Chapter One

Shattered dreams

Sometimes the winds of changenot only whip your hat off, they can blow your dreams away aswell. None of us can live well without dreams, because dreamsfuel our vitality. All of my life I have been a compulsivedreamer. Can’t keep from it. I think it’s because I ampart of the human family. Even poems about dreaming enchant us.Remember this song of a dreamer:

Man is a dreamer ever,

He glimpses the hills afar,

And dreams of the things out yonder,

Where all his tomorrows are.

And back of the sound of the hammer,

And back of the hissing steam,

And back of the wheels that clamor,

Is ever a daring dream.

—Author unknown

Birth of dreams

In other words, every big thingwe humans have done began between some dreamer’s ears. HenryFord dreamed a sputtering, rattling dream and put the world onwheels. Edison dreamed, and night disappeared. Columbus dreamed,and a new world came into view.

Einstein, while daydreaming ona hill one summer day, imagined riding sunbeams to the farextremities of the universe. Upon finding himself returned,“illogically,” to the surface of the sun, he realizedthat the universe must indeed be curved. This was the beginningof his theory of relativity.

Beethoven stumbled through thewoods stone deaf to sounds outside him but with his head full ofmusical dreams, and he put a song in the heart of humanity. Manis a dreamer—ever!

Broken dreams

Yet, dark shadows lurk behindour brightest dreams! Another poet hinted broadly that dreamsdon’t always come true.

We are all of us dreamers of dreams,

On visions our childhood is fed;

And the heart of the child is unhaunted, it seems,

By the ghosts of dreams that are dead.

Only children dream blissfullyunaware that some dreams get totally shattered. Life has not yetleft them with broken dreams. But sooner or later . . . So thepoet moves on:

From childhood to youth’s but a span

And the years of our life are soon sped;

But the youth is no longer a youth, but a man,

When the first of his dreams is dead.

When did you last mourn the death of a dream?

In 1901 a strange sale tookplace in Washington, D. C. The government auctioned off 100,000old patents that had never made it to production. The crowdrepeatedly roared with laughter at the bizarre contraptionsinventors had dreamed up. One was the “automatic bed bugbuster”: two blocks of wood, with leatherhand-holders—one for the right hand, one for the left.Simply place the bug between the blocks and “bust‘im.” Didn’t sell! Another device was intended tocure snoring. Some inventive hand had simply unraveled a trumpetand attached it to a head harness. The sleeper could strap themouthpiece to the lips with the big end of the trumpet to theear. When his amplified snore thundered in his ear, he wokehimself. My wife, Carolyn, has been looking for one for me!

An observer of this event saidthat his laughter died when it dawned on him that he was notlistening to 100,000 jokes, but witnessing 100,000 broken dreams.People had invested lifetimes into some of those contraptions.But the inventors had died with broken dreams!

When I drive across the plainsand spot one of those lonely, abandoned old houses on thehorizon, the collapsing fence corralling a yard of tumbleweed,windows boarded up or gaping empty, I often feel a tug at myheartstrings over the wreckage of someone’s broken dreams.

Maybe just now you have lookedaway from this page and, with a lump in your throat, recalled abroken dream: failed health, a promotion that never came, ashattered romance, a marriage gone sour, a business gonebelly-up, a child who went wrong. Most of us will face brokendreams now and again.

After fifty-seven years ofliving, nearly forty of them in ministry, I know plenty ofshattered dreams firsthand. In fact, I think that somewhere alongthe way, at least for a while, my own Church of Christfellowship, like many others, lost its dreams.

Dying dreams

A brief look at the strugglefor growth in Churches of Christ provides insight not only for myfellowship, but for many others as well. In 1865 The BaltimoreAmerican, one of the leading newspapers in the country in thosedays, said the Churches of Christ were “the fastest growingdenomination in America, beginning only about forty years ago,but numbering now, in the United States alone, over six hundredthousand communicants.”

Just think. From 1815-1865,zero to six hundred thousand in only forty years! In 1865, wewere a church on the cutting edge of the culture. But not sotoday!

Somewhere between the 1860s andthe 1950s, we began dreaming big dreams. As recently as the 1960swe believed the trend was continuing. We were told that from 1865to 1960 solid growth continued. We said we were still the fastestgrowing religious group in the country. My college buddies and Idreamed of “taking the world.” Our flagshipcongregation of that day, the Madison Church of Christ inNashville, was growing explosively! The Herald of Truth (a Churchof Christ radio outreach ministry) broadcasts blanketed theglobe. Campus ministries flourished. Our foreign missionariestopped six hundred. The media were beginning to notice us. It wasthe dawning of a new age, and we were part of a movement thatwould change the planet! Oh, how we dreamed!

Then, somewhere around 1965, aswas the trend in many denominations, our growth statisticsflattened until 1970, when they dived into a freefall towardoblivion. Many of our nose-counters and number-cruncherspredicted that, if those trends continued, Churches of Christcould well disappear early in the twenty-first century. Althoughfigures compiled by Mac Lynn of David Lipscomb University show anet gain of some 3 percent between 1980 and 1990, there is littlecause for celebration. First, those statistics included thefast-growing Boston-based group now known as the InternationalChurches of Christ, not really a part of our fellowship, and thisskewed the figures considerably. Second, during that period, babyboomers who had left began bringing their babies back to church.But George Barna’s research shows they left again in thelate 1980s. Thirdly, the population grew by 10 percent, and wehave fallen far below those percentages. So at best our growthstatistics have only flat-lined. We are scarcely on the road toreal recovery.

In some states, we ended thedecade smaller by scores of thousands. Throughout the lastdecade, as I have visited churches, lectureships, and conferencesacross the continent, almost everywhere I go, tired voices tellme stories of mega efforts yielding meager growth. Our dreamswere shattered! Speaking of Churches of Christ, in 1991 FlavilYeakley (a researcher at Harding University who periodically doesa nose count among Churches of Christ) said, “I don’tknow of any of our older, larger mainline churches that aregrowing by evangelism.”

Yes, some congregations aregrowing, but very few by reaching unchurched people. Rather, someare “swelling” by consolidating the fallout fromfailing, dying churches and collecting bodies at the front edgeof demographic shifts. As for reaching the unchurched world, mostchurches are not getting bigger, but smaller. If that were notsad enough, large numbers of our children are leaving the Churchof Christ movement or even abandoning the faith altogether. Manyother Christian fellowships appear to have suffered similardeclines.

Not all is bleak, however.David A. Roozen and C. Kirk Hadaway, in research hot off thepress found that some long established churches are nowgrowing—and part of the growth is coming through evangelism.John Ellas, of the Center for Church Growth, has recentlydiscovered good news among Churches of Christ that parallel thefindings of Roozen and Hadaway. Some Churches of Christ, fifteenyears old and older, are now growing, and a significant part ofthat growth appears to result from evangelistic activity.However, these churches are (1) updating their evangelisticstrategies and (2) viewing evangelism as a process involving thewhole congregational system, not merely as an independent“branch” activity of the congregation. This gives mehope. Older churches can change. Established churches can grow.But, at best, we have a long way to go.

A lot of our preachers havelost their dream, too. Some have even thrown in the towel! At aconference in the mid 1980s, I spotted an old friend leaningagainst the wall, alone, though in a crowded room, staring at thefloor, his eyes as vacant as last year’s bird’s nest.When I asked what was wrong, it seemed as though he took fiveminutes to drag his eyes up from the floor to mine. Then he spokefor a lot of us, “Lynn, I’ve lost my dream. What do youdo without dreams?” He was only one of hundreds whorepresent a lost generation of ministers in the Churches ofChrist. I find precious few of my mid-fifties peers who are stillin the ministry. Dreams died. Many burned out or gave up. But asWilliam Willomon says, “Burnout in ministry is not usuallyfrom overwork, but from under-meaning.” Christian leaderscan live with the work, the flack, and the frustration; but wecan’t live without dreams.

He may live on by compact and plan

When the fine bloom of living is shed,

But God pity the little that’s left of a man

When the last of his dreams is dead.

Empty churches

A few summers ago, I sat oneafternoon on the balcony of a Swiss chalet in the company ofseveral American and European businessmen, eavesdropping on theirshop talk. A British fellow piqued my curiosity when he said hedecorated the interiors of bars and restaurants in Canada and theUnited States with the guts of old churches from Europe.

I said, “You’rekidding me!”

“Why, no,” heboasted, “One bar in Abilene, Texas, has two churches init!” (I could have told him about some other bars where thechurches seemed to have strong representation, but thought thebetter of it.)

“Really,” I marveled,“Have you been doing this for some time?”

“Oh, about ten or twelveyears, now.”

“Aw c’mon, how manyhave you done?” (I was thinking maybe one a year.)

“Oh, some months as manyas eleven, some less.”

Now I’m not quick withnumbers, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that hehad trashed a lot of churches. I was stunned! “Where in theworld do you find all those empty churches?”

“Oh, my friend,” theyoung Englishman beamed, “This man John Wesley has been deadfor over a century, but he is making me a millionaire. Hetraveled all over the British Isles. He got off his horse atnearly every crossroads and preached. By the time he was in thesaddle again, they were building a chapel in his tracks. Theybuilt ‘em big and they furnished ‘em well all over theUK.” He went on: “That was then. But now their great,great-grandchildren, the young folks in Great Britain,aren’t interested in that sort of thing anymore. Those oldchapels stand empty ‘cept for memories. So the descendantsbuild these little chapels on the corner of the property to housememorabilia. To pay upkeep on the chapels, they sell the guts ofthe old buildings to me, put the shell to the wrecking ball andthe land to the realtor.”

He rambled on, but my addledthoughts spun off into another world. By bedtime I stillcouldn’t shake the picture of all those empty churches. Ilay awake wondering how long before all those buildings from ourboom years, back when growth surged and dreams flourished, wouldgradually grow quiet, stand empty, and then fall to the wreckingcrew. My dreams were dying. What do you do, when the last of yourdreams is dead? Oh, what do you do?

Let him show a brave face if he can;

Let him woo fame and fortune instead;

But there’s little to do but to bury a man

When the last of his dreams is dead.

—From “To Dream Again”

The winds of change whipped ourdreams away. Will they whip us away, too? Will they tumble us outof sight across the plains of the future?

Did you shift in your chair andsay, “Lynn, I thought you were a messenger of hope; yousound more like a prophet of gloom and doom?” Well, now weare ready to talk hope. Listen to the winds whisper from thepast.

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Excerpted from Navigating the Winds of Change: How to Manage Change in the Church by Lynn Anderson
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