"I had a dream…"
It was a cold, rainy day, and all I could do was wait. The great migration of families and vans to Florida sunshine would begin soon, leaving behind this dreary Ohio weather. For once I was all packed and ready, but nobody else was…I lay sleep before the all-night journey began.
I slipped into a surreal dream that would haunt me the rest of Spring vacation.
We Are Stardust
Warm sunlight sprinkled through the pine forest and danced across the log-cabin floor of the lodge. Sliding-glass doors opened into a balcony overlooking an endless forest of needles dancing in the sun. Cascading stream-sounds drifted through the pine trees.
I sat in a large room filled with empty tables and chairs, all except for one: Greg, Mark, Joel and a few others were here, and we were laughing about something and sipping coffee. (It was like this Roundtable conversation…)
“I can’t believe how easy it is!” Greg said when the laughter stopped, but we all kept smiling and nodding.
“We tried so hard, so many years, but never imagined it was so easy!” someone said, chuckling. We could laugh about it now.
We were reminiscing about the church-growth movement we stumbled-upon accidentally. We were now “hopping” away from Northeast Ohio in short, 100-mile jumps, and after several years we were somewhere in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania planting more churches.
A large Ohio-Pennsylvania map on the wall was marked with a row of big, fat dots across it. Lines radiated outwards from each fat dot, and each line ended in a small dot. The fat dots were church-planting “hubs” with emanating lines — hundreds of them — ending in small “dots” that were newly-planted churches!
“They look like star-bursts,” someone said as we were gazing at all of them. I heard distant strains of music echoing in the forest from ages ago: “…we are star-dust…”
The World’s Greatest General
“Great armies march off the map!” — Alexander the Great
One man said it, but a man named Jesus Christ actually did it: he launched a movement that marched off the map.
We were laughing because we finally discovered the secret of a church-planting movement, and it was so absurdly simple! It was so obvious, too. It was the movement inaugurated by Jesus.
A movement doesn’t grow in, fat churches, but in small, little groups spawned with maybe a dozen Christians (or less). Such simple groups! But they were strong too, because they were tied together by “hubs”. Each “hub” was a Central Teaching and other things like training, finances and other ministrations which made the little groups strong.
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It was easy to plant a church of 10 or so!
The door burst open, and a few of our young leaders came bounding in, smiling and hyped. They were leading a group 10 miles south in a town called Gettysburg.
“We had 15 people last night!” one declared. There was clapping and back-slapping for the new leaders: “Cool! …Good job! …Praise God!”
They dragged a couple chairs across the wood floor and plopped down to tell us all about it, but then…
The door burst open and a young married couple came bouncing in from our first church plant 10 miles north…
“Hey guys!” the young lady said. “Guess what? We planted another church last night!”
“Yeah, and with 11 people!” the guy said.
“Whooot! Yahoo! …Praise God!” This was a great breakthrough: the first of the “Next Generation” of churches for eastern Pennsylvania.
What conversation echoed in that lodge that sunny morning! It all made sense now…
O Sleeper!
“Awake, O sleeper!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you!” — Eph. 5:24
When I woke up it was still cold, rainy and dreary in Akron.
But now I had an interesting story to tell Darlene and all my friends, and we talked about it all the way to sunny Florida.
But the “O sleeper” verse above is followed by an good point:
Therefore be very careful how you live – not as unwise but as wise, taking advantage of every opportunity, because the days are evil — Eph. 5:25,26
March 14, 2008 set in-motion a chain of events which I must discuss next…
this sounds so prophetic keith, i remember when u told this to me and some others, i would love to hear if something similar to the first part occured this weekend… follow up this blog soon keith u have me waiting to read – SUSPENSE!
[...] “I had a dream…” is an anecdotal (humorous) background for these “sending strategy”. (A followup is due shortly.) [...]