Big Dreams and Small Victories

A few days ago a friend emailed me with the news that he has accepted a call to pastor a church in the suburbs of a great American city. Already his home is on the market, and he plans to begin his ministry in his new church in the next few weeks. I could hear the excitement as he wrote about the opportunities for outreach because the community surrounding the church is truly multiethnic, with a high concentration of families of Middle Eastern origin. I’m happy for my friend and happy for his new church. I think it is a good match that will produce good fruit for the Kingdom in the years to come.

A complete church relocation
Sending out 50 new missionaries
Establishing five branch churches
Giving away $20 million for church planting
Sending 1000 people on short-term mission trips
Establishing a multisite church
Offering services in six languages
Building a Family Ministry Center
Starting a Christian school
Establishing 200 home ministry groups
Forming a partnership with an inner-city church
Founding a orphanage in Africa for children with AIDS
Establishing a 24/7 Prayer Center
Ministering to 100,000 people through your website

The possibilities are endless; the specifics depend on the pastor and the congregation. My only thought is that early on, the pastor should open the doors wide to let his people dream bigger dreams than ever before.

Then there is the matter of small victories. This is the other side of the coin. A church of 300 people–no matter how faith-filled they are–will have trouble envisioning some of these things. And by the way, the new pastor should mention one or two big dreams–not twenty. He wants to inspire people, not overwhelm them. And it’s rarely a good idea to move too fast on those big dreams. Cast the vision, plant the seed in the hearts of the people, and let the Lord give the increase in his own time. Meanwhile the new pastor is very wise if every week, he shares some good news with the congregation. Small things. Tiny things. Little bits of good news. A church without a pastor sometimes begins to lose confidence. There may have been problems in the past that are not fully resolved. Always there are various cross-currents in any congregation, and those currents accelerate when a church has no pastor. Very often the pastor’s first job is to encourage the people, to give them hope so they can say, “God has answered our prayers by sending us a shepherd.” How does a wise pastor give hope, especially when a congregation has been through rough water? He brings good news with him wherever he goes. And every time he speaks to the congregation or writes for the bulletin or the newsletter or on his weblog, somewhere, somehow, some way he has good news of small victories to share. Sometimes these are small indeed.

We just finished striping the parking lot.
Our girls took first place in the Awana Olympics yesterday.
We ordered new bells for the handbell choir.
Here are our three new fourth-grade Sunday School teachers.
The bank approved our building loan.
We’re sending a team to Honduras next week.
Forty-five people signed up for evangelism training.
I just saw Bert Langham and he said his surgery was successful.
We just called a new part-time singles pastor.
Let me tell you about someone who came to Christ this week.
We finally fixed the heater in the baptistry.
David Jones emailed from Iraq and thanked us for our prayers.
Thank you for giving a record amount in our faith promise offering.
Rose Kammerling donated the beautiful flowers today.
Special thanks to Bill Petch for driving our teens to the Basketball Marathon yesterday.

And so it goes. Small victories. The stuff of daily church life. Why does it matter? Because little things mean a lot. Let the new pastor be the bearer of good news everywhere he goes, let him talk about it and blog about it, let him be the one to announce small victories to his people, and soon enough those small victories will pile up and they will create the foundation for even larger victories that someday will allow those really big dreams to come true.