Just to remind you the cycle goes like this: Anticipation - Dream - Frustration - Nightmare - Death Wish
The dream stage is not when you're dreaming about all the possibilities, it's when you're living the dream. It's all going so well that you can hardly believe that you needed to go through all that training, if an OPM, to do this. The FX is flourishing, there is energy and excitement about what the future holds and all that you seem to touch turns to gold. Please note...it doesn't last!
There are a great deal of opportunities in the dream stage as it is a time where foundations can be built for the future. The dream time is when you get asked to do everything! You're perceived as a success and it seems that the Church is attracted to success. The temptation for the pioneer is to believe the hype, but as Public Enemy remind us don't believe the Hype, and more importantly make sure that the community doesn't believe the hype...
However, the problem with the dream stage is that it creates unrealistic expectations as to what the FX will be like in the long term. People start to think that it will always be like this; always be easy and hence when things change - as they will - the memory of what has been becomes a powerful comparison to the present. I would often meet people in Sanctus1 who would say, 'It used to be like this...' presenting a memory of a utopian dream that in reality was very different. The dream is an unstainable phase, it attracts the consumer rather than the disciple and hence the dream needs to be a phase of high cost discipleship.
The dream stage is one that we encountered at different points in Sanctus1 as the cycle is more cyclical than the linear way in which it is laid out. We'd hit frustration, and then we'd change things and for a while the dream would be reignited and energy levels high again. Then due to the transient nature of the context and hence the community the dream would end.
The hard part is breaking the cycle of dream to frustration. If this is broken the fantasy cycle gets broken and we move into something more permanent. However in a transient context, where different people enter at different points, the dream and frustrations are different depending on the time you entered the cycle.
Frustrations can lead to real growth in a community, but I'm going to leave my thoughts on frustrations for another few days...
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