This will be a long post, but I wish and I pray one thing; That the article below will inspire you not only to dream but to dream bigger.

Last Friday I read an article in the New York Times, titled "New Wealth, and Worries, for the Salvation Army." It featured the new home of a USD$2.5 million Henry Moore sculpture - the San Diego Salvation Army Community Centre. But more importantly was this, “The sculpture and the center, an $87 million complex featuring three swimming pools, indoor ice skating and skateboarding, playing fields and a 600-seat theater, were gifts from Joan Kroc, wife of the McDonald’s Corporation founder, Ray Kroc.

Mrs. Kroc, who died in 2003, also left the Salvation Army $1.5 billion to build 30 to 40 more Kroc centers now planned around the country, providing low-income neighborhoods the kind of facilities that even well-to-do communities can rarely afford” as reported by the article.

However, as much as this is cause for celebration and a breath of fresh air pumped into the age old charitable organisation of William Booth, there were a horde of questions and doubts beginning to rise in the organisation. Among the reactions within was this:

“We are at a crossroads, and the challenge for us is to remain true to our mission,” Commander Gaither said. “The whole idea is to build on what has been accomplished, not to build something completely different.”

I don’t know if there are any thoughts running through your head when you read this statement, but I understand if organisations have a strong stand in being committed to their vision and their mission. However, having said that, while the purpose remains the same, the method of doing it may change. Mal Fletcher once said in this sermon that the challenge of the Church is not to remain relevant, because the Church IS supposed to be relevant in the first place. But the challenge is to be at the forefront of the society, politics, education and the economics of the nation. We are meant to be the head and not the tail. I long for the day to come when the government body or the parliament approach Church leaders to ask where the nation should head. That is what vision should do – influence.

With the enormous resource that the San Diego Salvation Army possess in their hands, they are now planning to build new community centers in Atlanta, Phoenix, Honolulu and San Francisco, among other places. However, it is these plans that are drawing the most notice. This is what happens when the Church becomes relevant to their society. People take notice. If the Church is happy being the people that sings a few songs, clap their hands and go back to their own lives, the devil will be pretty happy about it and just leave them alone. Why? Simply because they’re too preoccupied with their belly-button gazing and too ignorant about being relevant and making an impact in their world.

The Salvation Army’s San Diego Community Centre was the pilot project that took off with a huge success. People from all walks of life came to the centre, because it offered a range of classes and services. Water aerobics classes, ice skating lessons, hockey, swimming lessons conducted in the Olympic-sized pool, pot-luck lunches and dinners, fund-raising activities were just some of the activities that are available in the community centre. Stories are told where once teenagers had nothing to do, but to roam the streets, now the come to the centre to socialize; they come for basketball sessions, swim, join figure-skating programs and skate in the in-house skate park the centre provides. The center also offers the Salvation Army’s traditional services like parenting classes, collecting and distributing food to the needy, and making referrals to social service programs.

That. Is Influence.

The article ended with this comment from a member of the community centre saying “I don’t know anything about the Salvation Army,” said Candy Henson, a water aerobics classmate of Ms. Hunsaker. “I just know what they’re doing for this community, and it’s good.”

That is my dream of the DreamCentre that DUMC is currently building. That people from the society will come and they will know of a place they can call home. They will know of a God that cares for them and love them. The outcasts, the dirty, the homeless, the prostitutes, the abused children, the widow, the hungry and the needy. Just when you think that going to church is about you and you having a good time. Think again. It’s for the people out there. Like what Mark Penny once said “It’s about the people, everything we do, it's for the people.”

Let us live the dream.