Ideas or dreams play out like marathons

Ideas seem to turn out to be marathons. If you are close to me you know that I have a lot of ideas turning circles in my head. Sometimes they pan out to be reality, sometimes not. I seem to dream big though. Going to the mission field started as a big dream when I was in eighth grade and has been playing out into reality in my life. The Christian culture of mediocrity and a big lack of mature disciples always bothered me and so I thought of writing a book. Before we left for Brazil I wrote that book (though few people read it). Fortunately Francis Chan, David Kinnaman, David Platt and others saw the same issues happening and wrote books that have been turning the Christian culture. (To my knowledge, none of them read my book).

Ideas are constantly generated and sometimes I have followed through with them. But they are generally a marathon. They take training or brainstorming, much work, much help and lots of diligence. A marathon is obviously not a quick sprint that our fast-food culture really enjoys. Some of these ideas are not too enjoyable as well.

In July I started a blog called Trends in Biblical Missions as a means of organizing ideas to implement in churches that will improve our mission’s system in our churches. To go along with the missions theme, for the past six years I have had an idea for a fund for these missionaries using real estate that will generate money to offset missions’ costs. These are some of the major marathon ideas I have had that are still in the beginning stages. Running a marathon helps me to realize that the process cannot just happen with the wink of an eye; it takes much time and work, but it can be done.