IN THE SUMMER OF 1896, twenty-five-year-old Orville Wright contracted typhoid fever. For several days he was in a near-death delirium. It would be an entire month before he could sit up in bed and several more weeks before he could get out of bed. And it may be the best thing that ever happened to him. Orville’s brother, Wilbur, had taken an intense interest in human flight. And with Orville bedridden, he had a captive audience. Wilbur read aloud to Orville, and that’s how the Wright brothers crossed paths with their lion.
Five-hundred-pound lions often hide within the pages of a book, just waiting for a dreamer to flip the page. Your dream may be one book, one page away.
Bishop Milton Wright had quite the library for the late nineteenth century. The bishop had a holy curiosity about all of life, but he had a particular fascination with the flight of birds, which explains an atypical title on his shelf, Animal Mechanism: A Treatise on Terrestrial and Aerial Locomotion. By the time Wilbur finished reading that book, he had discovered his destiny. The father’s fascination had become the brothers’ obsession.
On May 30, 1899, Wilbur wrote the most significant letter of his life, given the chain reaction it set in motion. He addressed the letter, written on Wright Cycle Company stationery, to the Smithsonian Institute, informing them that he had begun a systematic study of human flight. He asked for everything written on the subject, which wasn’t much. But one book, L’Empire de l’Air by French farmer, poet, and student of flight Louis Pierre Mouillard, was like “a prophet crying in the wilderness, exhorting the world to repent of its unbelief in the possibility of human flight.”1
Exhorting the world to repent of its unbelief in the possibility of human flight.
I like that sentence, a lot.
It convicts me, challenges me.
What impossibility do you need to repent of?
It’s not just our sin that we need to repent of. It’s our small dreams. The size of your dream may be the most accurate measure of the size of your God. Is He bigger than your biggest problem, your worst failure, your greatest mistake? Is He able to do immeasurably more than all you can ask or imagine?2
A God-sized dream will always be beyond your ability, beyond your resources. Unless God does it, it cannot be done! But that’s how God gets the glory. If your dream doesn’t scare you, it’s too small. It also falls short of God’s glory by not giving Him an opportunity to show up and show off His power.
This book is a call to repentance—repent of your small dreams and your small God. It’s also a dare—dare to go after a dream that is bigger than you are.
To an infinite God, all finites are equal. There is no big or small, easy or difficult, possible or impossible. When Jesus walked out of the tomb on the third day, the word impossible was deleted from our dictionary. So quit focusing on the five-hundred-pound lion. Fix your eyes on the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
The impossible is an illusion.
The Wright brothers had no education, no crowd funding, and no friends in high places. All they had was a dream, but that’s all it takes if it’s coupled with tenacious stick-to-it-iveness. Over and over again, the Wright brothers failed to fly, but they refused to give up. They learned from each and every failure until they defied gravity for twelve seconds at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.
The impossible is temporary.
In the summer of 1896, human flight was science fiction. It’s now our daily reality. At any given moment on any given day, five thousand airplanes carrying a million passengers are flying through the troposphere at three hundred miles per hour. And it all started with a dream. It always does. Wilbur Wright repented of his unbelief in the possibility of human flight, and the rest is history.
Don’t just read this book.
Repent of unbelief in the possibility of your dream!
Inception
My wife, Lora, and I have a little tradition on Christmas Eve. We watch the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart. Our kids have a tradition too. They watch Inception, the science-fiction thriller written, directed, and produced by Christopher Nolan. It gets our kids into the Christmas spirit, I guess.
The plot line isn’t easy to unravel, but extractors infiltrate the subconscious minds of their targets and extricate information while the targets are in a dream state. In one plot-changing scene, Dominic Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, goes beyond the art of extraction. He attempts the near-impossible task of inception—implanting an idea into a target’s subconscious.
Cobb says to his partner in crime, Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, “We have to plant it deep in his subconscious.” Arthur asks, “How deep?” Cobb says, “Three levels down.” Arthur responds with a question that frames the film: “A dream within a dream within a dream—is that even possible?”3
Christopher Nolan’s film popularized the phrase “a dream within a dream,” but its etymology traces back to a poem by Edgar Allan Poe titled “A Dream Within a Dream.” The last stanza poses a question: “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?”4
The answer, I believe, is yes.
In the beginning God had a dream called creation. On the sixth day He created dreamers. That ability to imagine is unique to His image bearers.
Imagination is God’s gift to you.
A dream is your gift back to God.
We assume that Adam and Eve would have remained in the Garden of Eden forever if they had not eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but that is a misreading of the text. Long before Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, God told them to fill the earth and subdue it. It was a divine invitation to explore, to adventure, to discover, to dream.
Everything east of Eden was uncharted—196,949,970 square miles of virgin territory. Not unlike Christopher Columbus, who was commissioned by the king and queen of Spain to find a westward route to the Indies, or Lewis and Clark, who were commissioned by President Jefferson to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, Adam and Eve were commissioned by God to subdue planet Earth.
The astronomer who charts the stars, the geneticist who maps the human genome, the researcher who seeks a cure for cancer, the developer who designs city centers, the oceanographer who explores the barrier reef, the ornithologist who studies rare bird species, the entrepreneur who starts businesses, the politician who drafts legislation, the physicist who chases quarks, and the chemist who charts molecular structures are all fulfilling the Genesis Commission in their own unique ways.
I don’t know what dream God has given you, but it’s a dream within a dream called Creation. It’s also a story within a story called Redemption. God is writing His-story through you, and it always starts with a dream. You may not see yourself as a dreamer, but you are one. You have dreams that you aren’t even aware of, dreams you haven’t thought of as dreams. If you’re a parent, for example, you have a dream. You even gave your dream a name when he or she was born.
Now let me narrow the aperture a little bit.
In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.5
Dream dreams.
That’s the natural, supernatural by-product of being filled with God’s Spirit.
The Holy Spirit can and does perform inception. He implants dreams deep within the human spirit, three levels down. He also extracts dreams that have been dead and buried for decades, bringing them back to life. And He can do it in a thousand different ways.
For Wilbur Wright, it was a book he read at twenty-nine.
For me, it was a sermon I heard at nineteen.
For David, it was the day a prophet showed up on his doorstep.
The Dreamer
David was tending sheep just as he’d done the day before and the day before the day before. It’s what he did; it’s who he was. So when the prophet Samuel told David’s father that one of his sons would become king, David’s father didn’t even bother to call David. Why? Because his earthly father didn’t see David’s potential. He saw a shepherd boy. Nothing more, nothing else.6
Samuel saw something else, something more.
As I look back on my dream journey, I’m eternally grateful for the prophets—coaches, teachers, pastors, mentors—who saw potential in me that I couldn’t see in myself. At critical junctures they believed in me more than I believed in myself. Their words of encouragement gave me the courage to take steps of faith. Their words of wisdom helped me navigate difficult decisions. They are ordinary people with ordinary names—Don, Bonnie, Bob, Karen, Bob, Bob, and Dick, just to name a few. Like Samuel with David, they helped me discover my destiny.
You never know when or where or how destiny will knock on your door, but it rarely has a scheduled appointment. More often than not, you don’t discover your dream. Your dream discovers you when you are faithfully tending sheep.
David was a giant killer, a songwriter, and the king of Israel. But before he was any of those things, David was a dreamer. Samuel did more than anoint David’s head; he implanted a dream in David’s heart. And like any God-sized dream, it would take time and it would take a team.
The Dream Team
Second Samuel 23 is more than a laundry list of thirty-seven names. It’s a who’s who list. In the pages that follow, I’ll detail some of their heroic deeds. These were David’s best friends, his closest confidants. Not only was their courage unmatched, but their loyalty to David was undivided. To a man, they were ready to trade their lives for David’s life. And that raises a few questions: What drew these mighty men to David? Why would they cast lots with a fugitive? What turned these ragtag rebels into a band of brothers who would risk their lives for what seemed like a lost cause?
The mighty men were drawn to a dreamer with a God-sized dream. And that’s what will draw people to you.
Without his band of brothers, David’s dream of becoming king was a pipe dream. His destiny was tied to theirs, and their destiny was tied to his. David’s dream became their dream, a dream within a dream.
Our dreams are more intricately interwoven across time and space than any of us could ever imagine. Your dreams are possible because of the dreams that were dreamed before you. And the domino effect of your dreams will be felt for generations.
Benaiah helped David fulfill his destiny, and David became the king of Israel. But it was a two-way street. David helped Benaiah’s dreams come true too. When the crown was passed from David to his son Solomon forty years later, Benaiah was promoted from bodyguard to commander in chief of Israel’s army. And the same was true of Solomon. It was David’s dream that set up Solomon as king of Israel, but it was Solomon who fulfilled his father’s dream of building a temple in Jerusalem.
Your greatest legacy isn’t your dream. Your greatest legacy is the next generation of dreamers that your dream inspires—the dreams within a dream.
One of my dreams is to pastor one church for life, and I’ve been living the dream for the last twenty years. But it’s really a dream within a dream. My father-in-law, Bob Schmidgall, planted and pastored Calvary Church in Naperville, Illinois, for thirty-one years. I had a front-row seat to watch long obedience in the same direction. I saw what God could do if you plant yourself in one place and let your roots grow deep. His dream implanted a seed in my spirit, three levels down.
My dream isn’t my legacy.
My dream is my father-in-law’s legacy.
My dream wasn’t birthed on January 7, 1996, the day I started pastoring a core group of nineteen people called National Community Church. My dream within a dream was conceived in July of 1967 when my father-in-law started Calvary Church.
Our dreams predate us.
They were born long before we were.
Our dreams postdate us.
They make a difference long after we are gone.
The Dreamcatcher
Our extended family gathered around the fireplace this past Thanksgiving and listened to a sermon my father-in-law preached on February 21, 1979. He died eighteen years ago, so some of his grandchildren had never heard his voice.
It was an amazing message on vision, but one preliminary comment caught my attention. My father-in-law honored E. M. Clark, who was in the audience that day. He referred to Clark, the district superintendent of the Illinois Assemblies of God, as a spiritual father.
I never met E. M. Clark. And until hearing that sermon, I had no idea that he had such a profound impact on my father-in-law’s life. But I’m the secondary beneficiary. If E. M. Clark was my father-in-law’s spiritual father, that makes me his spiritual grandson.
E. M. Clark was a dreamcatcher. His dream was leveraging other people’s dreams, and it’s evidenced by his motto that became the mantra of the Illinois district: “Come share your dream with us, and let us help you fulfill it.”
In the mid-1960s two young dreamers named Bob Schmidgall and Dick Foth responded to that clarion call. Dick and Ruth Foth planted a church near the University of Illinois in Urbana. Bob and Karen Schmidgall planted a church in Naperville, Illinois. They were the young guns of the Illinois district, and both churches followed a similar growth curve during their first decade. Dick Foth left the pastorate to become the president of Bethany College in Santa Cruz, California, but Dick and Bob remained close friends across the country, across the years.
Now let me connect the dots.
Right before Lora and I chased a lion to Washington, DC, in 1994, Dick and Ruth Foth relocated to the nation’s capital to work behind the scenes with the who’s who of Washington in embassies, at the Pentagon, and in the halls of Congress.
The Foths not only invited Lora and me over for dinner our first Thanksgiving in DC, but they treated us like family. In fact, Dick Foth has been my spiritual father for the past twenty years. His influence on my life is incalculable.
Twenty years ago when nineteen people showed up for our first service, two of them were Dick and Ruth Foth. And they invited their friends Senator John and Janet Ashcroft. They not only gave us much-needed moral support, but they also gave the lion’s share of financial support since our core group consisted primarily of college students.
If you do the math, 21 percent of our core group was the direct result of a friendship that my father-in-law had cultivated with Dick Foth before I was even born. And that friendship was the by-product of a dreamcatcher who said, “Come share your dream with us, and we’ll help you fulfill it.”
My point? My dream is a dream within a dream within a dream. And so is yours. Your dream has a genealogy. Honor your upline! Your dream also has progeny. Empower your downline! And remember, your life is one subplot in God’s grand narrative—the story arc of redemption.
One footnote: your legacy isn’t just your God-sized dreams.
It’s also your small acts of kindness.
E. M. Clark was a spiritual father to my father-in-law, but he did more than just help him fulfill his dream. One act of kindness made all the difference in the world. During the early days of their dream journey, a dozen college students spent a summer in Naperville, Illinois, helping my in-laws plant Calvary Church. E. M. and his wife, Estella, visited one weekend, and my mother-in-law served them hot dogs, chips, and Kool-Aid. That’s all she and my father-in-law could afford. On the way out of town, the Clarks stopped at the grocery store and bought steaks, baked potatoes, and ice cream for the entire team. A few days later my mother-in-law received a gift in the mail—an electric knife, which she still uses forty-nine years later! It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Not just the knife, but also the dream.
Dream Inventory
When I inventory my dreams, I realize that all of them are a dream within a dream. The dream of writing a book about Benaiah was inspired by a sermon I heard when I was nineteen years old. So that book is really a dream within a sermon by Sam Farina. The dream of creating a family foundation was inspired by Jim Linen and the Des Plaines Charitable Trust, where I’ve had the privilege of serving as a trustee for the past decade. Even our dream of meeting in movie theaters at metro stops is a dream within a dream. The idea was implanted in my subconscious as I listened to the history of Willow Creek Community Church at one of their leadership conferences.
This year we opened a first-rate, second-run movie theater on Capitol Hill. It’s an expression of our core conviction: the church belongs in the middle of the marketplace. In my opinion filmmakers are postmodern prophets, and movie screens are postmodern stained glass.
Too often the church complains about culture instead of creating it. The energy we spend on criticism is being stolen from creativity. It’s sideways energy. We need fewer commentators and more innovators. I try to live by Michelangelo’s maxim: criticize by creating. Quit complaining about what’s wrong, and do something that makes a difference!
Write a better book.
Start a better business.
Create a better product.
Run a better campaign.
Draft a better bill.
Produce a better movie.
In the 1930s a producer at 20th Century Fox wrote a letter to presidents of several prominent Christian colleges, asking them to send him screenwriters. His dream was to produce films with a redemptive subplot. One president wrote back and said he’d sooner send his young people to hell itself than send them to Hollywood.7
What a missed opportunity!
Now let me get off my soapbox and make my point. A church opening a movie theater is a little out of the box, but even that dream is a dream within a dream.
In 1960 an evangelist named R. W. Schambach was holding a revival in Washington, DC. As he walked by a movie theater at 535 Eighth Street SE, he felt prompted to pray that God would shut down the theater and turn it into a church. Two years later it became the People’s Church. And forty-nine years later it would become National Community Church.
I’ll never forget our first gathering. We packed the place—not just the sanctuary and the lobby. We had people spilling onto the sidewalk. Michael Hall, the pastor of the People’s Church, was there that night.
Afterward, Michael said, “Mark, many years ago I had a vision, and in that vision our church was packed with young people raising their hands in worship. The church was so full that I saw people worshiping God out the front door and onto the sidewalk.” Michael had dreamed that dream for a long time, and it became reality that night. “I thought the vision was for me,” he said. “But now I realize it was for you.”
I’m eternally grateful to our dear friends Michael and Terry Hall. It took tremendous courage for the People’s Church to sell us their building, and the prayers they prayed in that place for forty-nine years are still being answered. Everything God does in and through National Community Church is a prayer within a prayer. We are reaping where we have not sown.
Along with having our four weekend gatherings, we decided to turn our Capitol Hill campus back into an art-deco theater where the church and community could cross paths. We recently hung a blade sign outside the theater. We decided to name it what it was—The Miracle. It’s also a way of honoring R. W. Schambach, whose fifty-six-year-old prayer made it possible.
In the wake of his revivals, Schambach would sometimes start a church. The first one was in Newark, New Jersey, in 1959. He also started churches in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Brooklyn. Each one was given the same name—Miracle Temple. We dropped “Temple” and added “Theatre.” But it’s a testimony to a dreamer—a name within a name, a prayer within a prayer, a dream within a dream.
The story God is writing through your life is someone else’s subplot.
It was true for David’s mighty men.
It’s true for me.
And it’s true for you.