Acts 2:1-21 Chapters 4-6, Dream Like Jesus
This is the day of Pentecost, the day we celebrate the birthday of the Church. It’s quite an exciting story, from a special-effects point of view. Just imagine what Steven Spielberg could do with this!
The disciples of Jesus had gathered in Jerusalem all together in one place, probably in the large upper room where they had been meeting since Jesus ascended into heaven. They spent most of their time engaged in one activity; Acts 1:15 says that they “all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women …” And it was while they were gathered together praying that they heard the sound of a strong wind blowing through the house, a wind that had come from heaven. And then they saw flames of fire that shot out and came to rest on each one of them. And then all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues. And we are told that this was a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel, who recorded God’s promise: “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit.”
There are several things about this story that I think are important as we are beginning the process of dreaming big dreams and casting visions for our church. First, we should be diligent in praying together about what we are doing. We need to be asking God for his input and guidance and inspiration. This is something that is bigger than us, and we are going to need God’s help. Second, when we pray for the Holy Spirit to come, we need to expect some excitement! The Spirit isn’t all quiet and subtle and gentle and easygoing. The Spirit is dynamic and noisy and impossible to miss and will disturb the peace. Third, when the Spirit comes, we will see visions and we will dream dreams. We will no longer be content with the way things are; we will want to strive for the way things could become.
It is so crucial to the process of dreaming and visioning that we have faith, lots and lots of faith. Faith in God to plant the dream within us and help us carry it out. Faith in Jesus to walk with us through the process and co-create miracles with us. Remember that in the New Testament wherever people had great faith, Jesus performed great miracles; but wherever people lacked faith, Jesus did not do very much. We need to have faith in ourselves, that we will be able to carry out the vision because God will equip us to do what God calls us to do or provide other people who have the gifts and resources to do it. And we need to have faith in each other to each do what we can to make the dream become a reality.
In her book, Dream Like Jesus, Rebekah Simon-Peter talks about five elements that will be present in a Jesus-like dream. We will need lots of faith and the power of the Holy Spirit in order to embrace and live into these elements. Let’s talk a little bit about each of them.
First, a Jesus-like dream expands your assumptions about what is possible. It stretches your mind and your imagination. It pushes you to think bigger. As Rebekah states, “It doesn’t say I can’t. It says with God, we can.” I think that this is extremely important to remember, because we need to realize that the world around us is looking for the church to do more, to be more. And we are limiting ourselves by our too-small assumptions about what we can do and be. Rebekah writes, “Even if they don’t know it, the world wants more of churches: more spirituality, more community, more engagement, more love, more miracles, more demonstrations of the Kingdom.” And we can give them more only if we allow ourselves to see bigger possibilities and greater opportunities than we are seeing right now.
Second, a Jesus-like dream is bigger than you are. It is not something that you can do by yourself. It will take a whole community of dreamers to make it come true. And not only that, it will require the power and guidance of God through the work of the Holy Spirit. This makes sense, because if the dream isn’t bigger than you are, then you won’t need God’s involvement in it and you won’t know that you could have done so much more if you had relied on God’s resources and not merely on your own. Rebekah writes, “If it doesn’t require God’s touch, it won’t be worthy of the church. Your dream has to be worth it.” In Chapter 6, you read about my friend and colleague Steve Trout. When he first stated his vision to Rebekah while he was doing his Creating a Culture of Renewal program, she pushed him by asking, “Is that big enough?” more than once. He kept working at it and going deeper and getting bigger, until his vision became: “This church could end hunger in our community.” And, working with other churches in his town, that’s exactly what happened. There are no longer any children in his community in New Mexico who go to bed hungry.
Third, a Jesus-like dream will scare you. That’s because it seems like it is too big for you to accomplish. But if there’s nothing that scares you about your dream, then it isn’t big enough to require God’s help to accomplish. Perhaps instead of thinking in terms of a dream that scares us, we should think about creating a dream that calls for a spirit of adventure. We are going to go where we have not gone before; think about the adventures of the Starship Enterprise, its ongoing mission, to boldly go where no one has gone before. Don’t you think the people on that spaceship would be afraid some-times? Don’t you think that the pioneers who set out across our country in covered wagons were afraid? But if they hadn’t overcome those fears, they would never have seen their dreams being accomplished. And I am sure that they drew on God’s help in their journeys.
Fourth, a Jesus-like dream is about the transformation of the community, not the survival of the church. The dream is bigger than the congregation. The church is not the focus of the vision, it is the agent of the vision; the focus of the vision is the community. The church is meant to serve the needs of the community. We are here to live out the example set by Jesus: to feed the hungry, to tend to the sick, to visit those in need, to speak out for social justice, to address systemic injustice, to take care of strangers, to love those who feel unloved and to reach out to the outcast and make them feel welcomed and valued. Our dream must include at least some of those elements. By bringing our dream to fruition, we will be changing people’s lives.
Fifth, a Jesus-like dream inspires and unifies people. It will bring people together and rally them around a common cause. People get excited about making a difference in the lives of people and in transforming the community for the better. When they see the church at work doing good outside the walls of the building, living out what they say they believe, then they want to be a part of what is happening.
As we start the process of creating our dream and casting our vision, we need to recognize that it is a journey that will not be completed in one meeting. We need time to think about it, to allow new thoughts and new ideas to come into our minds and into our conversations. We need to look at things from new perspectives. We need time to pray, to read the Bible, to connect with other spiritual resources. And then we will begin to see the vision that God is calling us to. This vision will be bigger than we can imagine right now, and we will definitely need God’s help in providing finances, people, and other resources to bring it to completion.
Frederick Buechner wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” So begin to ask yourself, What brings me deep gladness? What brings our congregation deep gladness? What are some of our community’s deep hungers? What resources do we have that can be shared? And Rebekah Simon-Peter says that the intersection of those three things may begin to point us to our vision.
I’d like to close with a prayer written by the 16th-century sea explorer Sir Francis
Drake: Disturb us Lord when we are too well pleased with ourselves, when our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, when we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore … Disturb us Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wilder seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes, and to push back the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.
