This morning I preached a sermon (posted below) on dreaming God-sized dreams. I preached it in a different way: I invited the congregation to join with me in preaching the sermon.

No risk, no reward, right?

Heck yeah!

Well.

So I lost track of how many people came to the microphone or had me come to them with my microphone to share their G0d-Sized dream for the congregation (or something thereabouts). There were around two handfuls of people who made some sort of statement “for the record.”

In other words, approximately a tithe of the congregation.

Well.

This has not been the first time I’ve invited the congregation to dream. And as I continue to invite, the dreams continue to get bigger. This does not mean the church plans to go mega- any time soon. It does, however, mean that God is at work among us.

Some of the dreams expressed are just the inklings of greater things God will do; others are full-fledged and ready to go.

Visionary thinking is key to life in the body of Christ. Visionaries are the apostles and prophets, the pastors and teachers; they are the leaders of any title. Visionaries grow out of the body of believers – it is not just the pastor who is called to be visionary. Besides – the pastor’s really just a disciple of Jesus Christ who lives in a prophetic role to equip and empower the whole people of God for ministry, right?

So today we heard from the prophets. We heard from the dreamers. We heard from the hopeful. We heard from the grateful. We heard from those who hear from God.

Then there was Bible Study.

What began as a discussion of life in the Spirit in Romans 8 moved to a discussion of how the face of the church is changing in this country. We discussed how each one of us, as we grow, is to begin to look more and more like Jesus Christ and to be able to tie our experiences to his. We are to become like him so much that we start to see what happened to him to happen to us.

Well.

We further discussed how this kind of life would make church as we know it look different than we ever have seen it before. The excitement in the air was palpable. We are on the verge of a radical transformation toward following Jesus Christ in ways and through means we have never seen before – out of faithfulness to Christ.

I’m getting the reputation around here for being lovably crazy.

Read 1 and 2 Corinthians and you’ll understand why that’s OK.

Peace…