Shaun Groves
Brian introduced me to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings years ago. I started with Cost Of Discipleship and moved on to Life Together. I can’t find my copy now. But I found this quote from it on-line. It has everything to do with what Brant posted today about ants and leadership.
Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.
By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.
A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves this dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians which his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.
When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first the accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.
Keep in mind the time in which Bonhoeffer, a German minister, wrote these words. Hitler was ruling. Many churches (and most Lutherans) had thrown their support behind Naziism in what Bonhoeffer seems to have felt was a move of selfishness, hoping it would pay off for them in the long run. Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, was running a seminary he hoped would create dissident non-violent disciples able to stand against the idealistic “visionaries” and golden tongued orators selling the Third Reich to the Church. He was vilified by others in the Church who took a different stance on violence and Hitler.
Eventually imprisoned and killed (for plotting to kill Hitler – long story), his belief seems to have been that faithfulness should be the highest aim of the individual Christian, and that making it so would result in the strongest Church no matter the circumstances around her. That’s what I get from his writings anyway.
What’s your take? Is idealism in the church such a bad thing? Dreamers? Leadership? Is the faithful mob as trustworthy as the expert leader?
jwise says:
I see a very valid point that’s playing out in many “churches” across America. Men set up goals—x people in attendance by 2008, $y/wk by 2010—and structures necessary to meet those goals.. campaigns and fund-raisers and big screen TVs… all with the intention of building the church like Jesus himself could never have imagined.
But then I have to admit I too am an idealist. I read Acts 2 and think, “God, restore THAT.. and let me be a part of it.” And I read charges to purify myself and to remove leaven from the community, and I dream of one day when followers will actually OBEY… I dream of a day when God will not only be on our lips, but will have the devotion of our hearts.
Surely God can’t hate both dreams, can He? I’m sure some of my ideals are a little selfish or not-God-centered, but if we don’t have a goal, how on earth do we get there? A bunch of people hovering around a bonfire singing Cum Bay Ya getting warm fuzzies won’t feed the hungry and clothe the naked and break peoples’ chains.
God Himself has set a dream in our hearts… a dream of eternal life, the way it was meant to be lived. I think the challenge is to let go of the dreams that fly in the face of His Dream.
Have I actually said anything at all there?
P.S. I love Cost of Discipleship… didn’t at all like Living Together. The latter book seemed very legalistic. My $0.02.
amy says:
Lately I’ve been thinking about this because our church is heading into a time of transition. About a year ago we moved into a new sanctuary. Blessedly our church has stayed intact during our huge building campaign and hundreds of committee meetings to determine the future of our church and the use our our building. In a few months our head pastor of almost 20 years is stepping down. We have hired consultants to determine our strengths and weaknesses as a church body. Recommendations have been made as far as what our church needs to do to continue to move forward.
We need strong Godly leaders to lead. I think that part of that ability includes the ability to see what lies ahead, and what could lie ahead. I think that means a good leader has to be discerning. I think a good leaders needs to be able to look outside the box and dream, but if they are a Godly leader then they are looking into the future through God’s eyes. Hopefully those desires of the heart are God’s desires.
I started this comment a few hours ago. I’m finally back to finish it.
i think that what some people find difficult is that there is no specific outline for church service. We have guidelines on how to pray from the Lord’s Prayer and other scriptures, and we have guidelines on how to live as the Body of Christ. I think that we have turned church into such a man-made thing. There are so many unwritten rules about what is right and what is wrong and what goes where and when.
As the Body we are called to love God and love people. Sometimes we lose sight of that calling along the way. What would happen if we used that as our basis for Sunday morning services?
jwise says:
I’m really beginning to think the entire Sunday morning routine is, in many ways, keeping those who WANT to follow Christ from doing just that.
We pay $14K/mo on a mortgage for a building that’s open 10 hours a week (and locked up the rest of the time because of insurance). How many kids would $14K/mo sponsor, Shaun?
Instead of living together and sharing life together, training one another, encouraging one another, we look at Sunday and say, “That’s my church time.”
I think the reason Scripture doesn’t have guidelines for Sunday morning services is exactly as amy says—the “service” is a man-made thing. We’ve tried to come up with ways to fit teaching, evangelism, reproof/correction, training, etc. all into ONE HOUR every week, so it fits nicely with the other 50 million things we need to do. And then we scratch our heads because it’s not producing the effects that the 1st century Church produced.
I asked my men’s group Sunday what would happen if the building burned to the ground. Would people just go find another building? Probably. Would a few feel liberated to finally live out their Christianity by spending more time with other believers? Is it possible that discussions would take place outside of neat 45-minute blocks of time? Is it possible that Structure has become the great enemy of the Church?
I wrestle day and night over these things. I’m convinced there’s more than Sunday school and “worship services”. I AM a dreamer, and I dream big. But I’m also convinced my dreams are rooted in Scripture and in a God who can bring them to pass.
lorijo says:
I’m working my way through Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship this summer. I love what I’ve read so far, and what he talks about how we cheapen grace. It’s soo good! I just hope I can live in a way that reflects more costly grace than cheap grace. Thanks for sharing =)
tony says:
I met Phil Vischer once. He’s Bob the Tomato, in case you don’t know. Anyway. If you don’t know his story – the story of how his vision (Big Idea Productions – the company that created Veggie Tales) went from nothing to $40,000,000 plus in revenue and back to bankruptcy, then Google his name, find his blog, and read it.
But back to the topic. I met Phil once; after Big Idea crashed. He left an impression on me with something he said. Phil says that the thing he learned through all that was to stop chasing impact, start chasing Christ-likeness, and let the rest sort itself out.
I like that.
andrew osenga says:
I thought this said “God hates drummers” at first. Until about a paragraph in, actually. I was really excited.
“Finally, Shaun’s getting to the good stuff,” I selfishly thought. Maybe I’ll just have to write that post on my own blog…
ScW says:
For a short but decent modern look on Bonhoeffer, I’d recommend “Bonhoeffer Speaks Today” by Mark DeVine. It pulls what I think are some of the more useful concepts out talks about it along with a good summary of Bonhoeffer’s story.
Sarah Chia says:
Let me preface by saying I know of Bonhoeffer by name only and have never read his stuff except this one excerpt.
Having started there, it just seems to me like he’s made a faulty generalization based on some real premises.
For example, there are TONS of people who have their own human, self-serving idea of what should happen in the kingdom of God, and if they are the dreamers that Bonhoeffer’s speaking of, then yes, I agree that God’s not down with their dreams.
This doesn’t mean that God hates all dreaming.
Another way to look at it is by making sure we’re all defining “dream” the same. It seems that Bonhoeffer is only defining dreams as unrealistic expectations that we conjure up ourselves for our own liking. I don’t define dream that way. I define it as a vision for the future, and I believe that God gives visions to people and when our “dreams” are from God, they are good, and He loves them. When our “dreams” are from ourselves, God’s gonna shatter them in his grace as Bonhoeffer points out.