Modern Church Farmers
One of the spiritual disciples that we have been practicing during the Missional Order gathering is to spend time in Luke 10:1-12 and plumb its depths both as a group and in pairs. It has been a rich experience. In the first part of this passage Jesus talks about the rich harvest around us. This brings up some vivid imagery, imagery that helps us understand our calling and patterns. It also brought out a great observation from one of the participants today (Glenn Hatcher) about how the modern church has distorted this image. It was meant to be light hearted, but also insightful.
If the farmer worked like the current church, he would:
Plow in the barn;
Plant in the barn;
Pray that it would rain in the barn;
Harvest in the barn;
then burn down the barn and call it revival!
Let me contrast this with what you find in the passage.
We go into the neighborhoods. We share peace and where it is returned we dwell. In this dwelling among others, we first share hospitality (best around a meal), then we minister to needs including a focus on healing (physical, relational, physiological), then we bring the kingdom message.
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October 18th, 2007 at 11:10 am
i love this, good stuff Rick
October 18th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Rick,
This is a very timely encouragement for me. Thank you!
-Alan
October 18th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Thanks Makeesha. It sure would have been good to have had you voice added to this gathering.
October 18th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Super Alan. I pray that you will be lead to fruitful and refreshing places in your journey where you can dwell and minister to those seeking peace and the kingdom.
October 18th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Excellent stuff! Ah, would that I could have been there. Thanks for sharing it here!
October 18th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
oh I would have LOVED to have been there
October 18th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Mak and Jamie,
It would have been great to have you there. It wasn’t the same without you.
Rick,
One of the highlights of the event was getting to spend too short a time with you. I look forward to being able to sit down at length next time.
I look forward to blogging about the event this weekend.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Bill: I too would have liked to have spent more time talking. As much as I attempted to move around and never sit in the same spot twice, it was hard to get time with everyone. Still, there was lots of quality time together individually, in small groups and as a whole. Thanks for you guys and gals a Allelon for putting this on. Look forward to the follow-up meetings.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:53 am
The harvest…
I doubt that Rick Meigs overheard me ranting on about the harvest to all and sundry over the last couple of years, so maybe the Spirit really is saying something to the churches ;-)
If the farmer……
October 19th, 2007 at 2:51 am
love this post. absolutely something to share with my local community of jesus followers.
dani, my wife, really loved it as well.
brad
October 27th, 2007 at 3:29 am
[...] of the small group that I was in. During one of the main sessions, he riffed something that was eminently quotable, and a lot of us are indeed quoting [...]