Fruitlessness can look deceptively healthy. In fact, being unfruitful can all too easily be championed as a sign of maturity. Lack of fruit is discipleship gone bad, but it easily ensnares us.
Parable of the Sower
“And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.” (Mark 4: 18-19)
Notice that the unfruitful outcome of the thorns is in contrast to the death that happens with seeds that fell on the path or in the rocky soil. The seeds among the thorns are actually healthy plants, and apparently do not even die. They are unfruitful.
Notice the lurking danger here. The plants have the appearance of living, maybe even thriving amidst the competition with the thorns. Yet, the plants are rendered unfruitful, they are not serving out their God intended purpose.
Satisfied with Unfruitful
All too often, I fear that we are complacent with unfruitfulness. As a local church, we can point to ways that we have the appearance of growth. The growth can be “spiritual growth” or “numerical growth” – and it is used as a justification for whatever we are doing. Yet, the parable of the sower points out that we can actually be distracted from the Word even when we look like we are growing.
Think about this in terms of discipleship. We can point out how we are growing as disciples, either individually or corporately as a church. Yet, is the growth yielding fruitfulness? Are we living as disciple-makers, yielding fruit beyond our own personal growth?
A truncated view of discipleship looks only at growth—my growth as a disciple. If there is not a parallel to fruitfulness that goes beyond me, there is a good chance that I am captured in weeds.
Perhaps my church is caught in the weeds of keeping programs going, doing all the good things that other local churches are doing, or launching every latest initiative that has been on our favorite Christian blog. We can get wrapped up in too much.
Focus
One of the keys for church revitalization is focusing on our discipleship process. Our SDB Pulse process provides tools to detangle ourselves from weeds that choke out fruitfulness. We might even look healthy, but realize that there are thorns robbing our church of fruitfully advancing God’s Kingdom.
Blessings as we join together to identify weeds and thorns, while celebrating the fruitfulness of authentic discipleship in our churches.
— For an example of how thorns can be seen in church vision that is inconsistent with God’s vision, see Disability and the Church (2021) by Lamar Hardwick, p. 158-9.
