All by itself
| He also said, "This is what the Kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain - first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come." (Mark4:26-29) |
There is a lot about this model that is attractive. In the parable Jesus makes the point that God has programmed the seed to grow - you just put it in the ground, add water, and the natural God-given programming takes over. Growth is not foreign to the seed - it just does it.
But when there are obstacles in the way (like the hard path, rocky soil and weeds in the first parable) then growth in God's Kingdom seems stunted and hard work. If the obstacles are removed and space is given , growth should occur naturally. This is an exciting concept! If we stop trying to engineer growth and just get out of the way, a healthy church or ministry or individual will just grow! God has given us the instinctive know-how to just get on with growing!
The Jerusalem church grew explosively. These folk had no clue about running churches. The disciples knew Jesus and talked about Him, but they had no church-growth books or manuals and yet their era saw unparalleled church growth.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that reading up on church growth and evangelism methods is wrong. It's also not wrong to have witnessing courses and fellowship group training. The real point is this: if growth seems like a real struggle and feels unnatural, then there is a good chance that we have lost touch with the core-values of loving God and one another and that there are all sorts of obstacles in the way of the reproductive DNA that God has given His church.
How are we doing?
Are there obstacles and unnatural thought-patterns in place that hamper the God-given instincts toward spiritual growth in our lives? What will it take to get these out of the way?
