Donald Miller

Last Thursday night Jamie and I got to hear Donald Miller speak at Elmbrook Church (www.elmbrook.org). Phenomenal! Brandon Heath and the Robbie Seay Band opened for him. He spoke about story and what it means to live a good story. He said a good story involves a main character who has a dream who goes through conflict on his/her way to achieving the dream. He related this idea to the story of Joseph in the Bible. Joseph had a dream from God that his brothers would one day bow to him. He is sent to Egypt, then sent to prison (conflict), but eventually becomes second-in-command to Pharaoh.

Donald Miller said that the main character may mess up, won't be perfect, but never thinks of him/herself as better than anyone else. You may hate some of the things a main character does in their pursuit of the dream, but they treat others as equals. He didn't explicitly say it, but I think this is Jesus' love your neighbor as yourself.

He said the dream has to be better than "I want a Volvo." Who goes to a movie all about someone trying to buy a Volvo and leaves the theater with tears? The dream is bigger than that. It's better than that. He told a story of a woman he knows whose dream is to build 1,000 wells in Africa. He said if she got hit by a bus and died today, hundreds of thousands of people would die.

In dreaming there's always fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of embarrassment. And the only way to overcome the fear is to dive into the dream. Don't worry about next steps and possible setbacks along the way; just dive in. He said in a movie you don't know what a person is thinking. You only know if he's going fishing if the camera takes you to the boat and you see him sitting in it with a fishing rod out on the lake. Same thing with our dreams. We have to do something with them.

Then comes conflict. But conflict enables us to appreciate the dream all the more. What sports team loves going undefeated if they're playing the JV team all year long? There must be conflict. And finally the dream is reached. The character is changed in the process.

It's made me question if I even have a dream. At this point I don't think I do. What's your dream?