Part 1
The Keys to Real Change
When we began this journey together, we had no idea where our learning would take us. We knew that our congregations needed to change, but we didnât realize how much we would change along the way. We knew that we needed to learn some new things, but we didnât know that first we would have to learn how to learn.
In Part One, we share what we learned and how we learned it, and what we still have left to learn. We invite you to learn along with us.
Chapter 1
Fully Alive: Godâs Dream For Us
Brian Stone
I dream of a community that will not settle for good enough, or for the kingdoms of our hands, but will tirelessly fight for the kingdom of God in our neighborhoods, our city, our country and to the ends of the world.
âNate Pyle
I dream of missional lifeâa life where fear, doubts, masks, and surface relationships are no longer necessaryâa life where I live what I believe, that my child, my family, and others who meet me might learn not by preaching but by example.
âEdie Pekich Lenz
I was born with a dream inside me. So were you. We were designed to dream of the epic life God created us forâthe abundant life, the fully human, fully alive life that Jesus lived.
Along the way, we exchanged that dream for a seriously compromised version, characterized by the pursuit of comfort and convenienceâthe pursuit of the American Dream. We wanted to learn to dream again, to hear the call to join God in bringing shalom to our broken world.
Every person is born with a God-sized dream inside them. We were designed to dream of the epic life God created us forâthe abundant, fully human, and fully alive life that Jesus lived. This is the life we were created to live, and when we are living in this way, our congregations and communities are being transformed into places of mission, and fruitful and faithful living.
As church leaders, itâs easy to forget our dreams and move away from our true calling. Do you remember your dreams? When I was little, I pinned a towel around my neck like a cape and dreamed of being Superman. As a teenager, I dreamed of being a rock star. As a college student, I dreamed of being the kind of English teacher with whom students would clamor to study. Reconnecting with our childhood dreams helps us ignite our imaginations and allow ourselves to go to the âwhat ifsâ and âcould it besâ we all possess. Connecting to our childhood dreams helps us set aside the tyranny of congregational maintenance and opens up a spiritual space where we allow God to show us once again the full life he is calling us to. God created you full of potential and to dream big dreams for the Kingdom!
Practice and Reflect
So, I invite you to stop and set aside some time (an hour would be ideal) to get away and remember with God the dreams you had as a child and adolescent. It might feel hard to find the time. You might need to cancel a meeting. Youâll definitely need to turn off your computer and your smartphone. Take your journal, your Bible, and go someplace where you wonât be disturbed or distracted. You can pray this prayer, or one like it, and then quietly sit with God and remember. Journal whatever God brings to you.
Holy Spirit, I invite you into this space with me. It has been ____ years since I have allowed myself to remember the dreams you planted in my heart long ago. Would you remind me of those dreams? Give me the courage to imagine them again.
When I did this exercise and remembered my dreams to be a superhero, a rock star, and the worldâs best teacher. I was struck that I had a deep desire to have an impact in the world and to influence othersâeven when I was young! In that moment, God again stirred up in me a dream to make a significant impact for the Kingdom.
Dreaming Differently
Somewhere along the way, we stopped dreaming. We went from having big dreams about how we would have influence and change the world to settling and buying into the lie that we couldnât make a difference.
Some of us got hurt along the way. We were told, taught, or otherwise bought into the lie that we werenât good enough, smart enough, bold enough, or creative enough. We believed these lies and began to form a life around this diminished view of ourselves. And we settled.
We gave up on our dreams of making a difference and settled for dreams that were small and safe. We decided to find a job, make a living, and play it safe. We began to seek our significance in the accumulation of things. We learned to dream what the world around us supported and encouraged. In Romans, Paul tells us that we âexchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creatorâ (Romans 1:25).
Many of us settled or accepted someone elseâs dream for us. In either case we got something less than Godâs intention for our lives. What makes a lie so powerful is that it seems so right. Making more money to buy a better car, a bigger TV, a nicer house, and a smart phone with unlimited textingâwe dreamed of these things hoping that they would satisfy us.
This lie permeates every area of our lives in ways we are not even aware. It even impacts the church. In the church tribe I am part of, it was often said in jest that some of the best reasons for being in ministry were the tax breaks, pastoral perks, a great health plan, and one of the best denominational pension plans in the United States. Really?
But the lie doesnât impact pastoral leaders alone; it impacts entire congregations as well. The church I serve is fifty-eight years old as I write this. It was started out of a dream to bring the gospel to a community in desperate need for transformation. Along the way, however, the dream lost to the power of the lie that success for the local church was found in the worldâs definition of successâincreasing membership and financial stability along with the comfortable consumption of religious goods and services. As a church we learned to make great church members, but had no plan to make disciples who would impact their homes, neighborhoods, or workplaces with the gospel. We exchanged the dream of God for the American Dream of increasing ease and comfort.
Practice and Reflect
I invite you to stop reading again. A significant part of the learning journey is developing the capacity to tell yourself the truth. Please open your journal and spend a few moments in quiet. What does this last section stir up in you? Have you given up on your dreams? When did that happen? What hurt caused you to settle? Is there evidence that you have substituted Godâs dream for your life for the American Dream? Be courageous and write down what you hear.
Iâm inviting you to relearn that the fully human, abundant life that Jesus calls us to is a life driven by a God-given dream. Iâm inviting you to dream dreams that move you toward the calling that was yours from your creation. Are you ready to dream the kinds of dreams for which you are designed? Are you ready for dreams that propel you into aligning your life with Godâs mission in the world?
Dreaming Is Rooted in Godâs Creation
In the beginning of Genesis we read about God creating, out of nothing, all there is. Why? Why did God create? Why did God create You?
I have a deep conviction that God created the world because God is love and because God is on mission. In the beginning, God created the perfect environment for all to live and thrive. The restoration of this perfect environment is what we call the shalom of God, a Hebrew term for deep peace and wholeness.
With all the brokenness in the world, we can still experience this deep peace, this shalom, when we are fully alive, living into our intended design, and functioning as God intended. When a communityâa family, a school, a business, or a congregationâlives into its God-given design, shalom is experienced. Wherever Godâs love is fully expressed and experienced, Godâs shalom is at work.
Created in the image of God, we were entrusted with responsibility for the land (Genesis 1:28â30), and we are called to be a blessing to the world (Genesis 12:1â3). Though sin marred Godâs shalom, God chose us to partner with him in recreating and restoring shalom in our own families, our communities, and ultimately in the world. How can we reconnect to this central purpose, this central calling to be Godâs partners in restoring shalom?
Practice and Reflect
Stop here and spend some time journaling. Where is your world marred by sin and brokenness? What part of the brokenness stirs your heart, your passion? What wrong do you feel passionate about righting? What brokenness calls to something deep in you? What would your family or community or workplace look like if there were movement toward the full shalom of God being expressed?
Challenges in This Book
As you read through Learning Change, you will be asked to take an honest look at yourself. The journey of living into your dreams is fueled by a growing capacity to tell the truth about what is actually happening in your life, what we call âsaying what is so.â We will challenge you to be courageously authentic about your life, your work, your family, and your community.
When I get challenged like that, all my defenses go on high alert, and I find myself stiff arming the Holy Spirit and others. I stop listening to understand, and I begin to disagree, argue, or feel shameful with a desire to hide who I really am.
We will challenge you to find time in solitude to reflect on what you are reading. This work will have more impact if you are aware of experiences that you have of shame, of not being right, of not being enough. With awareness and persistence, you can quiet those voices more effectively.
God does not reveal our brokenness or integrity gaps to shame us. Remember, âThere is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesusâ (Rom. 8:1).
Integrity gaps are those places in our lives where we donât do what we said we would do, or where we donât live into the design for which we were created. God reveals those gaps to help us grow. Itâs as if God is saying, âI love you and I have a calling that I want to entrust to you, and if you are going to own that calling, this wound needs to be healed. Or, that integrity gap needs to be closed.â
Finally, it is in the practice and reflectionâthe places in this book where we ask you to stop and write a journal entry or have a conversation or say a more authentic prayer than youâve ever saidâwhere your dreams increasingly come true. So in order to get the most benefit from this book, please make the time to do this important work.
Dreams Rooted in Who We Are in Christ
St. Irenaeus, who lived in the second century, made this observation: âThe glory of God is a human being fully alive.â In Jesus Christ, God has given us an example of such a fully alive person. I am operating with a classical, orthodox understanding of the person of Jesus Christâthat he was both fully human and fully divine. Jesus, as a human being, lived fully into the design of what it meant for him to be human. He is our example and model for who we are to be.
As a human being, Jesus had to do the work of hearing Godâs calling, just like we do. In the baptism experience, God speaks and Jesusâs calling as the Messiah is fully imparted. Jesus immediately goes to the wilderness for forty days to hear from God and to clarify his calling. And as disciples, we follow the example of Jesus. He heard the Fatherâs plan for his life and he followed it. We are called to do the same. When you realize that God has an intention for your life and you begin to live into it, you will experience Godâs shalom.
Central to every personâs call is a sense of mission. You donât just have a job. You are not just pursuing a career. You have a calling to be on mission in the places where you spend most of your day. There you pray for and work for the coming of Godâs Kingdomâthe full shalom of God. Godâs call for you will be expressed in your work in the world.
When you find that calling, you will know the full, abundant life that Jesus promises in John 10:10 where Jesus says, âI came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.â Jesus intends for you to have a big life, an epic life. Jesus didnât come so that he could be the means to a life of greater ease and comfort or to help us get the next promotion or bigger church. He came to give us a full life. A full life is a missional life. Donât substitute his calling by taking on the American Dream.
The full life Jesus came to give us is expressed powerfully in John 15. We cannot live this abundant life unless like a vine, we are deeply connected to Jesus, the branch. When we are connected to Jesus, we bear fruit. We have the life for which he designed us. We become truly like him, fully human and fully alive.
Jesus says that those who follow him and become like him, will do âgreater works that theseâ (John 14:12). Wait! Did Jesus really mean that? I believe he did. When you look around at your life you might say, âI donât know anyone who is doing all the things Jesus did, let alone greater things?â Thatâs true for most of us. In unprecedented numbers, followers of Jesus have substituted his call to a fully human, fully alive missional life for a very small life driven by consumerism. What would happen if we began to recapture Jesusâs vision for what it means to be human and began to live into that?
Iâm challenging you to take on the possibility that by learning to dream againâlearning to hear Godâs calling for your lifeâthe promise of John 14:12 could begin to be realized in you.
The full life we were created for is found in Jesus. It is found in our becoming so much like Jesus that we begin to do the kinds of things that Jesus did. Your calling and my calling is not to be the Messiah. But like the Messiah, if I am connected to God, God will show me what my calling is. God will fill my heart with the dream of a missional life that contributes to Godâs shalom coming into the world where I live.
So what kind of dreams are you dreaming? Are your dreams guided by consumerism? Are they thwarted and made small by some experience of wounding from your childhood? Or are they dreams about living the ...