The dream connection

It happened again! During the days we worked on renovating the house, see earlier post, I chatted with one of the guys I've never met before. Not assuming he was a Christian I asked him a bit about how he viewed life. It turned out he didn't belong to any church, unusual in Paraguay, and didn't seem to want to. Fine with me, we were just talking. And then it came: he started to tell me about a dream he had a few weeks ago, which connected to another dream he's had three times in his life, the same one! And suddenly we were talking about fulfilling our life's destinies.

This is not the first time that the subject of dreams has been the bridge into talking about faith. In fact, I have come to believe that most people have one or more significant dream in their life that their looking for the answer to. And many people dream regularly dreams that they know are more than just the processing of their daily experiences. It's often enough to show yourself open to the dream world and interested in listening, the rest comes by itself.

Sadly this dimension of the Christian life seems to have been lost somewhere. That God speaks through dreams is obvious in the Bible, to all kinds of people. it has been and still is a vital part of the spiritual life of many believers and churches. But especially in the West, and the continents we have "blessed" with our theology the interest in dreams really have been lost. Usually you have several hindrances to go through:
- Pastors are sometimes afraid that people will put their experiences over the Word, and are therefore reluctant to speak about dreams.
- Many of them have bad experiences with dreams and misinterpretations. Most ministers have met what someone called "the flaky fringe", often immature people that use spirituality to avoid dealing with issues in their life.
- Most of us pastors doesn't have any training in how to deal with dreams. We simply don't know what to do with dreams.
- The people who DO teach on dreams often come from the "wrong" part of the church. They tend to be either charismatics or catholics/high church or Jungian psychologists. Or a mix of these.

For these and many other reasons we are not really equipped to deal with dreams, neither do we have routines in our churches for them. So we are quite deaf in this area. Which is sad, because it seems to me that God is using this way of speaking to people a lot these days.

Ironically, I personally hardly remember any of my dreams and usually don't listen to God in that way. Go figure.

The unavoidability of buildings

Tomorrow I'm going to do something I didn't think I would do, ever really. I will welcome a work crew and together we will renovate the church buildings, primarily the "casa pastoral", the pastors house. Two days intensive work they think, I honestly don't have a clue.

My ministry background is city, we've always been in ministry situations that focused on relationships, buildings were always rented and functional. Building houses, spending money and energy maintain church buildings has never been on the agenda. It's not really a cool thing to do, doesn't show up on the seminar list of the church planting conference really. In fact, one might argue that some new movements get their energy from being critical of these things, it's their point of reference in a negative way. A bit of an allergy really. That's where I come from.

And now, through an unplanned series of events I'm pastoring in a rural town setting with a classic church building. Ironic and probably God.

As we are discovering this building, and through that what went on before we came, I was reminded about an experience several years ago. Our family visited a monastery ruin in the south of Sweden. Nice as ruins go and even more interesting history wise. The monastery was built in the wilderness, and was meant to spread both the gospel and civilisation. Modern farming techniques, education, trade etc. They had had land and after a while influence in many spheres of society.

As I was walking there the thought came to me: spiritual movements seem to leave physical remnants that remain long after their spiritual strength has waned. Like these ruins. Or schools. Hospitals. Orphanages. Church buildings. In fact in the western world it's hard to think about a significant spiritual movement that has not left a mark in this way. They seem to need infrastructure to channel all that energy and enthusiasm.

Then of course we know the next steps: the energy goes, the maintenance mode kicks in and taking care of the structures becomes a high priority. In our case: the church was just about to shut down, hardly any activity left, but it was still being cleaned every week, with pride. It's easy to be critical at that stage, and wanting to cut out all organisation and structures to avoid getting there. But that doesn't seem to be possible.
The house church movement in England in the 80's soon got organised as the need for training and structure emerged. Revival movements in the past spawn denominations that soon build buildings.The cycle seem to be unavoidable and perhaps natural. So no need for allergy :-)

I doubt I will be pondering that tomorrow as we change the roof in 35 degrees heat, but in Gods ever-changing education of us there always seem to be new perspectives to be learnt.

When He goes before

I got a troubled start in my Christian life, at least when it comes to evangelism. In my early teens I really wanted to be a good Christian and tried to apply what I learned in church and the youth campaigns I participated in. However, I distinctly remember the task of “personal evangelism” more as a burden then an opportunity. My feeling of it, not that anyone actually said it like that, was that we had been delivered a parcel, a product, and now it was up to us to “sell” it, present it pretty much on our own. And you had to present the whole parcel as well, preferably at the same time, for example by using the famous “bridge-illustration”. Such was my feeling and as a young teenager it was quite a lot to carry. Sadly I’ve discovered I’m not the only one who has had that feeling.

But now when we are entering a new work, I have a different feeling. Instead of feeling left alone with a difficult task, I feel like we’re following someone else, looking for what is already prepared. Instead of feeling that I have to deliver something prepacked, I understand that I am part of a process that I neither started nor will see the end of. Clearly, this is quite a different scenario.

Let me give you some biblical background that encourages me to see it this way:

• In several stories in both the Old and the New Testament God has prepared people, without the main character knowing it. We find a classic example 1 Kings 17:9-16 where God had already prepared a person to provide for Elijah. Later in the book the same prophet feels very much alone, but God has 7000 men already in mind, 1 Kings 19:18.

• We cannot come to know God without God pulling us first (John 6:44). God has the initiative all the way through the salvation process. He is the one that is looking, pulling, searching, we might experience it a different way, but in the reality that’s the way it is.

•  Jesus instruction to his disciples in Luke 10, especially verse 6, indicates that people are prepared or not, but that is not the disciples worry. If they get a good reception they stay, if not they move on. Jesus teaching on the four soils, for example in Matthew 13, presupposes that people’s hearts are different and therefore reacts differently to the gospel. But it’s not the disciple’s job to prepare the soil, only to sow the seed. The preparation is obviously someone else’s work.

We could go on. Really it’s about having a big view of God and understanding the process of salvation, neither which I had as a younger me. But know when we enter this work we are looking out for the ones God has prepared, for the people where he has already worked the soil. And that’s a wholly different experience.

Content and process

It seems to me that there are two sides to our teaching and training in the church. The first is content, the substance of the faith. The other one is process, what we do as followers of Jesus.

Most of the material that I've seen for people that are just beginning their Christian life is focused on content,  with questions like: Who is this God, who is man and who is Jesus Christ, just to mention a few. Laid out according to varying ways of learning, naturally. Some has been plain books, perhaps with a study guide after each chapter (does anyone ever use these?), some are more fill in the blanks stuff, some are group material, other individual. But they are geared to get as much content into the heads as possible.

The supposition is, probably: "If they understand it, they will do it." The teachers dream world naturally :-)

Now I like teaching, reading and all that. I'm a content kind of guy. I really wish that the world would work in the above way. In that way we could just make a better power-point, use a better illustration, or even use drama, art and music to transfer our content in a more effective or impacting way.

But it doesn't seem to be like that. It seems to me that the key questions for a dynamic Christian life does not depend on content. What really changes your life in the long run is learning some key processes. The How-to-questions. To do certain things.

What really changes your life in the long run is learning some key processes.

For example: prayer. Very important. A key feature of a life with God. The traditional approach aims at content: What to believe about prayer, foundations in Scripture, promises, various forms of petitions etc. All very valid. However, these days it seems to me that the the key questions about prayer is not the theological ones, but the "how"-questions. How do I pray? What does it feel like? What do I do with the stream of thoughts in my head? Is my attitude OK? Questions like these are not aimed at content, what to believe, but at process, how do I do it. And in the long run, if I don't learn the process of praying, the content won't help me. We could go on, forgiveness, Bible reading, service, all important areas where the key factor in the long run is process, not content.

So what am I learning from this? To balance content and process, but to prioritise process. I believe as well that over-teaching is harmful in the long run. It dulls us and makes us feel like we already know things, and worse, that we already practise things. So I will aim at practise, do things with people and try to restrain my content-side a bit.