If you did not know, my wife’s father is a wheat farmer under the big blue skies of Montana. Though some of his equipment might be old (he is still using the same equipment his father did), his farming techniques are far from antiquated. He produces greater yields than his father could have ever dreamed, using a GPS system to guide his planting. The system makes the rows as even and close together as possible. He uses new techniques to reduce weeds manually and not have to poison the ground with herbicides. He has the timing of when to plant down to a science. For a guy in his 50s, he has stayed very advanced in his farming. He understands a great deal.
Yet, even with that, once the seed is in the ground, the ground will do what it wants. He has no control once it is in the ground. The ground may dry out and produce little. The ground may soak up a lot of water and produce abundantly. The ground may not protect the wheat from the hail, thus destroying the crop. In the end, the ground will do what it wants, and there is nothing he can do about it.
For those of you who are fans of church administration, and you know who you are (you read all the books about church growth, about group dynamics and family systems; I know there are tons of you out there), one of the basic principles is this: no matter how large the church, no matter the amount of people you hope to organize, you cannot ever convice yourself that you are in control. In fact, it is perilous to imagine that you are in control.
Trying to force people to organize and attend a coffee hour in a small congregation is bad enough; imagine trying to control the lives of thousands attending a huge church.
The temptation is to become a church Nazi and manage all the ministries so that nothing crazy and abnormal happens. It may be the natural thing to do but, it always results in the church having a monotone of color. Everyone begins to look exactly like the nicely dressed and well organized church leaders who keep the flowers in the right place, the children locked away in the back closet, and ask the old to sit in back so that when we look forward, we look like a young and thriving congregation. Such a church looks nothing like the Jesus we follow. It is not crazy enough. It does not do surprising things. It does not talk to unknown people.
Instead of becoming a church Nazi, you should try the advise that goes something like this: Give people a guiding principle, plant the seed of Christ, and let it grow however it wants. For example, the guiding principle for your church might be, “The love of Jesus heals the world.” With that seed planted, the podiatrist in the congregation may come up to you as a member of the church council and say, "we need to heal people’s feet."
"That's exactly what I was thinking when I laid out that priciple," you think sarcastically.
Though it may seem like a confusing, but none the less fascinating as in “what is he going to to our feet” ministry proposition, you as the leader would simply say, “Yes.”
You say, “yes” not because you understand that it is going to be a great ministry. It may or may not be great. You say “yes” because the seed is in the ground. The ground will do with it as it likes. God will do with it as God likes. When the podiatrist spoke to you, you might not have understood that healing people’s feet meant giving shoes to school children who have nothing but ragged sneakers held together by duct tape.
The church is not a tidy field. We cannot control the work of Jesus in people’s lives. We cannot stop God from using crosses to save the world. Once the seed is in the ground, God does with it what God wants.
The Bible talks about mustard seeds being planted in the field, but I want to talk about thistles. We do not have mustard problems around here, we have no idea how they take over everything, but we do have a thistle problem. You let one of them babies fall into your garden, and you will have thistles everywhere in no time. You chop one down and hack it into little pieces and you have a national park of thistles within two weeks.
You would never intentionally plant one, but if you did, it soon would grow huge and give a place for the gold finches to rest and would provide an ample supply of flowers for the honey bees. The ground will grow what is needed, and it will be good. The ground will grow an ugly, horrible, life choking cross, and it will provide a place for people to hang their sins so that they can walk away with a lighter load through Jesus the Christ. Had we the chance, we would have weeded out that ugly cross in the first place. But, the ground will produce what is needed.
Churches often have a desire to pull weeds, to remove that which causes fear, to cut off that which is not known, and to spray away that which appears ugly and abnormal. But, in the end, the ground will win. The ground is more powerful than any hand that comes along. The ground can hold onto the roots of a weed and bring it back at any time to produce a home for the gold finches.
Sometimes, the most holy thing one can do is to allow the seeds to be planted, and to stand back and see what beautiful creations God makes.
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