Here's portions of an email Mark (my brother) sent me today:

"i'm "teaching" wed. night at our home group...[Mark is taking one of the lessons from a book (which will remain nameless) their group in Minnesota is reading]. I'm going to try to break it down and see if we can dig a bit deeper than "ministry is serving in church"...anyway, for wednesday, i think the plan is to not just jump into this book, but back up and show how ministry is really a very short link between discipleship (me and Jesus in the context of others) and mission. "I don't just want to receive, I want to give, I want to be a part of something bigger than me". the components of spiritual formation (gifts, disciplines, attitude, passions, experiences) come together to be the building blocks of our vocation or calling. We then join together with others, all with our callings and we go somewhere...mission. Here's a quote, albeit slightly out of context, but it sums up the heart of the book and unfortunately, I think, the motivation for all these churches doing it...this is the motto of this guy's church..."Whatever you are good at, you should be doing for your church."

Here's a better quote, from that Guder book i've been reading [Missional Church]... i think i'm going to share this by the way..."if a mission community saw itself primarily as the Spirit's steward of the calling and gifts of its members, its internal activities would, in one sense, diminish. it would spend much less time on providing activities that take its members out of the world. it would devote more of its times of gathering for the equipping, support, and accountability of its member-missionaries. the ancient sense of the conclusion of public worship as the sending out of God's people would be translated into the concrete forms of congregational life. our concept of "active church member" would, of course, have to change. we would expect to see less of our more mature and accountable members, and focus more of our gathered time on the young, the new Christians, those in training for their missionary vocation."

Here's a little bit of my response:

"Dude, that is cool. This weekend during my conversations with Ahren and T, I was able to articulate my role and what I think my calling is, better than I ever have before. It is, quite simply, to make everyone else better than myself, to help them realize their dreams and visions, to "equip the saints" not for the work of my ministry, but for theirs. Naturally, the goal will be for them to spend less time doing what we have normally considered 'church activity' as they mature and discover their unique callings. This is leadership turned completely on its head...my goal is not to sell you on my vision, but sell you on your own - or really what God's vision is for your life. Then, and only then, do I have the right to suggest tools (training) to help this calling become a reality. It will be necessary to hold people "loosely in my hands" as they go through this process. Lately I've been thinking about Church of the Savior a lot - how they never had more than 200 people a part of their church at any given time, yet they have touched thousands of lives. I want to be like that."

More to come on this. Much more in the works actually. But, we got to have a baby in the meantime. 7:30AM tomorrow is the c-section. Thanks for praying.