masking & unveiling

In January of this year, our staff stared at each other around a conference table and threw out absurd answers to the question “if you could dream a big dream for Grace in 2008, without wondering or worrying about how it would happen, what would it be?”

We spoke from our hearts — from our personal burdens for the church — about what we imagined this group of people in Central Florida could become.

At the end of fifteen minutes, we’d listed about 25 dreams. We then took a few moments to narrow them down to seven or eight things we’d choose above all the others.

Truth must be told: the staff left that meeting, and promptly forgot about the list. No steps, no thoughts, no action plan — just words on white board that were recorded in our staff meeting notes and left to simmer in a file drawer.

We forgot them until last night at our first night of fall staff advance, that is, when a member of our team dug them out and read them out loud.

More than 95% of them had come true. And not just 95% out of the seven or eight key dreams. 95% out of all 25.

Back in January, it was crazy, out-on-a-limb, can-you-be-serious to even utter some of these dreams aloud. And yet here we were, eight months later, in the middle of living them out without even realizing what had happened.

That’s how I learned — with the kind of learning that changes your perspective in an instant — that a crazy dream spoken out loud is more powerful than one kept to yourself. It opens some sort of well of audacity inside you, crushing the invisible barriers that keep dreams in the dark, cowering in fear and irreality.

Dreaming out loud transforms your world, sometimes before you even realize it’s changing.