Someone has said, "Do what others are dreaming about instead of dreaming about what others are doing." Such a man is indeed a beautiful dreamer. There's a place in the Christian church for the theorician and the dreamer. Planning is an integral part of management. Someone must think ahead for any organization to move ahead. There is nothing more out of place in this age of transition than the stagnation of intransigence. Yesterday's budget cannot finance today's or tomorrow's programs. Policies that were good for the forties and fifties may be totally out of date for the sixties and seventies. If it is determined by collective committee judgment that more is to be lost by "holding the line" than by "changing the line," then change the line. In matters of principle, of course, this does not hold, for principle is eternal, anchored to the unmovable. Right and wrong can never fluctuate from age to age in terms of moral judgment, but method and policy can and must adapt to changing circumstance. That a tradition or a policy has existed for fifty or sixty years may not mean at all that it is a wise and just procedure. Its age may merely indicate that it needs a thorough overhauling—or total abandoning.
There is something patriotic about the expression, "Don't give up the ship." Now, if the ship is one of policy, wouldn't it depend upon what ship or whether the ship can stay afloat or whether the ship can match speeds with the more modern and adequate vessels? If it is a bridge of principle, we must stand like Horatius, yielding not one inch; but if it is a lesser matter, it may be best to change horses before one gets to midstream. It is difficult to tell just how far along the road the church and the world would be had it listened more closely to its dreamers; not the impractical stargazer who never sees the earth or things earthly, but to the man who dreams and then schemes to make his dreams come true. He is not too practical to proiect and not too ascetic to produce. This indeed is a beautiful dreamer.
Men are being paid exorbitant salaries, even as I dictate this note, for doing nothing but thinking. These are idea men. Their requirement is only that their ideas be translatable into practicality. It is not required that the idea be practical, rather only that it can be made practical.
In the Christian church this type of dreaming is indispensable. Let me illustrate. Refusal of a local committee to authorize an evangelistic campaign on the grounds that it might create the necessity of a church building for which the employing organization does not have the money is a clear case of limited vision. Had this type of thinking governed the original, we would not have a church today, for the New Testament founders of the Christian church had only their dreams and teachings with which to begin. They created the problem by evangelizing the people, and the people put in the money for the building of churches and institutions. This vision carried over to the founders of the Adventist Church. They were in the main very poor people, but they were rich in the Spirit and had the most powerful message on the face of the earth. With it they built the giant institutions that now belt the globe. There were problems of financing then, but they concentrated on baptizing people, and people pay the bill. And if my infatuation with this idea marks me a dreamer, let me dream on!
