With the coming of Spring, and the new growth we see all around us, we are again given hope that what once appeared dead still has the potential for new life within it. Part of my springtime ritual is getting out in the garden early in April to cultivate the soil in preparation for a new growing season, and it is one of my favorite tasks in the annual gardening cycle. There’s not much that is more satisfying for a gardener than seeing freshly tilled soil ready for planting. Our daughters are inevitably drawn to walk barefoot in the freshly turned soil. The sensation of sinking their feet into the soft soil almost makes their assigned task of picking rocks out of the soil enjoyable. (That and the dollar-a-bucket they earn by doing so.)

            The rock-picking is an ongoing necessity in our garden to keep it easily tillable. There are other forces that affect the soil through the year that make continued cultivation necessary as well. The rains come, followed by hot sun that bakes the once-soft clayish soil into a hard crust. The pesky weeds that grow as fast as the crops become hard to pull as the soil hardens, so mid-season cultivation becomes a needed task in order to keep the garden a fertile environment to enable a fruitful harvest of produce. A garden can have decent soil, yet if ignored won’t have near the capacity for fruitfulness as it would if properly cultivated.

            By now you may be saying, this is a nice essay about gardening, but what does this have to do with church? Well, I believe there are clear analogies here for us as we consider how to be fruitful for God’s kingdom. The environment in our community of faith must be tended in order for the optimum conditions for growth to be present. A healthy community doesn’t just happen any more than a garden’s soil will yield the optimum harvest without attention to its cultivation. To enable growth, maturity and fruitfulness within the church, we must be intentional and consistent with our efforts. We must stave off weeds and keep the soil aerated for openness to the refreshing water of God’s spirit.

            Over the next several months, our Sunday messages will focus on the fruits of the Spirit. This series will not only focus though on how an individual should display this fruit, but also on how to cultivate the environment within our faith community to enable our lives and witness to be fruitful. I will be drawing on the book Life On The Vine by Phil Kenneson as one of my resources in preparation.*   What makes this book stand out from the many other books on the fruit of the Spirit is his insightful analysis of our culture and the forces in it that fight against our fruitfulness. He identifies the “rocks” in our societal soil that make it hard to cultivate a good growing environment and suggests practices the Christian community can use to restore our soil’s fertility.

I look forward to discussing these ideas as a body in the months ahead. It is only in acknowledging that there are rocks present and that the soil has become crusty that we are motivated to work at cultivating it into the kind of place we are drawn to walk in… to sink our feet into. It is through creating such an inviting environment that persons are drawn into the Kingdom way of life, and that their true life is found.

May we commit ourselves to cultivation, and may we cultivate rich soil.

Pastor Carl  

* I would encourage those of you who are looking for a good book to read to get it and read along for extra benefit. I am ordering a few copies that you can purchase from the church office for $10.00 each. We’ll also place one in the library for loan.