In 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the dangers of what he called ‘visionary dreaming’.
He said: ‘God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.’ In our present context, we might translate these words as something like dreams of ministry success.
In the same paragraph, Bonhoeffer goes on to write about the dangers of visionary dreaming within the Christian community. Bonhoeffer writes: ‘He [the leader] acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first the accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.’
