The Power of Imagination

Years ago during a meeting with my Leadership Team, I shared a story about the power of imagination to help change the way they thought so they could expand their capacity of what is possible. The story is powerful and really impacted them.  I want to share that story with you today to impact you and help expand your capacity for what is possible in your life.  

At our previous church, Charis Christian Center, Ashley and I led a small group. The group was a bible study group that met in our house. We averaged 10-12  people in regular attendance our first year holding the group, which wasn’t bad. 

Before my last year of Bible College, I felt like God told me to plant a church back in North Carolina when we were done in Colorado. I knew planting a church would be challenging, so I set about to take some of the principles I was learning in school to see if I could grow our small group. Let’s be honest, if you can’t grow a small group past 12 people, you probably can’t grow a church.

What’s interesting is as I prayed I felt like God impressed upon me to not call our group a small group. Calling it a small group affected how I approached leading the group. I had a small mindset and mentality. We did things in such a way that we stayed small. We didn’t outreach to others and we didn’t try to build. As I prayed further, I felt like God told me to refer to the group as a Charis Group. The church we went to referred to home groups as Charis (grace) Groups or small groups so we decided to refer to our group as a Charis group instead.

Over the next 6 months, we more than doubled the size of our group. Our basement got really full. The reason this happened is I changed my words and that changed my mentality. According to Romans 10:17, faith comes by hearing. We will believe for what we hear. We did some other things that got people in, but having a big mindset (one that agreed with God) was the key to experiencing all God had for me.

I want to encourage everyone reading this to think about the words you speak and change your words if they don’t line up with what you want. Faith comes by hearing and your faith will be in proportion to the words you hear. Change your mentality and change your life!  If you’d like to learn more about the power of imagination, check out this message I taught at Grace Life Church.