I have been blessed with ADHD and as such my mind is a rabbit warren of thought trails.  Normally, I run these tunnels by myself, but together we may glimpse the Spirit’s movement.  Starting at one of my favorite trailheads, we have the 2005 cinematic masterpiece, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3D, one of the best bad movies ever made.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the film follows the adventures of Max, a fourth grader with a rocky home life, who struggles to make friends at school. One day, two kid superheroes, Shark Boy and Lava Girl, from Max’s dreams come to life, whisk Max away on a quest to save a planet and prevent a supervillain from stopping kids dreaming. In both the dream and real world, Max is faced with various forms of crisis all of which threaten to make him “stop dreaming and grow up.”  Here we encounter the sharp right towards a glimmer of a biblical factoid up ahead.

The Bible has many examples of people in crisis that could guide us towards our destination, but this tunnel leads us to the prophet Joel. Squeezed in between two of my favorite dens, Joel is easy to miss. One of the obscure prophets from the book of the Twelve, this small, three-chapter prophet packs a lot of crises into a small space. In his prophecy, Joel represents the crisis of exile and ethnic erasure as a crisis of environmental devastation. Joel’s environmental crisis is all encompassing, touching not only every element of human life, but of creation domesticated and wild. This crisis in Joel is not just overwhelming, it is traumatic.

I don’t know about you, but I often feel overwhelmed by our world today. It’s so easy to look around and see crisis at every corner, racial and economic crisis, heteropatriarchy and political crisis, climate change and extinction. Climate Doomism, the belief that we have gone too far to save our planet from ecological devastation, is a rapidly growing belief among my peers. Crisis appears to affect every system and relationship humanity and God have created. The institutional Western church is also in crisis. Christian fascism is on the rise among white evangelicals. A study on US religious life released in January of 2024 found that 30% of US American adults and 52% of Gen Z identify as “nones” or having no religious affiliation. In response, social media was flooded with articles about how our generation will be the one to kill religion in the United States, and it’s tempting to believe these obituaries. Why would anyone think about saying yes to the church under these conditions? 

I’d encourage you to tighten your straps as our trail moves past this lake of existential dread. It’s easy to fall in and be lost for good. I know that I have often gone swimming in the opaque waters of this sea, and while I paddle around, it is often hard to dream of a future. But the rabbit trail can’t end here. We must recognize these emotions and the truths they reveal. It’s true that faith leaders of the future will not look like faith leaders of the past. It’s true that climate presents an existential threat if we do not act soon. It’s true that the institutional crisis in the church is connected to the crises in our world; that the Western church has faced the court of public opinion for her response to injustice and has been found lacking. Does that mean the dream is dead? Is the church, is Christian faith, on its final breath, if not already dead?

At the climax of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, Max is surrounded by his broken dreams. Shark boy and Lava girl are dead. The darkness has taken over the planet, leading to the end of children’s dreams and the ability for them to come true. Max is defeated, sad, and doesn’t know what to do. He cries and asks “what do you do when all your dreams are dead?” To his surprise he hears an answer from a dream he had long forgotten, “Dream a better dream.”

The call of the Hebrew Prophets has always been to dream a better dream, a dream of shalom, wholeness and wellbeing. As Christians, we believe that Jesus stands in the legacy of these dreams and in his life, death and resurrection began to make this dream come true. The community around Jesus, the infant church, is invited to join him in the work of dreaming this world, the kingdom of God, into being. I don’t think it’s a mistake that Peter at the birth of this new church at Pentecost quotes Joel saying: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days I will pour out my spirit.” The coming of the kin-dom is marked by all flesh, young and old, oppressed and oppressor, of every sex and gender participating in the prophetic dreaming of Christ’s kingdom come on earth as in heaven.

Every generation has had to “dream a better dream” for the church. We must do the same. Our generation must mourn the economic, environmental, and religious futures that were dreamed for us, tend to our emotions from these losses, and then let them go, because the challenge of overcoming crisis is not insurmountable. That is the beauty of resurrection. What seems like an existential threat becomes an invitation to new life. If we as a church are to live more fully into who God created us to be, the cycle of death and rebirth must continue. The old ways of injustice and division must die so that new ways of justice can be born. 

I believe that God is working to raise up a new generation of leaders to face the crises of our world. The Holy Spirit is doing something new, and you have a part to play. We are not the church’s future; we are the church now. If the church is to continue to dream God’s peace and love into the world, to dream God’s people through the crises of faith and of injustice in the world then the church needs you. The church needs people who care deeply about their faith and the environment. People who are moved by faith to work for peace, and whose faith drives them to witness God’s love for justice to the halls of political and economic power. The church needs people with a passion for God-Talk and for ministering God’s love and compassion to the diverse beauty of all humanity. The church needs you. We need you. I need you. I need you to join me as we dream a better dream for the church, to dream of a church that looks more like Jesus.

So, here in this den at the bottom of a rabbit trail. If the Holy Spirit is tapping you on the shoulder, I’d encourage you to turn to her and listen. What is she asking you to say yes to? What does she want you to know? And what journey, what rabbit trails, is she encouraging you to run down with her? I know that for all of us, she is inviting us to join her in turning toward our crises, personal and global, and declare to them that we are dreaming a better dream for the future, and with God’s help, those dreams might just come true.