Overview:
Named after the message he received, the two DreamLife Worship Centers focuses their message on "the dream that's in every heart."
Dr. Kenneth Robinson is no stranger to rising above challenges that come between him and his dreams of success as a minister and Christian apostle.
Called to the pulpit at age 18, Robinson overcame twin anxieties — a childhood speech impediment and fear of public speaking — to join the ministry. Decades later, going through a painful divorce while leading a Baltimore-area church, Robinson found himself wondering if he should leave the pulpit altogether and become an accountant, maybe, or sell insurance.
In that dark season, however, he received another message from above.
“I heard these words: ‘Dream again,’” says Robinson, co-pastor of DreamLife Worship Center in Randallstown, Maryland, a Baltimore suburb. “And that’s what I did. I dreamed that I would still be able to fulfill the plan and will of God in my life. And it occurred to me that the only thing that kept me going was the dream God put in my heart.”
The result is a new wife, Lenyar Robinson, with whom he co-pastors in Randallstown as well as a second church, DreamLife Worship Center Dallas in Prosper, Texas, a city suburb.
It almost goes without saying, but Robinson acknowledges it’s not easy to manage a twin-campus ministry; he and his wife are at one campus or the other every weekend. But it is yet another challenge that Robinson has faced since he preached his first sermon as a teenager, pushing past self-doubt to do it.
“I was terrified at the thought of having to get up in front of people for 30 minutes and talk because I had a speech impediment, and spent a lot of my earlier years in speech class,” he says. “So when I started sensing the call of God on my life, it was quite frightening.”
His mother, however, reminded Robinson he’d actually been preparing himself.
”My mother said I would come home after school in my high school years and would listen to my father’s tapes all the time,” Robinson says, referring to his father, Bishop Kenneth O. Robinson Sr. “So it’s almost like God was preparing me without me even knowing it.”
Over the years, Robinson grew more comfortable with public speaking and grew in stature as a minister. As his ministerial style evolved, Robinson developed a professorial style that his congregation grew to appreciate.
”Everybody knows Dr. Ken loves to teach, but I do preach,” he says. “I like to call myself a preacher-teacher. But my first inclination is always to teach and to bring understanding.”
It is a conscientious departure from the style he’s known since he was a boy, Robinson says: ”I grew up in churches where they just exhorted a lot and the organ played behind you. And it was good, but there wasn’t a lot of explanation. So I purposed in my heart to help bring understanding to the word of God so people will have something practical to use when they leave the sanctuary.”
“What excites me about ministry is seeing the lives of people, of families be transformed, be changed, seeing them grow in life,” Robinson says. “Of course we all experience trials and tribulations in life, [but] then seeing [people] overcome them and give God praise” is very gratifying.
That understanding — overcoming trials, and giving God praise — was prescient. Robinson, then the lead pastor of what was then known as Restoring Life Church in Randallstown, leaned on it when his marriage fell apart.
”Fourteen years ago, I went through a very painful divorce, something I never, ever expected would happen in my life,” he said. “And I, at that moment, really didn’t see how I was going to continue in ministry because most people who know me know that family, and my boys, have always been everything to me. But the marriage didn’t work out, and it was a very dark time.”
He goes on: ”I really didn’t even want to continue ministry. I felt like I pretty much had disqualified myself. I didn’t want to be a divorced pastor. I began to consider other professions. I decided I’d be an accountant or an insurance salesman.”
But when God delivered him the “dream again” message, Robinson fully embraced it.
”I began to tell people to dream again and we changed the ministry name from Restoring Life to Dream Life,” Robinson says. “We preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, of course, but we focus in particular on our vision, on the dream that’s in every heart. We focus on how we can teach the children to dream big, how we can teach teenagers to discover their dream in God.”
Anointed with the gift of an apostle, he looked to Dallas as a new opportunity to spread his message to a second congregation — as if pastoring one congregation were not enough.
During his personal restoration, Robinson met his “beautiful queen, Lenyar,” in Dallas at a T.D. Jakes event. He received affirmation from his spiritual father, Archbishop Ralph Dennis, that he could indeed be an apostle.
“I knew at that moment I would have to be mobile. I knew there was no more standing still if I was going to fulfill that call and assignment.” Robinson says. So he ultimately felt the Holy Spirit encouraging him to expand his Maryland ministry to metro Dallas, Lenyar Robinson’s hometown.
”We did it in crazy faith, during the pandemic, when everyone else was shutting down,” he says. People with no spiritual home, he says, “found their way to DreamLife Dallas, which seems like a Mecca or a place where people from all over come to live.” New Orleans is in his sights as another possible DreamLife location.
“The apostle plans and plants churches, the bishop administers them, and I’m very clear as to what these titles and offices represent,” he says. “So I think there’s a very exciting future for what we call the Dream Nation.”