Church: Crazy People on a Mission

A team of crazy people left to creatively fend for themselves and solve a major problem cooperatively while stranded in the big city suddenly find themselves "getting better" and beoming a cohesive community. The 1989 movie "Dream Team" has always felt like a picture of church at its best and most honest (are those synonymous?) to me.



Michael Keaton (history of violence and delusions; the ringleader and "senior pastor), Christoper Lloyd (brilliant as he impersonates a doctor) , Peter Boyle (with a messianic complex...doesn't every church have one?) and Stephen Furst are wonderful in this flick.

"They are bound to each other, and they truly find each other, in the context of an arduous but common mission"

That quote above, though it perfectly describes "The Dream Team," and could have been lifted directly from its P.R., is actually Alan Hirsch's description of "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy; in the context of illustrating that church finds true communitas only as it engages missional adventures. ("The Forgotten Ways," 229).

More from that necessary book relevant to "Dream Team Church," and the spiritual formation and missional training of crazy saints (the only kind there are):

"Living systems cannot be herded along a linear path." (Pacale, quoted in Hirsch, 232)

"Prophets and artists tend to be liminal and marginal people, 'edgemen' who strive with a passionate sincerity to rid themselves of the cliches associated with status and role-playing and to enter into vital relations with other men in fact or imagination." (Turner, quoted in Hirsch, 227)

"....(Consider) Zion's courageous stand against the machines in the Matrix series. Communitas features in just about every adventure movie. These stories have real power over us, because they awaken something very deep inside us--the abiding human need for adventure, journey and comradeship.....there are more chilled versions of communitas that have real potency for missional restructuring of communities (226).

"Dream Team," though far from the level of drama and epic of "Lord of the Rings," and even "Matrix," is a very funny and helpful flick. Missional-minded even. It was introduced to us by a pastor friend, St Belinda, in seminary in 1989; and we still watch it often. It was no doubt one of the most useful "courses" in my seminary curriculum.(:

Still is.