This will be more of a fun one - as opposed to my more "serious" (if you can call it that) posts about church and life, I guess. Haha.
I've always been a bit of a dreamer, thinking big and thinking supernatural. Most of the time, the dreaming doesn't really amount to anything practical, or even achievable, but hey, it's part of my personality. As they say, if you're an INFP on the Myers-Briggs scale, then you're born to dream. Usually, as most people have it, passions drive your dreams. So seeing how my dreams have evolved over the years has been really interesting - and slightly embarrassing.
I wanted to write on this because of how I'm approaching 2016 in regards to my church. We recently have started talking about possibly renovating the old sanctuary, where the English side meets, as part of our 40th Anniversary celebration. Upon hearing that news, I immediately became bright eyed and wanted to go through a whole process of redesigning my sanctuary. Due to being busy, and ultimately pushing this dreaming business off to the side, I haven't had much opportunity to really put pen to the paper with how we could change the look of our sacred worship space. I've been open about my desire to "upgrade" our space since I stepped foot into this church, so it's no secret to the leadership what I want to do.
Another fun, but challenging, part of dreaming for 2016 has been how to take care of my people and my ministries. Eventually, I landed on the idea of discipleship and that if our church can get to where the leadership wants to go, it will be a top 2 contributor to getting there. The first, obviously, being grace that is granted to us. Coming right up behind grace, to me at least, will be discipleship. The church has expressed this desire to evangelize and provide outreach into the community and into the world. Given the way I think, there is no better evangelism than through discipleship. With the context of North America, you really don't hear too often about the big revivals that happen where thousands of people come to Christ overnight. So, from where I stand, I need to equip and empower the people around me so they can either do the same or go out to the places that seek revival.
So I've been doing my best to keep my mind at a state where I am genuinely loving these people enough that I'd want to invest and bless their lives through teaching and training them. I've told my leaders that starting this next year, I'm going to begin the process of working myself out of my job. This isn't that I have no desire to stay here, but I think there will inevitably come a time where God needs my skill set somewhere else. So when the day comes that I leave, I want to have the confidence that this church is well equipped to do what I've been doing.
One of the bigger challenges of me doing this is that it involves a lot of spending time to meet with people. If they don't want to meet with me as badly as I do with them, then it's going to be a one-way thing - and this is where the relationship and love for each other comes in. Another challenge is the style of leadership that I approach discipleship in a practical manner. With where I am, people have a strong lean towards the side of me being the leader to do exactly that: lead. Telling people what to do and, in some ways, commanding them is what I see prevailing in my eyes. The way that I prefer to go about it isn't through dictatorship, though. I love preaching and the pulpit work, but where the real growth happens is in the coffee shop when I'm talking to you about how we can all do this together, each pulling their weight. If that means me telling you in a dictator fashion to get off your butt, then so be it. But not everyone responds to that, so I need to find out what makes each person click.
So that's my dream. I want Newbern, in reaching 40 years, to turn the page a little bit and see that doing church may need to be looked at a little differently. As our younger half of the church begin to take on more leadership, this is the shift I think we will need to see taking place in the next few years.
It's crazy how this has become one of my dreams in life, to see a flourishing church. I'm the kid that used to dream about being a rockstar, playing guitar on stage and having people chant my name. Yeah, those days are long gone. My biggest desires in life are now pleasing God, having a growing and healthy church, and growing a healthy family where I can play soccer with my kids in the backyard. I don't ever want to stop dreaming, it's a wonderful thing. When I dream, I get inspired and move into action. For a person that is generally laid back and lazy, I welcome this into my life often. I just have to be careful that I don't get carried away in this fantasy land and neglect what's in front of me in the real world.
CRAZY, I tell you!
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