"goals"

Tonight we are having a special session meeting devoted to the "goal making" or "goal discerning" (or whatever) part of our visioning process.

I don't really do "goals." I more the big-picture, hope, vision, idea type rather than the specific, measurable, attainable type. Not that there aren't things I want, or things I hope for, or whatever, and not that I have no drive. Just..."goals"?? It seems so black and white.

I was listening to David LaMotte this afternoon as I thought about this session meeting, and the song "Hope" began to play. In the chorus are these lines:

I've got a lot of hope for the future
I've got a lot of faith things can work out fine
Got a lot of dreams for a better world
Got a lot of work to do if I'm going to make them mine

See, that's more my speed. I dream. Other people (people with the skills to make things happen) implement. So the question is, in the 10 areas we've identified so far in this process, what are my dreams, what are the session's dreams, what are the congregations dreams, and how do we work to make them ours?


(For the record, I sort of did the homework, which was to write goals for each finding in each of four areas, which should result in 40 goal statements. I've never written a goal...ever...so that was way beyond my capabilities. Instead I wrote a few dreams for 6 of the 10 areas that are both important to me and part of my own sense of call. I figure it's not helpful for me to write goals or dreams for things that aren't part of my own sense of call, because they'll be inaccurate at best and destructive at worst. I hope that's okay. It's not that I don't care about the wider community of the church or what the congregation has identified as important, it's just that I know I can't do everything, nor am I qualified to dream about some of these things. This is me being realistic and also boundary-setting.)

art is "dream a little dream" by Emelisa Mudle. You can find it, and her other work, here.