In Seekers mission groups, selecting participants to fill roles requires a process of discernment that allows the group to call forth and confirm God's special gift to each participant in the group. Sometimes this gift is a skill or talent that the individual has developed outside the group, like administration or accounting, or leading meditation. There are times when God's gift to a group is through an individual's pain or weakness: the participant in pain can draw forth the healing love of the entire group by being open and vulnerable in sharing that pain. In the same way, God's gift is sometimes a desire to learn something new by offering it to the mission group. The important thing is to be open to the quiet voice of God, and honest with one another in the group about what we hear.
Once the gift of each member has been discerned (within the context of the group) and confirmed, roles can be structured to allow each participant to give to the group from a position of authority. This allows authority within the group to be shared by all participants, and gives each person a position of leadership. Discerning the gifts of mission group members should be done for all participants at the same time. As new participants join a group, the distribution of gifts will change. Discernment involves sharing God's hints, praying together, discussing, claiming what is revealed, and confirming the gifts in the presence of everyone.
There are many processes for clarifying and confirming the gifts of members of a mission group. Typically, the person leading the group will include these elements:
The only way we can free anyone else to claim God's gift to them and be uniquely themselves is to have some understanding and excitement about our own uniqueness. As long as any participant in a mission group does not feel that his or her gift is essential and making a contribution to living out the call of the group, there will be problems.
When we speak of the authority of each participant at the point of their gift, we mean that as each person in the mission group exercises her or his gift, every other person in the group will confirm and be obedient to that gift. For example, if you are the worship leader of a mission group, you can expect all participants to enter into worship from the heart.
When this process causes disagreement or tension, it is the task of the group to work through the issue with prayer and love until the gift can be confirmed by all in the group. If this confirmation is not possible, the group must enter a period of discernment to reassess where gifts for the group are being given.
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