy falling into a vat of something or running away from wild dogs.
It has to be really embarrassing where their butts stuck up in the air and they're just struggling.
And they're running off to the sunset.
I'll get you, kids.
Yeah.
Looks like Team Rockets blasting off again.
So yeah, anyway, if you find yourself being really defensive about something, like a joke about Trump.
Yeah.
Yeah, reread it.
Take stock.
This is really common, too.
Like, yeah, first of all, even if it was making fun of Trump, like, let's lighten up a little bit.
Just, it's not healthy.
But also, like, this joke was making this joke.
Like, one of the most common things I saw in comments was satire contains at least a little bit of truth to be funny, and there's no truth in this.
Swing it a miss, B. Swing it a miss.
Yeah, Trump is definitely the most compassionate person when it comes to immigration, right?
There's no.
There is a kernel of truth there, but also there's a kernel, a large kernel of truth to what it's mocking, and it's mocking the cartoon version of Trump that people are, you know.
So to me, it's mocking the leftist argument.
Our second story this week, Joe Biden promises his followers eternal life.
And there will be sorrow.
I'm sure that we have a lot of bad religion fans listening.
Yeah.
Yeah, I wonder what the Venn diagram would look like of bad religion fans and Babylon B followers.
There's probably a few.
Yeah, I'm sure there is.
I know a lot of my.
If you're a bad religion fan, drop us a note.
Like to hear from you.
So the Democratic candidates have been promising increasingly bizarre things.
Yeah, all these different reparations.
Reparations paying for college yeah, free college.
We did another, another article where there was uh, there was just a fishing line with money on it dangling over the crowd.
You know the debt.
You get the image of the Democrats like having this, this fishing pole, and they're just come on.
Yeah, follow me to the polls.
And I think Biden's was the craziest when he promised to cure cancer.
And we talked about that a few episodes ago.
This was kind of a collaboration.
There were a few different ideas in this vein in our writers group.
Someone said something about, I think Seth actually, our owner, said something about, it was taken from Revelation, like Biden, Biden promises no more death, no more sorrow, no more pain.
And someone else said he promises eternal life.
So actually, I combined them and the headline is Joe Biden promises his followers eternal life.
And then in the article, he says, there will be no more debt, no more death, no more pain, for the former things will have passed away.
I will wipe every tear from their eyes.
And then I actually got the bad religion quote on there.
There will be sorrow no more.
Oh, nice.
I think nobody commented on it.
So I guess we don't have any bad religion fans.
This reminded me of a GK Chesterton quote.
This is your one.
There is now a false idealism of turning government into God by a vague notion that it gives everything to everybody.
He said that 100 years ago.
We need an audio cue for G.K. Chesterton quotes.
Can Dave do a GK Chesterton voice?
His voice was very high.
It was a higher pitch than you'd expect.
There's only one recording that I've seen.
I think there are other ones, but where he's talking, he's like, he talks very much like a British man in a glass.
Hey, you can do it.
There we go.
Thank you.
Yeah, I like the idea that government is this benevolent deity.
I will give you eternal life if you want to.
Yeah, do we get how it works?
I'm amazed how many people this works on, just the idea like, oh, yeah, we'll just wipe out all your debt.
Like, do you get what they're doing?
They're going to make you pay it just through a different way.
It's going to be taxes.
Like, it's all the same.
They just have this idea that there's these three or four companies that are always going to be rich and always going to have a bunch of money to pay everybody else for, I don't know.
Read some Thomas Soul, please.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know what else to say about that one.
It's so obvious.
Yeah, the student debt thing is crazy.
I've heard a lot of commentary like the student debt.
You know, you're ending up subsidizing people who make a lot more money than you because you're paying for these people who are college graduates and make, you know, 30% or 40% more than the median salary.
So it's almost this transfer of wealth to the wealthier.
So it's crazy.
Yeah, that drives me crazy.
Like the student debt thing and the health insurance thing, it's like they're both things where the money kind of just sneaks its way in so they can almost name their price.
And that seems to be the issue that's not addressed.
It's always like, how can the government fix it by giving it for free, which is just going to make it even crazier?
I'll also mention on this article that I was talking before about how I don't really see this big distinction between Christian satire and non-Christian satire necessarily.
But we're always writing satire that's biblically aware.
And this is the kind of joke where you might hear, a non-Christian might be able to make this joke, right?
Joe Biden promises his followers eternal life.
But a lot of the details, you know, like we're quoting from Revelation and he says, my yoke is easy and my taxes are, well, they're going to be pretty heavy.
But still, you know.
I never actually read the article and this was pretty funny.
Kind of disappointed in you.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, so, you know, I like when we can combine a current event and you take kind of that Christian angle on it.
You know, where obviously we're painting him as this kind of false messiah type.
you think that it feels like that it feels like a lot of i think politicians on both sides feel this way but it's more popular to be uh i don't know There's just a weird connection between replacing religion with government on the left.
But I do think you do get the sense from a lot of these people that they think that they are going to be little mini messiahs.
Yeah.
Yeah, that happens on both sides, I think.
Yeah, totally.
I definitely think Trump has a bit of a messiah complex.
Churchgoer takes a knee in protest as newfangled chorus added to classic hymn.
This one's close to my heart.
Yeah.
Again, I'm going to step away for a few minutes and let Ethan rant.
I believe this one was written during the podcast, but I think it may have been during a subscriber portion.
I think so.
We were joking around during the subscriber portion, and Ethan was talking about how he hates.
Yeah, I was talking about, like, I, oh, yeah, because you were saying you don't stand for the Pledge of Allegiance or, oh, no, you stand for it, but you don't say it or something.
Something like that.
There's some kind of stand you take.
That's how I'm a, I'm pretty much a, I go along with whatever.
If everybody's standing, I just stand because I don't want to be the jerk who's sitting because then my kids will sit.
But the one thing that I do protest is whenever they add like a new bridge or chorus to a worship song, I cannot sing it.
You can't bring yourself to do it.
I can't do it.
Okay.
So amazing grace, my chains are gone.
Do you sing the you don't sing my chains are gone?
Chris Tomlin version?
Oh, if they do.
Oh, yeah, because they, yeah, because he like breaks out for that.
My chains are gone.
I hate that so much.
So you don't sing, you just don't sing.
Despise it.
Yeah, I just don't.
I just stand there staring.
And I look around.
I'm curious to see who my friends are.
Because there's like half the church still not singing.
Like people that like, yeah, you okay?
We're cool.
We're cool.
I look mostly older people.
But they might also be those old people that just don't sing anyway.
That's true.
I think there's a lot of people who go to church like, why do we sing so much?
What are all these songs?
What the heck?
Yeah, I think there's this weird divide where modern people who come to church expecting modern music, you know, modern music has this flow to it, right?
Where you're building up through these verses and then it all kind of unleashes during this chorus.
and hymns don't really have that right because yeah hymns don't have the modern thing where they go super they hit the highest note possible before your throat starts to bleed yeah But either that or they sing the entire hymn in that high pitch.
True.
But the dynamics of the hymn are often, you know, the hymn will build through the verse or through the stanza and then it has a powerful part, you know, on the third line or the fourth line or whatever.
But then it just repeats that four times.
And so people want that, you know, you build up the quiet verses and then the big, my chains are.
Oh, yeah, the bridge.
The bridge is like a thing that I think worship bands have become very dependent on, which I realized because I was in worship.
I was a worship leader.
And then when I was in a band, I realized like, oh, we're just using this.
Like you do like a repeated phrase and you keep building up and the drum's like, and then you break off.
Yeah.
So like, it's a good way to make it feel like the Holy Spirit's there.
Yes, Lord.
Yes.
So I think they felt like, man, there's no, there's not that bridge in these songs.
We really, Jesus forgot.
The Holy Spirit forgot to inspire them to put a bridge in, so we have to add it now.
So they add it.
The drummer has nowhere to go.
I think a lot of the divide is a disagreement about what church music is for.
That's probably true, too.
Yeah.
Like people, people think, oh, this music should give me this emotional high, you know, versus we are declaring truths.
And I think there's probably some merit to both of those views.
But when you go all the way one direction, say, we need this emotional high, and then, you know, then an old hymn probably isn't going to do it for you.
So that's why they modify them.
Yeah, that's the only reason I kind of just take it back on this stuff.
I never argue about it or complain about it in church.
I know that it's just my, I think I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to this stuff.
You know, so it's because I've been in music and I've like made music.
And I think that I'm just, it's kind of like a, you know, how a chef would like judge food.
I'm just like snobby about it.
So people love it and really enjoy it.
So I try to just sit back and I sing along because I enjoy singing.
But yeah.
I kind of.
But I am that grumpy old man.
I'm a total grumpy old man.
I kind of ran the gamut because when I was growing up, we'll talk about this more in the context of youth group, I think.
But I grew up and it was kind of this emotional, like that to me, I did not like the old hymns at all.
I didn't even know most of them growing up because the church I went to was kind of experience driven.
And so then I went, when I went to college, I started hearing all these hymns and I go, oh my gosh, these are amazing.
These are really good.
Why were we not singing these?
And part of that, just to be fair, I think, is kind of like with old movies, you're pulling like the best 10 movies out of like decades.
Oh, yeah, there were bad ones.
There were bad ones.
It's not that they were made, you know.
So it's kind of like that too.
Like, there's tons of bad hymns too.
I'm sure, but the best have risen to the top.
In the Garden.
Do you remember that song?
No.
It's like.
I've heard in the jungle.
There was this period of hymn writing in the 1900s to like 1900s to 1950s where it was kind of these gospel songs and it was all it started to become this light, you know, repetitious thing.
And there was a song in the garden.
You know, God walks with me and he talks with me in the garden.
You know what I mean?
He walks with me and he talks with me.
Is that that one?
Yeah.
Can't stand it.
So they're the same criticisms people make about modern songs.
You can make them about a bunch of old ones.
Totally ones.
It's some very strange ones, too.
You're going to flipping through that hymnal.
Yeah.
How about the Mormon hymn, When We All Hide a Kolob?
Is that real?
That's a real one, yeah.
For those who don't know, Kolob is the star closest to God, I believe, in the Mormon religion.
I think that's correct.
Yeah, I had a crush on a Mormon girl once.
I was Googling Come Thou Fount.
I was trying to find arrangements of Come Thou Fount.
And it was like, come thou fount slash when we all hide to kolab.
When we all what to kolab?
I think it's high.
I think it's how it's pronounced.
H-I-E.
So weird how we use words and high as a verb.
So don't sing.
But I just want to say also as a side note, this is a frustration of mine as the quote-unquote creative director.
Because it's been publicly stated now that I'm the Photoshop guy.
And so now when Kyle does a Photoshop, I know that people are like, and this could be another thing where I'm being a snob with that old man in that picture.
You guys look at this picture.
Yeah.
I told Kyle.
Discussing a picture works really well on a plane.
On audio.
Kyle took.
Well, there's going to be show notes if you can find them.
I don't know if you'll find them.
But you just Google, you just search on our site, Church Goer Takes a Knee, and it'll come up.
And you can see this guy and like the angle of the background with the angle of a guy.
And then his head is like a different angle.
So it looks like his head's kind of like deflating like a balloon.
And his chest and his arms look massive.
I think it looks amazing.
It actually like for like because like for your Photoshop, this actually is pretty good.
Like I'm not saying you're horrible.
I just it's a challenging Photoshop.
It would be really hard to do like putting a head on a body that's not just standing straight and at a weird angle.
That's very hard.
You have to find just the right angle.
And so all things considered, because I like his face, his hands are just, I think you found a picture of a guy who's in pain, was the idea of what the, because you have to find whatever shutterstock gives you is what you got to use.
So you find a guy who's like gripping his knee and then you added the face of his like wincing.
So he looks like it looks like his knee is giving out and he's like, so I think it actually added some humor to it.
Yeah.
This guy's like, yeah, this guy's tried to take a knee, but he's old.
And he's like, I'm taking a knee in protest.
That's great.
So deflating balloon headman is our star Photoshop guy.
And it looks amazing.
It's great.
All right.
So we're going to go to our main topic.
Is it time?
It is time.
And now, the Babylon Bees topic of the week.
Our topic this week is youth groups.
A institution, an institution that is near and dear to the hearts of every American churchgoer.
Strange, strange place.
A strange place.
It's like you walk through a weird time warp to this alternate dimension of youth group.
I was not.
I always felt like I didn't fit in.
Well, I think most people feel that way.
But I really did not like all the way from when I was a little kid, Hawanas, any of those.
I hated these group games.
I just hated them.
I don't know why as a kid.
I felt like I was being manipulated or something.
I just felt, it felt, I don't know why.
I just hated it.
Manipulated.
It felt like everybody, or I don't know what it was.
I didn't get why everybody liked it so much.
We're going to run around in a circle and eat candy.
I don't know.
I just didn't get it.
I don't know why.
Hey, guys, is everyone having a good time?
Yeah, that forced energy.
I can't hear you.
When people are like that, I immediately, even when I was a kid, it makes me go the opposite direction.
You're like, no, I'm not having a good time.
Yeah, I'll have a worse time now because you're trying to force me to change and have a good one.
OK, so churches, you know, churches didn't always have youth groups all the way back to to the early New Testament church.
Right.
I mean, this is makes sense.
This is a relatively recent thing because you used to go to church and you just sat with your parents.
And even when I was growing up, you'd go and you'd sit with your parents and then you'd break off after the service and you'd have a separate, they'd have age groups afterwards.
After the whole service?
Well, it was kind of like, you know, there's two services.
At ours, they make a big display, kind of like right in the middle of service, and they do like a prayer.
We do this prayer where we put our hand out.
Oh, my.
It's new.
You put your hand forward towards the kids.
And up at a 45-degree angle.
Not at a, yeah, not the angle.
But we do have, but we put it out as if we are Gandalf casting a wizard spell on the children.
Oh, my.
Wait, as they like, every week as they go through.
We read like the era.
We just say like the aeronic blessing or whatever.
This is every week as they go to their channel.
As they go to their, yeah.
But that's the part that always makes me feel weird is like putting your hand out towards them.
And once again, I participate because I'm a conformist when it comes to just like simple stuff.
And so I'm like, fine, I'll be, I'm not going to be the jerk who doesn't put his hand up.
But I still don't get how that does that make the prayer shoot towards them better or how does that work?
Do you go to a cult?
It feels like a pretty normal church.
Is it in a compound in the middle of the woods?
It's kind of like, it's the same idea as laying hands on, I think, except for it keeps everybody having to get up.
I guess it's weird to me that you guys do it every week as the kids leave.
Well, they stand there.
They get up like, it's time for, you know, we're going to pray for them before they go off to their Sunday school.
Well, praying isn't bad.
Yeah, no, it's praying.
It's just the Lord bless you and keep you.
Blah, blah, blah.
I will come out in this Christian podcast and bravely state that praying is not bad.
Bold.
Stunning and bold.
Okay, so youth groups, we've got this idea that it's a good idea to take kids that are in their most awkward phase of life.
To say the least.
Get 100 of them and stuff them in a room together.
I don't know.
It seems like a recipe for disaster.
And then all the weird ways we have to censor ourselves or pretend certain things aren't really there.
Like, I don't know.
I mean, just the most obvious thing is this is like the age where sexual attention is creeping in really strongly with kids.
Yeah.
I don't even know where to go.
Well, and it's almost, and they almost play on that.
Like some of the youth group games that they do.
Very bizarre games.
I went to a youth group once at my friends, and actually, I think this was the same friend in the same church I had mentioned previously where he went.
This might have been in the subscriber section, but we talked about how this guy pretended to shoot the entire youth group and then said, you're all dead.
Yeah.
That's the end of your life.
And it's like, oh.
So I went to this one and they did some kissing game.
I don't think I participated.
I think I was just arriving and they were doing it.
But it's like someone sits in the middle and someone has to run in and kiss.
The person's eyes are closed and you go kiss them.
I don't remember what the point was.
It was like, you know, you dare someone to kiss them and then they go kiss them and then they have to chase them around.
And I'm just like, what is this?
Remember the orange, passing the orange?
Where you're like with your chin under the neck.
It's basically necking without lips.
Oh man.
And, you know, there's people of different heights and there's just, that's an area, especially on females.
Like, it's very close.
It's just bad.
Why are you encouraging guys to like shove their face up against women?
Oh, that's awkward.
I don't know.
Maybe that's not, that might be a, I'm curious if they'd still do that one.
Did you guys ever play Chubby Bunny?
Yeah.
We also did Chubby Chihuahua.
Where you stuff all the marshmallows in your mouth and you have to say Chubby Bunny.
Yeah.
You just add more and more.
Chubby Chihuahua, it's jalapenos.
I wonder how many people have died.
Yeah, there's got to be somebody who's died.
Like what the mortality rate is of chubby bunny participants.
What about human blender?
That sounds familiar.
That's where like it's a skit where like you put the food, like there's like four people in a row and you put the food in the first person's mouth.
They like chew it up and swish it around.
And like one's chop, one's blend, one's mince, one's mix or whatever.
Then they spit it in the next person's mouth.
They chew it all up and swash it.
And then the next person at the end, the last person spits it into like a blender container.
And we go through like 10 different food items.
So disgusting.
And the last, then we have this nasty shake at the end and somebody drinks it.
Wait, so they're actually spitting it into each other's mouths?
Yeah.
It's like the last person.
Are these youth group kids or are these leaders?
Well, I was in Young Life.
Young Life is like a cult.
Youth group, like insane.
I'm convinced you're just like this cult member that snuck into the Battle of Beast somehow.
Oh my gosh.
Well, Young Life, because Young Life, I think they would try to be extreme.
Because the idea of club, I call it a club.
It was an outreach to secular, like unchurched.
So they would sing like secular songs.
Oh, man.
And then at the end, sing a Christian song before them.
Then they give a 15-minute message at the end.
But the idea was for it to be such a fun, blast, crazy time that they'd want to keep coming back.
You sneak the gospel, and that's the gospel sucker punch.
Yeah, the gospel sucker punch.
Hey, what's that?
Yeah, I always love that.
I think we did an article similar where you've got this youth group flyer that's like fun, games, prizes, and then a little text at the bottom, short sermon.
Yeah, so youth group is a crazy time.
I'm sure we have plenty of stories of wild goings on.
One thing I wanted to bring up was the youth group.
Now, let me ask you, Ethan, did you guys have a band that was composed of youth group?
No, well, that was what got me going to Young Life before I came to Christ.
I was a little secular grunge guy, but everyone talking about the band at Young Life, and they're like, there's a mosh pit.
So some of the cool band guys in our school were playing in the band at Young Life, and they would play cool songs and everybody mosh because this was like the 90s.
And so I went and then, so the cool people got to play in the Young Life band, and I ended up becoming the song leader of the Young Life band before I'd even come to Christ.
I was already playing the music and leading my band in high school.
I feel like this is a common thing.
This is probably a common thread for stories of youth groups is that the band was not Christians.
Yeah.
It was just guys from the local high school that were like, what?
It's like the one opportunity to rock out in front of everybody.
Yeah.
I mean, that's, and that may be true of the adult worship group too, is I think a lot of people come to church and, you know, just get, want to get involved in the band because it's the only place you can play music.
Well, a lot of musicians come out of church culture because I think because we have so much, we have such a strong culture of music.
Sure.
So that's pretty interesting.
But.
Yeah.
So I started playing bass in the youth group and I was.
That's what I played.
Yeah.
And so I was horrible.
I was horrible.
Like I bought a, or I got for Christmas or something.
I got the, what's the Fender knockoff?
Is it Squire?
Squire?
Yeah.
It's like their budget.
They have a Squire bass?
Yeah, I got a Squire.
Oh, yeah, because my brother plays a Squire bass.
It was similar to the Fender.
They named their band Squire after the bass, like the band.
Really?
Yeah.
It was like the Fender P-bass.
You know, it just looked like the standard guitar bass body.
But it was a Squire, so it was the one that was $99.
Yeah, my first bass was like an all-purpose bass that didn't even have a logo on it of any kind.
It was just the cheapest bass you could get.
And so our youth group had six guitarists.
What?
You know, and one drummer and a singer and no bassist.
So I said, I'll play bass.
So I think I even, I had the knockoff of the knockoff of the Fender for my amp.
It was like Rogue.
Yeah.
Do you remember Rogue?
Rogue too.
I think that was the cheap, the cheaper version of the squire.
And so I think I blew it out within like a month.
It was gone.
But I would just go up there and I didn't even know.
You know, I probably knew three notes on the thing.
And it's like, oh, this song isn't in the key of G.
I don't know.
Can you change it?
Yeah.
Well, I got like, I got very obsessed with playing my bass when I was about a freshman in high school.
I had played saxophone in the school band.
I knew some stuff about music.
And I really got into Primus, which is like he plays lots of slap bass and lots of funky tapping and which is like not what basses are supposed to sound like, especially if you're trying to glorify the Lord.
And so I would do like slap bass riffs, even if it was like, you know, the simplest, you know, supposed to be where the bass is not even heard.
You know, I'd be like, oh, dang, dang, dang, don't, dang, don't.
Someone all Seinfeld in the middle of like a worship, like a soft worship song.
I was similar, and I kind of still do that if I ever play bass, but not really slap.
It's just more like I'm always throwing riffs and licks in, and the worship leader glares at you like walking up the line.
Yeah, what are you doing, man?
What are you doing?
That's why there's so many bass player jokes.
And we're going to talk about it later.
We'll talk about it, I think, in the subscriber section.
Sorry.
So, youth pastors.
Yeah, youth pastors.
Special breed.
That was one thing that happened to me.
Like, when I came to Christ, I became a Young Life leader almost instantly.
So I was in a place of leadership.
I felt like I had been a Christian for a week and they're already putting me like, all right, cool.
Let's lead a Bible study.
I like the low standards that a lot of people.
But it feels like a lot of youth groups and churches have that, right?
No, I'm not picking on Young Life.
I'm saying just in general, it's pretty common.
Youth groups are like, hey, you have a face.
Yeah.
You know, kids think you're cool.
You have a trucker hat.
Yeah.
You have a tattoo on your wrist.
You have a tattoo.
Can you lead the kids?
You know?
Yeah, so youth pastors.
Youth pastors are, again, different varieties of youth pastors.
I think we talked about this subscriber stuff too.
Yeah, there's the, there's the, well, there's just creepy.
Like, they should not have this job.
But they're usually good at faking or, you know, being seeming like normal people.
But then there's like the ones who just never wanted high school to end.
I think there's that.
And there's the good people that really have a heart for it.
Yeah.
But to me, those are like the three main categories.
I think there's this perception of youth pastors that it's not a real job.
Like it's the stepping stone to becoming an actual pastor.
And that's probably true in a lot of places that someone wants to be an associate pastor or wants to be a lead pastor.
And it's like, well, we don't have any job openings.
What about youth?
It's been like our church.
Our current youth pastor has been there for a while now, but it was like a revolving door for a while.
They kept having a new one.
Because I think it is a low-paying job.
If it pays at all.
Yeah, if it pays at all.
And yeah, it was cracking me up because my daughter was like, man, my youth pastor, he's taking me out to pizza, and he's taking everybody in the youth group out to pizza individually.
I'm like, well, you get how being a youth pastor works.
Like they give you a credit card and you charge it to the church whenever you take a kid out to eat.
So he's probably just having pizza for every meal so that he can, he's just using you guys.
I'm just kidding if he's listening.
We've got to be careful.
I know.
It used to be just Babylon B.
We were just anonymous and we could just throw articles out there and now people know our names.
I'm only saying that because that's what I would do.
Yeah, so the youth pastor position is often the mail room of getting your foot in the door for a real job.
And I think it's rare, but it's probably really valuable when it comes up that you find someone who really has a heart for youth ministry.
Like that's what they want to do.
Like you don't see a lot of people where that's their goal.
I want to become a youth pastor.
Yeah, yeah.
But I feel like if you found someone like that, it would be like, hang on to that person because it's a reality.
They're either a treasure or a creep.
Which one are you?
Keep an eye on them.
What else about youth groups?
We would like at some point to do just stories of youth group.
Yeah, we do.
Do you have a story from youth group that you could on your mind right now?
I had one I was playing with, but it was more from camp.
I don't know if I should share it or not.
Yeah, I guess I have, I guess I mostly have camp.
Camp stories?
Stories.
We'll do a camp stories one too.
We'll do camp stories.
Yeah.
We needed like a podcast exclusive email.
How would that work?
Do you know what we'd send to or do we have to set that up?
We're getting something set up, I think.
Okay, so we can't announce it yet.
So I guess I'll give one story.
The youth pastor that ran our high school group when I was growing up, he ran it for all four years, and he kind of introduced me to like actual, you know, theology.
Okay, because our church was pretty, I mean, I'm not going to say it was like off the rails, but it was kind of, you know, very basic, I guess, in terms of theology.
And this guy was more hardcore, like he knew, he actually knew things and he would actually teach the kids things, you know, the hard, hard doctrine that you wouldn't hear from the pulpit normally.
And so he was a good guy, and he started to ask if kids wanted to preach.
So we started doing like Wednesday night, you know, kids who wanted to be leaders, kids who were volunteering a lot.
You know, they got to, they got to give a little talk.
And our youth group was about 200, 250, something like that.
It was a pretty big group.
And so I got to teach one Wednesday night.
I think there's still a tape of it somewhere.
Oh, yeah.
And it was horrifying.
It was terrible.
And so it's like standing up there and, you know, you kind of put this talk together, but you don't really know how to put together a talk.
Yeah, once you're in front of people, it's way different.
That's totally different.
You don't expect it.
So I'm standing there in front of my peers and I give this whole talk about the book of Revelation or something.
And literally, like, that's a good, that's a good thing to pick.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For your first ever sermon.
Talk about the book of Revelation.
That's easy.
And so I did it.
And then I felt pretty good about it.
I was, I was nervous, but I was like, oh, that went okay.
And this other kid comes up to me afterwards and he goes, Did you know that John wrote Revelation and not Paul?
And I'm like, so I realized that the entire sermon you've been saying Paul.
I've been saying, what Paul wrote here was this.
So that was how I got my start.
Wow.
That's a good sting.
Nowhere but up.
Yeah.
My first big talk was this was like what kind of set me in this path where I think people thought I was going to be like this big new young life leader in the area because I gave my, it was the night that I was to give my testimony, a quote unquote.
And so that day I had stabbed my finger on accident when I was getting ready for a skit that night where I was trying to poke a hole in a pair of Mickey Mouse ears so I could put a thread on them and put them on my head because they wouldn't fit because they were like kids' size.
And while I was stabbing the hole through the hat with scissors, the scissors went through like half of my finger and I had to go to the emergency room and like stitch it up like actually to get stitches.
So I gave my talk that night with a giant like Mickey Mouse finger, like a huge bandage on my finger, waking wagging it.
And I was, you know, and really embellishing my testimony.
Like, oh, because I smoked weed like twice in ice because I had a past of drugs.
Anyone who's ever walked by a marijuana joint cloud is like, smelled it one time.
I have a history.
Save me from my history of drugs.
You got to spice up your testimony however you can, you know.
Everything you can to make it sound like it was really bad.
And then the thing turned around.
The Lord saved me from the slammer.
The big thing that happened that night, and not to like, you know, but was I gave, uh, they gave an invitation after my testimony, and like a record number of kids like stood.
So it was like, wow, like 20 kids or something out of 100 or something.
That was because they were scared of your big wave.
But so then that was like kind of kicked off.
Like I felt all expired.
Like, oh my gosh, I'm leading people to Jesus.
And I wanted to.
But yeah, that was it.
I'm going to become a satire writer someday.
Yeah, someday I'm going to be a jaded, cynical satire writer.
Jesus.
All right.
So we're wrapping up our topic.
But yeah, youth groups, youth pastors, it's just a crazy thing.
And it's something that it's a well that we'll constantly go to for humor because there's just so much.
It's kind of this microcasm of microcosm of big church, you know, but it's these kids that are in this awkward stage.
So, yeah.
And then, yeah, and the awkwardness of youth completers.
We've barely scratched the surface of all this stuff.
We'll do more.
There's so much this is not appropriate to talk about.
Yeah, we actually did have a thread where we were trying to get stories for this.
And yeah, from our group.
Because it is such an awkward, tense, hormonal phase.
Yeah, it's like after the fact about all that.
Every funny story that someone posted was like, we can't read that.
We can't read that out loud.
All right.
So if you're a youth person, go to youth group, enjoy it.
If you're a youth pastor, lead your kids to Jesus.
Don't be creepy.
And don't be creepy.
Stop with the creepiness.
It's time for everyone's favorite time of the week.
Hate mail.
Get your hate mail.
I really miss Adam Ford.
I feel like this is like Mr. Rogers, where the mailman shows up, you know, every episode.
Speedy delivery.
He's like, entire tracks, and his clothes are all torn up, and he's got black eyes.
What was his name?
Mr. Nick Reedy or something?
I don't know.
Speedy delivery.
I think we're going to do a Dave this week.
Oh, we got a Dave.
I don't have it recorded yet, but by the time this podcast comes out, hopefully I will.
So here's the hate mail.
Now, I need to provide some context.
Yeah, we need context.
This was, we did an article where Melania Trump was getting criticized in the media for the way she decorated the White House.
And people were like taking pictures of, you know, why did she use white flowers?
Why did she, you know, there was like this crazy media commentary around it.
So we, we play, similar to the Trump piece earlier about the gruel, we kind of played that up, you know, like making fun of those people.
Yeah, when they were making fun of the media or making fun of the left's take and people aren't getting it.
And I don't know if that reflects worse on the people who don't get the joke or the fact that it is possible that this criticism could actually be made.
Yeah.
So the joke was, the headline was, Melania Trump criticized for decorating the White House with the skulls of her enemies.
And we have these skulls hanging from...
Standing there looking like Circe, Circe, Lancer.
Circe Lannister, which you wouldn't know.
You wouldn't know because it's from Game of Thrones and we've never seen it.
Yeah.
Okay, so here's the hate mail.
You should be ashamed of yourself to say what you do about our beautiful first lady who has to take your crap on a daily basis and yet you attack her Christmas decorating.
Christians, you are not.
Scumbag.
Hold on.
I can't read that.
I can't even read.
This is all caps now.
Christians.
Yeah, before we switch to caps mode.
Christians, you are not.
Scumbags, you indeed are.
Really need some swashbuckling music after that.
I love the Yoda, the switch to the Yoda sentence structure at the end there.
I see it more as like Shakespearean or like one of those festivals they have where everybody wears Renaissance.
Renaissance.
It's very Renaissance.
Christian.
Huzzah!
Like he's at a huzzah at the end.
Christians, you are not.
Scumbags, you indeed are.
Huzzah!
Scallywags.
Rap scallion carpetbaggers.
Dare to insult the first lady.
Maybe that could be the sound.
We'll have make it sound like they're in the middle of a sword fight.
You can hear swords clanging and you hear other people fighting in the background like on a pirate ship.
And then it'll be like the fight they have while they're fighting swords.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Ching, ching, ching.
To say what you do about our beautiful first lady.
Ching, ching, ching.
Yeah.
Avast yi.
All right, so I'm going to get Dave to do that.
And here it is.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Say what you do about our beautiful First Lady who has to take your crap on a daily basis and yet you attack her Christmas decorating Christians.
You are not scumbit.
You indeed are even better.
Man, that was great.
Even better.
Even better.
Well, guys, I'm sorry to say, but it's time to wrap this thing up.
So thanks for joining us.
Yes.
And if you got any thoughts about youth group, et cetera, you want to give us some feedback, feel free to send us an email at editor at babylonbee.com.
We'll tag it.
We'll ignore you.
If it's a really, make sure it's a really funny story and not too long.
If it's great, we might use it in a future episode.
All right.
Well, we're actually going to continue on for another little bit here for subscribers.
So if you want to become a subscriber, go to babylonbee.com slash plans.
You can sign up at any level and you get to join us for our little small group.
Little subscribers, small group, where we're going to talk about this stuff.
Why doesn't our church have more programs?
Oh, we're going to talk about G.K. Chesterton, too.
Yes.
Yes.
We're going to answer some questions.
All right.
See you guys later.
Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.