Dawn Lind, ICF-PCC and IAC Certified Coach
www.FocusOnPurpose.com
February, 2004 (rev. April, 2006)
On that Wednesday in January, my morning began as it typically does these days… I woke up saying “I LOVE my job! I have the privilege of helping people discover and live their life purpose - their Big Dream. I’m a Focus On Purpose and Dream Giver coach. I was born to do this!!! It doesn’t get any better than that.
However, it was only four years earlier when I desperately wondered if I would ever again be able to wake up and say ”I love my job”. There were some days I didn’t even want to wake up at all anymore. Everything just seemed like too much work. While on the journey to fulfilling my Big Dream, something had gone terribly wrong. What once was my Dream job had become a nightmare– complete with Border Bullies and Giants. As a pastor’s wife, I found myself stuck for years in a place called “Wasteland”.
Many years earlier, I remember my mother telling me, “Dawn, you’re out to change the world. ”I responded. “And what’s wrong with that?” From that point on, I began my journey to make the world a better place!
I set out to simplify and organize the world so it could function harmoniously with purpose. In my mind, world peace was really quite simple. Each person must:
1. Discover his/her individual life purpose.
2. Know who they are, like who they are and be who they are
3. Partner with people who are opposite, thus providing what’s missing
4. Form a team with goals and objectives to fulfill a need in the world
5. Love what one does and have a great attitude!
After becoming a Christian at the age of 18, I then discovered what I considered to be the missing link which was the power of Christ. After that discovery, the concept of world peace became even more simplified in my mind. One just needed to mobilize the Christians and still do the five steps listed above. Through Christ, we must get organized on purpose. Then we must lovingly divide and conquer in order to bring others into the wonderful world of Christianity. “Onward Christian Soldiers!” Easy!! (Ahhh yes…the naivety of youth.)
The Big Dream…
As a young child, I loved going to church. After becoming a Christian, I loved the church. I saw church work as loaded with possibilities and opportunities… an arena where no challenge was too big because the Lord loved the church and wanted it to succeed. For several years my plan unfolded beautifully. I would discover the needs of people and then organize a group to fulfill that need. Basically, my Big Dream was to help others find their Big Dream and then plug into the local church.
Early on, I did have one requirement regarding this Dream - it went something like this. If the Lord had a plan for me to be married, I had specifically told Him that I never wanted to marry a doctor or a pastor, because a man in either of those professions would be too busy with all the details of everyone else. Instead, I wanted to team up with my Christian husband to do ministry together. I knew I would not be content to just watch from a distance as he ministered, because I wanted to be involved in the action.
The Lord did have plans for me to marry, and eventually I married a wonderful Electrical Engineer who had the Dream of helping people grow spiritually. We became highly involved together in the local church because we loved the church.
To show you how serious we were about “doing church”, my Electrical Engineer husband quit his job to attend Moody Bible Institute and become the pastor of a church we helped start in the suburbs of Chicago. And I also left my teaching job to play the role which would ultimately become known as the “Pastor’sWife”. Even though I had specifically stated that I didn’t want to marry a pastor, he eventually became one. But as I thought about it, what could be better? My husband and I would be doing spiritual ministry together!!! Therefore, becoming a pastoral team seemed to be the next logical step. Together we would go into ministry full time because we loved the church.
As Dave began to spend many hours studying, preaching and pastoring, I did the “Pastor’s Wife” thing while raising 3 boys and a dog. If people wanted to know more about the Bible, I’d organize evangelistic Bible studies. Did they want contemporary music? I’d start a “seeker sensitive” worship team. Guess who started a Kids’ Klub team? …Teens’ ministry? …Senior citizens’ gatherings…Women’s events?
Part of the secret of success in each of those endeavors was that I never did those ministries by myself. I’d find a team of individuals who wanted to invest their time into the same purpose. Then I would intuitively put them in the right positions, so they would be working in their strengths. After bathing each ministry in prayer, we were then mobilized and ready for action. It was part of my Dream and I enjoyed the synergy that resulted from a dynamic group working together with one common purpose. My Dream was becoming a reality. I was actually instrumental in changing my little corner of the world by forming teams of people focusing on purpose to meet a variety of needs.
As God revealed specific needs, I would design a new ministry and lead it with my team. Then I’d write a prototype of how to duplicate each of these ministries so that someone else could take over. I was so excited for others to experience the joys of leadership, and I was willing to coach them until they felt ready to be on their own. Leadership is quite interesting. Some leaders would continue on, but many would give up when it got too hard or they became busy with matters outside the realm of church. When that happened, they would often pass the ministry back to me.
On our vacations, we would drive from Chicago to visit Dave’s family in New England. During one of those visits, the pastor of a local church called us into his office because he could sense that we both loved the local church. At the end of our visit, he said “If you ever feel the Holy Spirit calling you to New England, we’d be honored to have you minister with us at this church.”
Well, I was sure the Lord would never call us to such a liberal place in the middle of nowhere. Why would God want to take us away from the hub of Christianity? After all, our church in Illinois was a “happening place”. We were enjoying the vibrancy of couples working together in church leadership, experiencing wonderful contemporary music, and being surrounded by family and friends. Just 40 minutes from our home, our boys could see Michael Jordan, the Chicago Bulls, the Chicago Bears and the Super Bowl Shuffle. Why would we want to leave all that to go to a place where people might not even know who Michael Jordan was?
Soon after that visit, while attending a mission conference, I saw a poster that tore at my heartstrings and made me cry. It was a picture of a giant log being carried at one end by ten strong, muscular men and held up on the other side by one very tired, lonely, exhausted man. The caption read, “Which end are you willing to help carry?” How sobering - Here we were in the Chicago area with a good church on every corner, contemporary Christian radio or TV stations on several channels and famous Christian speakers and musicians coming to our area every week.
A short time after seeing that poster, we began to feel the tug of the Holy Spirit wooing us to that little New England church… to people who perhaps had never even heard of those speakers, musicians or songs. They had no Christian TV and were just getting their first Christian radio station started. One pastor was trying to do the work of the ministry alone. Furthermore, all the churches in that area were similar (only smaller). Those smaller churches witnessed pastors burning out every two years. With all the training we had received at seminars from great Christian leaders, we felt it would be wrong not to move east and share what we had learned.
So after spending 12 years involved in the growth of a vibrant church in Illinois, we moved to New England to team up with that pastor who had asked us several years earlier to come.
Before we made the final move, Dave made it very clear that he was not coming as a hired hand to do all the work at this church. Instead he was coming to equip the people to do the work of the ministry as described in Ephesians 4. Together, he and I would be helping people to discover their purpose, and would be forming teams to evangelize and disciple within the church. As Dave shared his vision, the Elder Board emphatically agreed that this was what they desired too… or so they thought.
Historically, this was not the standard way that New England churches operated so Dave’s plan would mean initiating a movement of “change”. The Board had stated that they were ready for change. In the years that followed, however, we would eventually come to learn that ”change” in this church was equivalent to a dirty word.
Let me slow down… I’m getting ahead of the original story.
Let’s go back to that Wednesday in January….
I was sitting in the church office with our Administrative Assistant, amidst a flurry of activity. As I sat there, it suddenly hit me that I was the one who started that office 12 years earlier because I loved the church.
When we moved to the church, there was no secretary, so I created the position. My first project was to set up a phone list for the church. After compiling this list, there was nothing to do. There weren’t many phone calls coming into the church office, so I started calling the names on the phone list that I had just created. I was basically just getting to know these people, asking for prayer requests, discussing their Dreams, helping them to discover their gifts and asking them what part they would like to play in helping the church to grow.
They began to tell me their dreams - of kids’ groups and fellowship and music. Soon I was putting their dreams into a newsletter for others to read - and ministries were born which attracted new people to come to the church. I was enjoying these people, listening to them, helping them discover how they were best gifted to serve in the church and then connecting them to others with similar dreams.
It was so much fun! Just as it had happened before in Illinois, my Dream of helping others to find their purpose and plug into the local church was happening again. Oh, how I loved this little town, how I loved these people and mostly - how I LOVED the church! Life was good, and all was right with the world.
Things were going quite well. Two pastors (with very different ministry philosophies) were sharing the load and the church had doubled in size. However, after the other pastor retired, it became quite evident that there had been two very different churches under one roof! The “first church” preferred the original pastor’s style- where one man does the majority of the work of the ministry and the people basically come to be “fed”. The “second church” believed that equipping the people to do the work of the ministry was the biblical way.
Suddenly, the church honeymoon was abruptly over. The “first church” made it extremely clear that they did not like us. Soon my pastor husband was bombarded with criticism for doing the very thing he had clearly stated, up front, that he would do: “equip the people to do the work of the ministry”.
A few years later, he discovered The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren. Here was a plan in print similar in outline to what we had already been implementing for many years! He assumed that if his critics would just read this book, surely they would have clarity regarding what he had been endeavoring to do. But when the book was introduced, the previous criticism that he had received looked like child’s play for what was about to come.
Various individuals emphatically informed us that New Englanders don’t like change. Some began to send hate mail while others crossed on the opposite side of the street in anticipation of our presence. We were informed that we should get accustomed to the fact that the pastor is hired to do the work and his wife is “thrown in there for free”.
Running Away…
After a long period of intense criticism, the church work that I had once enjoyed was becoming a weary and disillusioning task. In other words, church work had become exactly that - WORK. I was very protective of my husband and didn’t like to see him being criticized for every move he made. I begged him to quit being a pastor and do something else. I tried to reason with him that we could still do Christian ministry in the secular world. But my efforts to convince him that it would be more productive to leave went unheeded.
No amount of pleading worked because Dave felt called to stay and complete what God had brought him there to do. So eventually I found my own ways to leave. I desperately searched for a new career that I could love again. I longed for a job that would be fulfilling, fruitful and motivating - like I had once had. I had always wanted to have a team ministry with my husband, but if he wouldn’t leave the church work, I felt I had to. Living in New England was no longer interesting for me at all. I viewed the church as a group of people who were trying to kill the Dream by fabricating daily dramas to stir up dissension.
In the years that followed, I began a cycle in which I would run away from the church to pursue various teaching jobs. I even earned a Masters degree in education. The cycle looked something like this: After a time of working in the educational field, I would miss partnering with my husband and would come back to the church world. However when I would re-enter the church work, nothing had changed. There would still be criticism, and the ongoing saga of people wanting their own way. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I would run back to teaching. Each time I came back to the ministry, I’d face another wave of disapproval and disappointment.
My husband’s occupation had even become distasteful to me and I didn’t want my new associates to know what he did for a living. I was embarrassed to have my husband associated with such an unloving group of individuals in an institution that called itself a “church”. To make matters worse, I didn’t feel needed there anymore. Whereas once doing ministry together was exciting, now it was disappointing. Soon I felt unsupportive and very guilty as a wife. (What kind of help mate had I become?) Furthermore - what had happened to our Big Dream?
After several years of this cycle of running away and coming back, I grew weary and decided to return to the church environment and endure it. Even though I didn’t love the local church anymore I loved my husband and HE loved the church! So I would try to find ways to support him.
The Crash…
One Sunday morning after a wonderful sermon, Dave announced that he was stepping back from the church. He didn’t know whether his leave of absence would be for one day or forever. He just knew that he must carve out a huge space to seek the Lord’s direction. He shared that he needed time to determine whether or not we should stay in this church. Everyone was shocked - “ including me! Those who loved him were reduced to tears and bewilderment. At that time, many were still unaware that some individuals had been making it miserable for us because they didn’t want us there. In reality, who could we have confided in? In an independent, non-denominational church, where does the pastor go for help?
When he stepped back, my first thought was “Oh no, what have I done? This potential disaster is all my fault. I had finally pulled Dave away from the church - and what if I have killed the church that he loved?” Those were my first thoughts. However my next reaction was “I am so glad he did this! He has been criticized long enough. Besides, he really needs me - only me!”
The majority of people were very kind to us in allowing the time and space we needed to process this decision. A few others seemed to relish the apparent discouragement.
Days turned into weeks and it was still not clear what should happen. Finally after six weeks had passed, the Elders begged Dave to return and to put into practice the principles of the “Purpose Driven Church”. They had made their choice between the two styles of “doing church” - and had concluded that “Purpose Driven” was the way to proceed. Dave and I looked at each other with a “We’re 80 % sure” look, and agreed to come back to that same church and start over. In hindsight we probably should have waited until we were 100 % sure; but that is not what we did.
I wish I could say that when he came back, everything was terrific. But some of the people did not agree with the Elders’ decision. I’ll spare the gory details and simply say that in 1999 it officially happened… The Dream became a Nightmare - “A Nightmare in New England”!
How could all this have happened? How could such a beautiful Dream disintegrate in such a horrible way? Several years later I came to realize that the Dream was still alive - but just barely breathing. I discovered that a death process is normal in the lifecycle of a true Big Dream! But I didn’t understand this concept back then.
The journey to my Dream was so different than I thought it would be. As a young girl, I saw a glimpse of the Dream and thought… “Poof, this will be fun!”. But in reality, much of the journey has been long, hard, tiring and lonely. Actually, if I had seen the whole picture and what it would take to pursue such a Big Dream, I’m not sure I would have ever begun that journey. That’s probably why God usually reveals one step at a time rather than the whole Dream at once.
Big Dream Expanded…
I am pleased to report that there is great progress regarding our “church story”. My husband is the senior pastor in that same New England church and we have passed our silver anniversary milestone in church ministry. The “Pastor’s Wife” learned to love the church again (albeit cautiously). We have reaped the rewards and blessings of a Purpose Driven Church. Scores of seekers have come to Christ and have eagerly sought to discover their purpose so they can bring more seekers to Christ. And my husband and I now work together in our own ministry! As a team, we lead classes and give retreats specifically designed to coach other leaders to move forward in their own Big Dream.
After I quit running away, God orchestrated a wonderful series of events in my life. In pursuing my training and certification as a life coach, I was involved in the leadership of an organization where I traveled to South Africa to plant gardens and build teams. It is interesting to note that when I became a Christian in college, I told God that I would never go to Africa. Then 37 years to the day of my salvation experience, I was on a plane to South Africa!! Every person I talked to, regardless of how bad their life circumstances were, could articulate their Big Dream.
My pastor husband and I now do most of our coaching together as a “Team of 2″. We have a national ministry using our coach training to influence pastors, ministry leaders, life coaches and corporate executives to pursue their Big Dreams and develop effective teams throughout the United States. Together, we do phone coaching, lead classes and give retreats specifically designed to inspire other leaders to move forward in their own Big Dream.
Also, God has opened the door for us to be part of the leadership team of AMFM (Association of Marriage & Family). We lead workshops at their conferences and coordinate the Leadership Development Focus Group. I’m trilled to say that my Big Dream has expanded and is no longer a nightmare.
Yes, I love the Lord and because HE loves the church, I will give my life to His first love. He suffered and died for the church; and in a comparatively small way, my husband and I have also given our lives for the church.
I wake up every morning saying “I love my job!” I am blessed to be currently living my Big Dream - “designed specifically for me from the Dream Giver Himself. It doesn’t get any better than this!
Dawn Lind has shown her servant’s heart through her passionate work with Dream Giver Coach Network (DGCN). She has a calling as a coach that sets her apart from the rest. Dawn is a life-long learner who takes what she learns and uses it in her partnerships with others as she empowers leaders to “focus on purpose”. She has been involved not only with DGCN, but also enthusiastically embraced the needs in Africa by joining the Dream for Africa movement. Dawn has been a joy to know and I would recommend her as a coach if you are ready to discover and live out your Dream!”
- Bruce Wilkinson(New York Times #1 best-selling author)