Recently it was my pleasure and privilege to be one of my church's delegates to the annual District Assembly. I had been in the previous two years and knew that it would be inspirational, but I am not sure I was ready to be so greatly blessed and challenged. District Superintendent Rob Songer started by presenting us with 7 essentials to have a successful, discipling church.  Here they are:

    Meaningful worship
    Theological coherence
    Transformational leadership
    Intentional discipleship
    Church development
    Passionate evangelism
    Purposeful compassion

Each one of these could generate several sermons. Instead of sermons, each essential was presented by pastors and church leaders. They shared with us how there particular essential was at work in their church.  For example, church development, Pastor Guadalupe shared that no sooner had she established a new work in Farmersville than God began to speak to her about a new work in Orosi.  She stated that doing so was not a money problem, only a vision problem. Pastor Jason presented purposeful by, in part, talking about how their church adopted every school principal in town and prayed for their school and their leadership, culminating in inviting them all to a Thanksgiving dinner.  It was truly inspiring to hear what was going on in our district to further the cause of Christ.

One of the great things about assembly was the worship, especially on Friday night. I haven't heard such enthusiastic congregational worship in some time. At Friday nights ordination service we worshipped together singing We Believe, a recent hit of the Newsboys. The worship was so electric that when the song was finished, Dr Busic (our General Superintendent) asked the worship leader to do it again. We nearly got Pentecostal as our voices raised in worship. Truly a memorable moment.

If that wasn't enough, my wife Debbie, as our local missions president, was a delegate to Saturday's Missions Convention.  There we were priviliged to hear from Missionaries Mark and Linda Louw.  Highlights from that:

Mark Louw - Mission is not a something, its is you-here. When you are sent there, your there becomes your here. Think about it.
A man named Kevin (leader of a house church in a coountry where Christian churches are forbidden) - my only fear is not doing what God called me to do
Mark Louw - we are each in our own mission field, is your presence making a difference?
Mark Louw - Integrity, if you say it you must do it
Mark Louw - is your heart broken for the world or is church just something you do?

And finally, Martha Lundquist (District Missions President) spoke straight to me when she said - Let's no think about what we can do, but what God is calling us to do.