Dreams

He sat quietly for a few moments, swirling the dark ale in his glass, thinking unheard thoughts before answering my question. "Twenty years," he finally announces, placing his glass gently but firmly back on the table in the pub. I did a double-take, my own ale momentarily forgotten. "Twenty years?" I finally managed to say, unable to hide my surprise and incredulity.

"Yeah, hard to believe, eh?" He responded, leaning forward and taking another hearty sip of his drink. "It's been twenty years since I was last in fulltime ministry."

"How do you process that?" I asked, "Do you feel like you've lost something, did times just change, or do you just look at 'ministry' in a different way now?"

He and his wife exchanged looks. "All of the above," he replied. "I think something was lost, something which I'd love to get back. Times have changed, churches have changed, society's changed. And I guess we look at ministry differently, but let me tell you something..."

He leaned forward to emphasize what he was saying. "When we talked about our life dreams a few weeks ago at our home group, we were the only ones who had dreams of fulltime ministry. Our group is awesome; very godly people. But we were the only ones with ministry-oriented dreams."

He leaned back into his chair, fingering the tankard of ale, the food on the table now cold and forgotten. "I guess I still dare to dream."

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I don't meet many dreamers these days. Lots of 'doers', which is certainly preferable to 'hearers only' (James 1:22), but not as many dreamers.

In the early days of this blog, we had quite a discussion about dreams dying, and many commenters (40+) weighed in with some very vulnerable stories and thoughts on the death of their dreams (unfortunately, Haloscan doesn't archive for very long). Many of them were from charismatic backgrounds, and were tired of the hype and hoopla of charismania, and of spiritually abusive authority structures. Many were very wounded by their experiences, and described themselves as "post-charismatic".

That got me thinking and wrestling, and with the encouragement of a number of trusted friends, I've spent almost a year now, researching and writing on what it means to be post-charismatic, but not post-Spirit. What is needed is to deconstruct the parts of the charismatic movement that have resulted in casualties and woundedness, and REconstruct a new praxis that is post-charismatic but is firmly and biblically Spirit-led.

As I put the final pieces together on "Post-Charismatic (but not Post-Spirit)", I would appreciate your prayers. Not surprisingly, there's been spiritual warfare associated with this project!

I guess I still dare to dream of a theology and praxis that is deliberately and enthusiastically living in the "radical middle". Post-Charismatic, but not post-Spirit.