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Go Ahead, Dream about Flourishing

Writer's picture: Chelsey HarmonChelsey Harmon

Can you imagine a world in which your community, your congregation and its members, and your leadership are flourishing as God Designed? 


God created a world of shalom and though it was challenged, through the prophets God continued to call humanity to pursue God’s Design for flourishing. Jesus Christ embodied the fullness of human flourishing and God’s Design for life on earth. He promised the Holy Spirit would continue to be at work to transform God’s people through the renewal of their minds so that our lives would become acts of worship in themselves. And what better way to worship the God of shalom than to pursue God’s Design until Christ returns and establishes eternal flourishing?



Flourishing is the widest description of God’s emerging future: it is the already and not yet reality of our hope. And yet, it’s easy to lose sight or thought of it, easy to cover our lack of vision or our fear that it might not be possible with busy projects and ministries that meet felt needs right now


Of course, the two don’t need to be mutually exclusive: following the Spirit’s lead towards God’s Design for flourishing will mean addressing things that are not the way they’re supposed to be right here and now. So why bother dreaming, thinking, and praying about what flourishing could look like if we have enough we to focus on? 


When the worshipper sings, “I lift my eyes up,” or the prophet says, “I have a dream,” we see the power of defining flourishing in the midst of hardship at work. 


By making it a habit to curiously look to God for pictures of shalom, we are creatively reorienting ourselves for the work of the present. We are seeking God’s encouragement and power for challenges and projects too big for us to do on our own. We are offering ourselves as living sacrifices, willing to change in order to find fulfillment in God’s Design.


CLC’s definition of integrity includes the upside-down idea that we ought to give our word to big things with God– things that we know we are not able to accomplish– because that will grow our faith and spiritual skills of seeking God and because it’s the only way to actually set out towards God’s future. 


So what if, in spite of the circumstances of 2025, you and your leadership group paused your planning and dreamt with God about what flourishing means? For your church, wonder aloud, in prayer, and with Scripture and the Christian tradition, 

what flourishing disciples would look like… 

what a flourishing congregation would be like… 

and how you would be part of a flourishing community in your context.


We promise it won’t be a waste of time.

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