Where Are You Planting Your Presence?
Good Morning Friends,
Today we look at a prayer from Paul about how the manifestation, charisma and authority of God the Father, through Jesus, gives all good things. And then we meditate on a passage from Luke how the Word is multiplied through those who have this abiding love. So, friends, today’s devotional is about sowing seeds in the Spirit and facing the greatest threat of the Church. For it is not secularism or militant atheism or a lack of respect or even violent attacks that is our greatest threat. Nor even Satan. Perhaps it is our collective lack of conviction to cultivate new Christians while not falling prey to false teaching. Where Are You Planting Your Presence?
Scripture: In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
1 Timothy 6:13-16 (NRSV)
When a great crowd gathered and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: “A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold.” As he said this, he called out, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand.’ “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing fall away. As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.
Luke 8:4-15 (NRSV)
Message: There is a lot of talk about church planting in some but not all circles of believers. Most of the focus is on cities and areas of population growth. But we may be forgetting our rural roots. We do not like to talk about our failures. But we can learn from them. I have over the years participated in several para church movements and the establishment of four Presbyterian Churches and a Presbyterian mission outreach in Southwest Florida and frankly am batting 500 with maybe some extra credit for the mission outreach. And I guess this is all right in baseball but maybe not so great in church planting. It is like what is happening in the parable of the sower. The reality is that it is a tilling in hard soil for establish institutions to birth new groups. However, maybe a new congregation with a new people group can be planted within the overall structure of an existing church. Maybe a new Sunday service at another time, or a new network of house churches that are connected to a larger relationship could benefit an already existing congregation in sowing the Gospel. However, we must remember that the existing institutional needs and new needs of prospective members will determine the dynamics of any capacity building. The problem is that Presbyterians, as an example, typically do not convert new Christians but more typically recycle existing one. Oh, we do serve a purpose in a mainline church but the science of it all suggests that a new congregation empowers new converts much more quickly and readily than can older churches. This may have happened when a Pastor left the Presbyterian Church where I was baptized to start his own expression of church. I do not typically support this abandonment of our roots, as a rule, but it does instruct that such a design might reach others with greater facility than long-established institutions. Still I believe that new designs always have and always will, reach new converts with greater facility than long-established bodies can. So, as we have been reading through 1 Timothy, we can see the threats facing the church and the challenge of this line of thinking. Paul constantly charges Timothy to confront the threat posed by false teaching, by poor leadership, disunity, and of the community failing to care for itself. Paul often refers to the threat posed by Satan prowling around and looking to choke off new growth. But, the truth is, the greatest danger comes from within. The greatest danger is that we allow any of these other things to distract us from the truth. The greatest danger facing the church is that we lose our focus on what counts, that we fail to keep a firm grip on our faith that God is in control and we are not.
Pray we think of creative new ways to be the church in community while not forgetting our roots. Pray we realize that some dynamics will make it difficult for the church to grow. Pray we sow seeds of faith anyway. Pray we are not rootless. Pray we are patient. Pray we save what we love. Pray we develop the capacity to live out our faith focused on the future promise of eternal life with Christ. Pray we energetically and consistently strive to increase the number of believers.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 