Dreaming ministry dreams for 2015

What are your dreams for 2015?  (I know I'm a bit late to the new year thing, that's what holidays do for you.)  I've been thinking about what our community needs, how the gospel could transform and minister to our community?  What are my gospel dreams for the area God has called me to serve?

Now I have two temptations here, one is to be cynical and barely dream at all, just stick to what I can do and control.  The other is to impose on a big dream my time scale, and I'm impatient and want it yesterday.

Over the last few weeks and months I've found myself dreaming about ways the gospel will transform our area.  Some of these dreams are big and long term none of them we can do in and of our own strength.

1. Creating community identity
Our area is one without an identity.  It used to be the RAF base and attached housing.  It is currently called Auckley, though local people refer to it either as Finningley or the former RAF base, or the camp.  It doesn't feel like Auckley which is a village a 10-15 minute walk away and has a totally different feel to it.

As a church one way we can serve our community is to help create a community identity.  There are things we can do to facilitate this, and we will be doing some of those - trying to get the council to carry out a Community Governance Review and rename the area Hayfield and maybe have our own Parish Council to serve the community.  Involving people from the community in serving and making decisions for the community they live in.  But we can't create community, we can try to facilitate it, but we need God to work to create community through the gospel.  By creating in our church family a heart that longs to serve not its own needs but the needs of the community we are called to serve.

2. Meeting community needs
This is an area with real needs, and we by God's grace and love in the hearts of the church family are meeting those needs.  My dream for this year is that that ministry is multiplied, that more and more grace flows outwards over the boundaries of the church into the hearts and lives of the broken and needy who are loved and see Jesus lived out.

The big dream is that we as a church can meet community needs.  there is no place to go, no neutral space.  No pub, no community centre or building.  We've been in contact with some organisations about facilitating the running of such a building, but there has been as of yet no response.  Only God can make that happen.  My big dream would be that God provides so that we could have a community use building that is more than just a building.  That contains a space where we can run toddlers and coffee mornings.  Where we can house counselling and debt services.  Where we could have attached to it a doctors surgery with a committed Christian GP or two who would serve the area in an almost old fashioned way.

That is a big dream, especially for a church with a monthly budget deficit that means we only have money for 1 more year of full time ministry.  But dreams are about looking at the community and thinking about how the gospel can serve.  That may not be God's will, God's will may be small scale and incremental.  But those kind of dreams are vital as we look at a community and imagine ways the gospel could bring transformation.