Dream #5

A little more than a year ago I shared with you four of my dreams for my life for my near and not so near future: to be a farmer, to live in or start a Christian intentional community, to open a socially conscious, environmentally friendly coffee shop, and to be a writer.  When I finished writing about my fourth dream, I thought I was done, but then I realized there was one more dream I had than needed to be put in writing.  I wrote most of this following post a year ago, but I left it sitting in the “blog” folder on my computer.  There were a few reasons why I chose not to post it on my blog a year ago.  I think the biggest reason why I didn’t post it was fear: fear that it wouldn’t happen and at the same time fear that it would happen. 

But now I’d like to share this dream with you. 

In their own ways, my other four dreams are radical, extraordinary, romantic, and idealistic.  This dream on the other hand is more realistic, less grandiose, and much closer to actually happening.  At times I don’t really see it as a dream- perhaps because I’ve already been partially living out this dream and I’m already doing what I can to make it a reality.

The dream: To work as a director of social ministry at my church: educating the congregation about injustice in the world, connecting our faith and Scripture to that injustice and the need to do something about it, and then encouraging and enabling the congregation to DO something to address injustice in our community and our world.

Where this dream came from:  Well, it all started with a little bit of a crazy idea I had about two and a half ago to ask my pastor to do an internship at my church.  One of the requirements of my graduate program was to do an internship and so I was looking around at different organizations working for justice.  But it ultimately dawned on me that it made a lot of sense for a few big reasons to do my internship at my church.  So I asked my pastor and he said “yes”.  During my internship I did a variety of things to educate the congregation about injustice in the world and then to encourage and help people to do something to address the injustice in the world.  During my internship I often had the feeling that I was doing exactly I was called to do.  I was challenged by and loved the work I was doing.  My internship came to an end in May of 2011, but I wasn’t ready to stop doing the work I was doing and there were others at my church who weren’t ready for me to stop doing the work I was doing. 

So I approached my pastor with another little bit of a crazy idea: to hire me to continue to do the type of work I was doing.  Unfortunately for my church (and for many other nonprofit organizations out there these days), there is work to be done but insufficient funds to pay people to do that work.  So I started working on applications for grant funding and this whole process took far too long.  Last fall I started back up teaching a Sunday morning adult Bible study on social issues, and I have been able to some other work related to social ministry on a voluntary basis.  But I haven’t been able to dedicate the time and energy I would have liked since I have been working quite a few hours at Feed My Starving Children as well.

I worked on writing and applying for three grants that would allow my church to formalize and expand our social ministry program.  Two foundations denied our grant requests and one foundation denied our request but suggested we re-write the grant proposal and re-apply.  So we did…and in the process I got to practice being very patient.  Finally we got word that this third foundation, Thrivent Financial for Lutheran Foundation approved our grant request for my church’s social ministry program!!!

This means a couple of things.  It means that my church is going to have a Social Ministry Program- this means formalizing and expanding ministries we have already been involved with but also creating new ways for the congregation to learn about congregation is going to have more opportunities to put their faith in action (I sure hope they are ready for this!).

It also means that I will be working full-time at my church.  I will continue in my role as the Communications Coordinator and this role is expanding some, but I will also be taking on the responsibilities of leading and coordinating the Social Ministry Program.

I am so excited to see all that God will do through me and my church.

So after a lot of waiting, a lot of patience, and a lot of prayer dream #5 is a reality.