(p.187) One of the best working definitions of poverty is not just the lack of money but the lack of a dream, a vision, hope. Darryl Gardiner, the director of Youth for Christ in New Zealand, believes that one of the core missional tasks when working with the poor is to help them to begin to dream again. The poor, in Darryl's view, are people without a dream. It is the missionary's task to rouse the imaginative abilities that lie at the base of the human soul in order to awaken the possibilities for a new gospel future and to access the deepest sources of human motivation - faith, love, pleasure, and hope. It is to awaken a sense of purpose, of mission, in life. No less is needed to help birth and nurture the missional church in the West. We need to dream again, and to do this we must cultivate a love for imagination. Before we can do it, we need to dream it.
Wow. Yeah. I could apply this in so many different situations and directions. It is so true, but also so troubling (to me, personally). Maybe not as much as this next quote on p. 223. They share a parable from Soren Kierkegaard about how when the wild geese fly overhead, the tame geese on the ground run about flapping their wings trying to imitate them...
The twist in this tale is this: that while it has been observed that wild geese have become tame... it has seldom been observed that tame geese can become wild again. We need to beware of the anesthetizing and stultifying effects that Christendom, the tame, nonmissional church, and our safe middle classness have had on us.
You know, I'm no good at book reviews and things like that. But I'll just say this about this book: It has pissed me off, but at the same time it ticks me off partly because it seems to be saying the exact things I was THINKING when I first had inklings to plant a church. And... this is a leadership-type book, and I am pretty much going to react negatively to any leadership type of stuff. But that doesn't always mean I don't agree with it. It's just how I am. I don't like it, and I don't exactly know why I do it. But it happens.
On the one hand, I think I reacted negatively to some of this stuff because it pointed out how I have been "tamed." I don't dream anymore. The fire's been dampened. I mean, though, it's not like I agreed with everything in the book. But overall I agree with what they're saying.
On the other hand, as I kinda said, it was nice to read stuff that's been in my head for years and years and have it put down into charts and graphs and paragraphs. My mind isn't able to be quantified as such, but this is the kind of movement I've been stirred by since early on in my spiritual journey. And sometimes it's irritating. I mean, I felt I was thrust toward ministry by nothing short of a driving passion for a particular group of people. It was never to be a "pastor" or anything like that. When I went to seminary I had no idea where it would lead... but I knew who I had a heart for! And I can remember talking with church planting people and they kinda steered me away from the notion because... you know... I'm not the most dynamic of personalities, and I had no real visions for how to "grow" the thing, and all the baggage I seem to carry on my shoulder (is that a chip on your shoulder or are you just glad to see me). So sometimes I think I've sold out, you know.
The truth is, though... life is long. And sometimes God takes us on these journeys, and it's not without good reason. I don't particularly know what the reason is... and maybe it doesn't matter. But I believe Jesus can redeem and restore anyone and anything... And sometimes things aren't the way they appear. And sometimes our ways are not his ways. And maybe waste is only something seen in human terms, not in God's economy.
Reading this book reminded me of the days when we had the Friday Night Freaks Bible Study back home. I was all into the Jesus People thing, and going to C-stone, and thinking about communal living, and I'd go to work in the chimney factory and talk about the stories I'd read in the Bible and how cool it was, and... Glenn Kaiser and Darrel Mansfield and Larry Howard... and...
Dang, my office is a pigsty.
1 comment:
I remember...
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