Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The Proper Soil

It looked pretty bad.
I had never been that great of a gardener, the skills that my father had in growing things never were passed on to me. Some years my garden did pretty well, and other years not so good.
This is one of those bad years.
The seed was okay, the timing was good, the soil had been worked, but what I couldn't control was the amount of rain we would receive.
And boy did we get rain this year.
Many of my plants spent a good bit of time under water, one portion of my garden washed away in a miniature mud slide.
So I wasn't to surprised to find that while some plants looked okay, they didn't produce.
The corn plants became discolored and died, most of them didn't produce an ear of corn. The pepper plants didn't grow at all, stuck in what seemed like a permanent pose, never growing, just staying the same. The melon plants that my Father-in-law gave me washed down the creek in a torrent of water and mud.
Bad soil conditions = bad crops.
In building the Kingdom it works the same way. We have to provide the proper soil for growth.
Our church communities become the soil. We have to work at provided the proper conditions for fruit to be produced.
To become a church where seekers feel safe, the church cannot become a place where all they find is condemnation. They need to find a place where it is safe to explore, to ask questions without feeling like they just asked the stupidest question there is. They need to find love, genuine caring love for who they are. We need to produce soil that makes it easy for people to connect with Jesus and the community of believers that surround them.
At the same time we must provide a proper soil for those who already believe, to create an environment that challenges them to look beyond the walls, to keep in front of them the vision and purpose that God has for their lives and to keep them moving in that direction.
If our churches neglect these things the soil does not get worked, we don't produce fruit, we die.
The church of Jesus Christ was never meant to be a country club, it was meant to be a living, thriving organism, that grows when the proper conditions are maintained.
But those conditions will require sacrifice, hard work, and a mindset that keeps us focused on Christ.
Because if we neglect the soil, we will never be the fruit producing body that Christ has called us to be.