dreams and visions

For those of you who are relatively new to the blog, thanks for joining us on our journey.  You might not know that I’ve recently switched gears at our church.  11 years ago, Calvary asked me to come join the team and serve as the youth pastor.  My role has shifted and morphed over the past decade, and in January I stepped out of the youth pastor role, becoming the Pastor for the Next Generation.  I still oversee the middle school and high school ministries (but not hands on and day-to-day) and I get to lead the gathering that meets at the local high school (midtown).  I still lead worship regularly at midtown, but my role is more along the lines of developing leaders and teams than it was before.

I got to do a little dreaming with a recent PSU grad this morning.  Jamie’s been part of our high school ministry team, and she has a heart (dream and vision) to see people connect with God through the outdoors.  But like many college grads, the pressure to find a job to pay the bills is threatening to squeeze the life out of her dreams and visions.

Does it have to come down to a choice between paying the bills and pursuing the dream?

As we talked, I realized that I am still in the process of defining my parenting role.  I am still fleshing out my dreams and visions for my kids.  I don’t know that I’ve got it all worked out in my head just yet.  But I’m at a good place of examining the kind of life that Kim and I are modeling, setting our values and priorities clearly for our kids to see, living deliberately and intentionally.  I want to pass that on to our kids.

One of the immediate benefits of my changing role at Calvary is that I have more free time to be with my family.  That means that I can be more present in their lives, more available to listen to their stories, more active in their development.  I’m praying that we shape our parenting to foster a relentless pursuit of the dream/vision that God places in their hearts.  God made them for a purpose; I want to help them discover that purpose, and live it out.

What about you–are you living in the dream that God placed in your heart?  If you aren’t, what would you need to change today to move a little closer to that dream?