Recently, a friend challenged me to think about the church and ministry differently then how I’ve been trained in the past. My friend asked me to consider this thought, was what I dreaming about aligned more with 1950 or with 2050? Where is my focus?
I found this line of questioning profound. I am certainly not interested in going back to the 1950’s, but to think about 2050 requires a significant amount of time and processing. It also requires some heavy lifting in regards to simply retraining your brain to think this way.
Thinking about things from 1950 are relatively easy. You can look at the historical data and then craft a newer, updated version of what had success in the past and use that as a catalyst to determine success in the future. It’s not perfect, but most times doing the same things that were successful in the past, tend to work out okay in the present simply because there’s a pattern of understanding that everyone is used to.
But choosing to think about 2050 is much more dangerous and stressful. You have nothing to build off of so how do you do think about 2050 well? What is the criteria that you establish to know if the dream is on track? Where do you go when you find yourself sidetracked? What happens if there really is no dream and you’re just some mindless psychopath that is ranting and raving about something that is not grounded in reality? Who determines what the reality for the future is?
These are scary and intimidating thoughts. But perhaps, these are the thoughts that need to occur if you’re going to be focused on 2050 rather than 1950.
