Given the permission to dream

It's Sunday morning and I'm in my office at home. My 2 older kids are playing computer games, while I'm sniffling and wheezing and fighting a summer cold. The cold is irritating and more tiring than I remember colds being. We've been very blessed as a family this summer to have had a very healthy winter with hardly any illness.

During the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking more about the future. In particular, the future of our work in France. A couple of my current readings, particularly a couple of books on leadership by Andy Stanley, have triggered this. He talks about leaders as being people who give people permission to dream. A book by Tim Keller on the parable of the prodigal son has also given some dreams about the the kind of church(es) that I want to see developing in Paris and around the world. I've also been part of a leadership team meeting of the arts ministry I'm with, as well as another meeting this past Wednesday with its founder and executive director.

We're planning a 2 month summer Home Ministry Assignment in the U.S. Even yesterday, I began to try to think outside the box about HMAs, ministry support, and how I would like for these to work out in the future.

We were blessed 10 days ago by a visit of 7 women who were at a women's retreat that my wife attended 2 weekends ago in Lyon, France. They prayed for us and our neighborhood. I probably need to do some dreaming about short-term teams and interns and how that process could and should work out.

As a father and husband, I need to do more dreaming about this as well. As all kids ended up having lunch at school this past Tuesday, I was able to do a lunch date with my wife. We also went to the Parc de la Villette on Thursday, a national holiday in France known as Ascension Day.

Another idea that has struck me is that sometimes certain structures need to get in place in order to allow for greater growth. Some of these structures might seem very difficult or non-existent at this time. However, these disciplines need to happen.