Patience for the simple ways that work
This post is from the defunct blog “Dying Church”
Cerulean Sanctum on the problem with technological solutions to organic problems:
Our churches launch some guaranteed program backed by the slickest marketing and the best sound bites from the hottest church leaders and we hope and hope. A couple years later, that program stands forgotten. Sure, it was billed as the pesticide for whatever plagued us, but it wasn't God's way, was it? No fruit.
It's all about the fruit. If all our work produces no fruit, then we're just being wasteful. Sadly, that's what a lot of churches are doing, just wasting time, money, resources, and people's patience.
I think our problems with patience underlie the greater issue here. Yes, people get upset when the newfangled program bears no fruit, but it was sterile from the get-go. What people need is patience for the simple ways that work, the real discipleships that spans decades, not months. You try too hard to rush the fruit and you wind up with tasteless fruit. Think your typical grocery store here. Sure, you bought a package of mass-produced, industrial-strength strawberries. But they taste more like straw than berries.
We may be doing the same with our disciplemaking process. Better to go local, go organic, be patient with the old ways that served us for eons—even when it comes to making disciples.
God knows we have enough spiritual pests out there, but we can’t poison our young “plants” in our attempts to kill the weeds or wipe out the bugs.
