Memories or Dreams

This summer I've been reading a very thought-provoking book by Thomas Friedman called, The World Is Flat, which I picked up in the used book section of a library for $1. It's about outsourcing and globalization from an American point of view.

He veers off on the subject of the motivation and roots of terrorism as he sees it and says that a large factor is whether a country's leaders focus on memories of past glory or dreams of possibilities. From past experiences in churches, it struck me that his concept has very clear and direct implications for a church's ministry as well.

Analysts have always tended to measure a society by classical economic and social statistics: its deficit-to-GDP ratio, or its unemployment rate, or the rate of literacy among adult women. Such statistics are important and revealing. But there is another statistic, much harder to measure, that I think is even more important and revealing: Does your society have more memories than dreams or more dreams than memories?

By dreams I mean the positive, life-affirming variety. The business organization consultant Michael Hammer once remarked, " One thing that tells me a company is in trouble is when they tell you how good they were in the past. Same with countries. You don't want to forget your identity. I am glad you were great in the 14th century, but that was then and this is now. When memories exceed dreams, the end is near. The hallmark of a truly successful organization is the willingness to abandon what made it successful and start fresh."

In societies that have more memories than dreams, too many people are spending too many days looking backward. They see dignity, affirmation and self-worth not by mining the present but by chewing on the past. And even that is not a real past but an imagined and adorned past. Indeed, such societies focus all their imagination on making that imagined past even more beautiful than it ever was, and then they cling to it like a rosary or a strand of worry beads, rather than imagining a better future and acting on that. (pp. 450-451).

So what do you think? Should a church have more memories than dreams or dreams than memories?