Growth v.s. Fruit

I'm looking out my window, staring at my garden.  Some of it is still under piles of snow.  Some of it is mud.  Nothing is yet growing that I can see... but I know that underneath the dirt, life is stirring.

I wonder what has survived the winter.  What will grow this year.  What will flower.  What will bear fruit.

We've planted a number of things that we hope - someday - will give us a bountiful harvest.  Raspberry & blueberry bushes, apple & plum trees.  Two years ago we had lots of raspberries.  Last year the plants grew like crazy... but we had little fruit.

Something I've learned in the garden:  growth and fruit are not the same thing.  Plants can have great growing years... but that doesn't equate to a great harvest.

Friday morning I was on a call with a group of church planters.  We all have felt the pressure (at one point or another) to plant "successful" churches.  It was after this call I realized something:  "success" for most of us has been defined in terms of growth not fruit.  But growth is the wrong definition of success.

If our raspberry bushes grew like crazy and took over the yard (it could happen easily), but they never gave us raspberries, would I consider them "successful"?  No.  I'd consider them kindling for a bonfire!

Jesus told us we are called to go and "bear fruit."

The fruit of a tree or a bush has a purpose:  reproduction.  In every apple is many seeds to make many more apple trees.  If an apple tree is bearing many apples, then it has fruit to reproduce itself thousands of times over.  If our people and our churches were truly "fruitful" than we would be growing and multiplying devoted followers of Jesus.  People would experience a transformed life, and then would go share that transformed life with many others, who would be transformed, and would then go and share that transformed life with many others, who would be transformed, and would then...

You get the idea.

Note to self:  look for places where Jesus' life and Spirit and mission is multiplied.  That is success.  And the rest?  If it never multiplies, no matter how much it grows?  Kindling for the bonfire...