Ministry - St. Barnabas' Episcopal Church, Odessa, Texas

Our community follows Christ because we seek enhanced spiritual life with our heavenly Father.

Defining Lay Mobilization

At one level, lay mobilization is most often perceived as matching people's gifts with service opportunities in the various church programs. Others have expanded this to include volunteer service in the community. Yet, ultimately the church is not about mobilizing lay people for volunteer service. The church has a wider role to mobilize people to perceive daily life as ministry. Lay mobilization helps people understand they have a calling and gifts to be used in every dimension of life...their profession or occupation, in their neighborhood, and in their family as well as their volunteer service. The church is to prepare people for a "whole life" of ministry, and not just church or community service. Mobilizing must start with helping a person understand their gifts and calling, then help them see how that knowledge makes a difference in their daily life.

Original Source Material

Seven Basic Procedures for Lay Mobilization

Assimilation involves helping new members understand the church and existing members extend their involvement beyond Sunday morning attendance or to find more meaningful ministry opportunities.
Context involves helping members understand Scripture and come to trust that God had gifted and called them to ministry.
Discovery involves an interview and/or assessment process. It helps members to learn more about the unique gifts, talents, temperament, and life experiences which God has given to them. It allows them to share their needs for ministry and support from the congregation.
Matching involves identifying ministry opportunities where members' unique abilities are needed within the church and community.
Placement is the connection of the member with the ministry opportunity and involves meeting with the ministry leader and co-workers, reviewing the ministry description, obtaining preparation and training, and initiating a pattern of regular service.
Coaching is the ongoing provision of training, nurturing, support, supervision, and additional gift discovery.
Recognition involves the celebration of service and the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of ministry for a Christian. <br>Original Source Material

Values of Healthy Equipping Churches

Prayer: We act on the inherent value of prayer to discern God's vision, leadership and plan for equipping ministry.
Creed: We act through trusting our belief in the Holy Spirit and in the Spirit's gifts to our parish as part of the apostolic Church [See Ephesians 4].
Servant Leadership: We encourage our leadership to develop habits of humility, authenticity, accountability, and genuine care.
Team Ministry: We actively build healthy community through the use of teams. We seek each team accountability to this vision through their subjective evaluation in anecdotal team stories on

Were the gifts of individuals embraced by the team?
Did the team rejoice to account to others for their actions?
What were signs of God's grace through the team's strengthen will?

Intentionality: We seek God's guidance when we are understaffed for lay mobilization. We exhort ourselves and others to

say "no" if they are not called,
to know their spiritual gifts which enable their discernment of God's call and
to ask God eagerly for those gifts which will build up [See I Cor. 14:12].

Proactive Response to Change: With cultural shifts, we will change any method which is not essential to the message of Christ.Original Source: p. 25 Assessing Church Culture