The SIAFU Guidebook

148 The SIAFU Network Guidebook

may be beyond both your abilities and capacities. Some you may even try to do, even though you can’t do everything you might like to do. If God is given the greatest latitude to speak and lead the church in new and unforeseen ways, different kinds of ministries will emerge, in different sizes and emphasis, for different periods of time. The key will always be your ability to listen to the Spirit and your willingness to respond together to his prompting. Count on God leading you step by step, and be bold to meet the needs you can. How to Develop a Burden-Oriented Service Group Below are some ideas regarding how such burden-oriented groups might start. These are only suggestions; these groups may be organized in a number of different ways for different purposes. 1. Develop some mechanism for identifying the different concerns, issues, needs, and opportunities the members of the body are interested in addressing, studying, or meeting.

2. Gather the people together who share a common burden, seeking to match the interests as closely as possible.

3. Encourage the group to meet together to discern what in particular they desire to accomplish, and how that relates to the overall mission of the church. 4. The group should be encouraged to think through practically the nature of their burden and their particular field of interest, and how it relates to the Chapter’s mission and vision as a whole.

a. This will enable them to clarify their purpose as a service group.

b. This can be used to communicate to others who may be interested in joining.

c. This may be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the group’s efforts as it strives to fulfill its purpose.