Tonight I did what I should have done much earlier in the semester and went to an elders' meeting at the Highland church. I needed to get this out of the way for one of my classes, and unfortunately it meant missing the last CoffeeHouse of the semester and of my Abilene tenure. Nevertheless, it was great experience, and here is why.

Frist of all, any and all visitors are welcome at the elders' meetings. So my presence was very welcome and I must have met at least half of the 40 elders before I even sat down.

Highland is working very hard to embrace missionality in everything that it does. The elders are leading this charge in a big way. I would say that close to half of the entire meeting was spent in prayer. Part of this quest is an intense focus on scripture. And by intense, I mean every elder spending time in every meeting in a solid focused time over Luke 10 (the sending of the seventy-two). They read it to each other. They pray over it. They read it again. They pray some more. They have been doing this over individual xeroxed copies of Luke 10 for about nine months now. At every single elders' meeting. More time was spent praying over a new member in the congregation. He stood in the middle of the room and 40 elders crowded around him, laying hands on him and blessing him in the ministry he is doing with middle school kids. Some business was talked about by one of the admin elders then all of the rest of the time was spent in specific prayer over various needs of the congregation. One of the elders on staff sat next to me and explained everything that was going on. They announced that I was going to be the campus minister at Kansas State, which brought out a ton of encouragement before I could leave from a group of men who I didn't even know.

Part of the extraordinary life I am living is getting to have experiences like this. I know that my own elders at Southern Hills operate with a similar kind of spirit, and it is great to be in a faith community with that kind of purposeful and spirit-led leadership.