In the Broadway musical South Pacific, an old island woman all the sailors called Bloody Mary asks a key question:  "If you don't have a dream, how're you going to have a dream come true?"

I'm in the process of having one-on-one conversations with every person in the church I serve as pastor - Crossroads Church. In these conversations, I'm asking people to share the dreams they have for themselves as well as any dreams they may have for our church. It is being a profound privilege to hear people's dreams and even to help them clarify what their dreams may be.

I am also sharing my dreams with them:  dreams both for my own life and for the congregation. My dream is to change the world by changing the church through my work as a pastor, as a writer, and as a speaker. The change I want to see in the church is essentially to follow Jesus as we know him in the Gospels. My dream for the Crossroads congregation is to be both a model for and a laboratory of that change. The vehicle of change is freedom:  to have the freedom to question, the right to expect honest answers and straight talk in response to our deepest questions, and the need to respect that each person's faith journey has wisdom and value.

The change I want to see in the world is in the direction of our connectedness as a global community:  compassion for all people, respect for the different journeys we are each walking, and an acknowledgement that our security as a human race is irrevocably tied to every person's access to the benefits and opportunities of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - that no one wins unless we all win together! If we can learn to trust that this is true, it will change our whole approach to life. We will begin to give up grasping and clawing to get as much as we can in favor of seeking the best for all and the well being of the least among our brothers and sisters. Such an approach does not rule out achievement, but it gives a context for what we seek to gain by our achievement. All this may seem like a good idea, but that's not the reason to do it. The reason to value compassion, cooperation, mercy, justice, and peacemaking is that this is the nature of the universe and of our Creator. That's what Jesus taught and, through faith, that is what gives meaning to our lives. It is the dream I have and the one I want to see come true.

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.
  
Jack Price

FYI - Jack has published several articles at: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jack_F_Price

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