CHAPTER 1
Fully Alive: God's 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.
— Nate Pyle
I dream of missional life — a life where fear, doubts, masks, and surface relationships are no longer necessary — a 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.
— Edie 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 for — the 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 convenience — the 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 for — the 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, it's 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 "what ifs" and "could it bes" 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. You'll definitely need to turn off your computer and your smart-phone. Take your journal, your Bible, and go someplace where you won't 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 world's best teacher. I was struck that I had a deep desire to have an impact in the world and to influence others — even 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 couldn't make a difference.
Some of us got hurt along the way. We were told, taught, or otherwise bought into the lie that we weren't 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 "exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator" (Romans 1:25).
Many of us settled or accepted someone else's dream for us. In either case we got something less than God's 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 texting — we 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 doesn't 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 world's definition of success — increasing 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 God's dream for your life for the American Dream? Be courageous and write down what you hear.
I'm inviting you to relearn that the fully human, abundant life that Jesus calls us to is a life driven by a God-given dream. I'm 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 God's mission in the world?
Dreaming Is Rooted in God's 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 community — a family, a school, a business, or a congregation — lives into its God-given design, shalom is experienced. Wherever God's love is fully expressed and experienced, God's shalom is at work.
Created in the image of God, we were entrusted with responsibility for the land (Genesis 1:28–30), and we are called to be a blessing to the world (Genesis 12:1–3). Though sin marred God's 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 God's 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 "saying what is so." 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, "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1).
Integrity gaps are those places in our lives where we don't do what we said we would do, or where we don't live into the design for which we were created. God reveals those gaps to help us grow. It's as if God is saying, "I 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."
Finally, it is in the practice and reflection — the 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 you've ever said — where 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: "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." 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 Christ — that 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 God's calling, just like we do. In the baptism experience, God speaks and Jesus's 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 Father's 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 God's shalom.
Central to every person's call is a sense of mission. You don't 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 God's Kingdom — the full shalom of God. God's 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, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." Jesus intends for you to have a big life, an epic life. Jesus didn't 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. Don't 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 "greater works that these" (John 14:12). Wait! Did Jesus really mean that? I believe he did. When you look around at your life you might say, "I don't know anyone who is doing all the things Jesus did, let alone greater things?" That's 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 Jesus's vision for what it means to be human and began to live into that?
I'm challenging you to take on the possibility that by learning to dream again — learning to hear God's calling for your life — the 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 God's 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 abundant life that Jesus models for you; the abundant life to which Jesus calls us all?
Heal Our Land
When we settle and live small lives that pursue greater ease and comfort, and when our dreams become about making ourselves feel good, we stop becoming like Jesus, and the world suffers. So, in this opening chapter we have called you back to dream again. We've rooted that call to dream in the biblical narrative of God's mission to establish shalom over all the earth. We've rooted it in the biblical narrative regarding God's design of human beings.
In 2 Chronicles 7 we have a picture of what happens when God's people stop pursuing the things of God. It is a picture of famine. Look at our world today: high unemployment, skyrocketing divorce, unprecedented numbers of children living in poverty, a pervasive sex culture, failing schools, declining cities, homelessness and despair. There is famine in the land. In 2 Chronicles 14, God promises that if we, God's people, will repent and turn from our wicked ways, God will come and heal our land.
We have a deep conviction that when we live into the design and purpose for which we are created, God brings healing to the land. When we begin to live into the full life to which Christ calls us, God brings healing to the land. When we abide in Christ in such a way as to produce fruit, God brings healing to the land.
Created in the image of God, we are called to be a blessing. We are given authority to declare the shalom of God and demonstrate it through love. We are invited to abide in Christ so we might do even greater things. We are commissioned with a ministry of reconciliation and reminded that God's people will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned and care for the single mother and her family.
That is the full life Jesus offers us. It is this epic life that we are created to live as we step into the good works that God has already prepared for us.
Dream Big
How we see our future determines how we live today. If you know you will be going on vacation in a week, you begin to live toward that vacation. You begin laying out clothes to pack. You arrange for your mail to be held. You get your yard ready for when you will be gone. You get things lined up at work. You buy tickets for flights or program your GPS.
Begin to dream again. Begin to dream with God, through God's Word, and through prayer. Begin to invite God to shape your dreams. Begin to dream about your life of mission in the world. Not about what you will do, but who you can become. Not about the things you will accomplish, but about becoming so much like Jesus that those things happen naturally.
Begin to dream about your church on mission in the world. It's not about the buildings, your budget, the number of small groups, or a new sound system and lights. Dream with God about the people in your congregation and who they can be as they abandon themselves to the work of the Kingdom.
