Sorry I didn't make it to the meeting last Thursday, I was heading down to Ohio for a conference with some others from Calvary. It was a great conference about being a church that is focused on missions and serving. Our leadership staff here at church has really been wrestling with this stuff, so the conference was a great encouragement. This last Oct. we started a year of Jubilee where we decided not to spend any money on any building projects here (and paid off our mortage) instead we wanted to do building projects all over the world and send teams of people from Calvary to assist in those projects. Now about half way through it has been incredible to hear all the stories about what God has been teaching us and doing. So after experiencing the success of this and reading a few books (mainly Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne) we have been evaluating how this year of Jubilee is going to affect the way we do church and who Calvary is as a church. Although things are just in the begining phases it looks like we are going to become a church that is extremely intentional about focusing on others instead of just looking inward. It will mean we have to ask and answer a lot of hard ?'s and rethink what it means to be successful (not how big can we build our church). I am really enjoying this and it is great to see the leadership of the church struggling through this. We just had a staff retreat yesterday and brought all the staff up to date on where things are heading and invited them to dream and struggle as well. It is great to see us asking ?'s about getting more to Jesus heart then to what the American church says.

If you want a book that will mess with you (which is acutally our sermon series right now) read Irresistible Revolution. What makes the book so powerful is that it is not full of ideas, but rather stories of how he has lived his life as a radical ordinary for Jesus.

Expectations...

I love reading Mark Batterson’s blog, Evotional. Mark is the lead pastor at National Community Church in Washington DC. theaterchurch.com Recently, he wrote a blog entry entitled Seven Expectations. These are the expectations he has of his staff. Personally, I think they are great. To read these expectations, check out Mark’s blog.

What expectations do you have of the people you work with?