Today I have a fun dream stretch. I am curious what some of these dreams will be. At my church, Grace Community Church, we are seeing God do amazing things. This post is a result of that activity of Go
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It’s Saturday…time for another dream stretch! I promise not to take this into perpetuity, but I really do believe the world needs a few more dreams. You can read more about my thoughts in the first dream stretch post HERE.
I remember in my undergraduate studies a professor of marketing say that no one could ever replace Sears as the number one retailer. Of course, looking back, that was a naïve comment. It’s easy to assume that Wal Mart will continue their dominance of the retail world, but recently, due to the economy, they have experience greater competition from the discounters and the higher end retailers. What will their future be? Still not certain, consider THIS ARTICLE I read this week.
This video blows my mind. I love big dreams…I love mind-stretching exercises…this one helps me think bigger than I might normally think. It’s 18 minutes long, but it’s worth watching. Whether you agree with this line of thinking or solution to global problems is not the issue here, but feel free to share them. I’m sharing this because I love how big Paul Romer is thinking.
If you follow my blog regularly, then you know that I’m trying to spur people to dream bigger dreams. Not only do I believe dreaming is a healthy practice, but I believe we need your dreams. Obviously we cannot life in dream world all the time, and I spend far more energy writing about accomplishing dreams than dreaming dreams, but I believe the world needs some more dreamers. I believe God encourages this process. If you don’t believe me, read my first post on this issue HERE.
The older I get (and that’s happening faster it seems that it once did) the more I’m beginning to assess my life and what the experiences of life have taught me. On my laptop I keep I file where I simply type principles/ideas/nuggets of wisdom as they occur to me. Sometimes these originate as a Twitter post, sometimes they are a line from a Sunday message, but often they just go in this file.
I believe dreams help us heal from negative emotions, stretch our imagination, and encourage us in the midst of difficult times. Sure dreams alone won’t solve the problems we face, but they may help point us towards a positive direction…and who knows…we may just head our life towards attaining some of them.
I think where I have landed, at least for now, is that bigger than the issue of evaluation, is the issue of continuance. The fact is that I really do believe growth is occurring in individual lives, not just in the total numbers of people. We are accomplishing our objective to “make growing disciples of Jesus Christâ€. I still want to consider ways to validate that belief, and I have some ideas I’m working on there, but the key word for me now is sustainability. I want us to be able to continue doing what we’ve been doing.
I realize before that any line of thinking that involves evaluation in a spiritual context is controversial at best, but evaluating now will help us continue to grow and stay healthy and enhance the future growth that we experience. I personally believe that the church must be evaluating progress towards objectives, as any healthy organization should do.
Getting out of town always provides me with time to develop new thoughts. Often I get into such a routine at home, that I don’t stop to just reflect, ponder, think and dream. I have to be alone, totally removed from my normal comfort zone it seems to really slow down enough to reflect. Yesterday, between sessions, I went for a long run along the Lake Shore Drive. (This is my favorite city in which to run.) About half way through the run, as I was talking to God, it seemed He impressed on my heart that there are new challenges He wants me to consider.