By Laurie D. Kennedy January 3/2021
Every farmer and business owner understands input leads to output. My agricultural friends plant seeds, fertilize and harvest their crop. My business owner friends buy and sell a product or deliver a service to customers. The concept is simple, complex, correct and scriptural. Let’s personalize it. The quality of results you and I produce or achieve at home, work or church are related to each of our prayerful contributions.
“By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” (Matthew 7:16-20 NIV)
If you want a specific fruit, you plant those seeds, fertilize and harvest the crop.
What seeds are planted by your church? Do you plant seeds of community service? Do you plant seeds of evangelism? Do you plant seeds of missions? Do you encourage the fruit toward harvest? Do you plant seeds the same way you have always done it?
“He told another story. God’s kingdom is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. That night, while his hired men were asleep, his enemy sowed thistles all through the wheat and slipped away before dawn. When the first green shoots appeared and the grain began to form, the thistles showed up, too.” (Matthew 13:24-26 MSG)
We as individual leaders and collectively as a church or mission need to decide what fruit God is expecting from us. Then, we need to plant seeds (evangelize) to harvest God’s fruit.
Leadership is … remembering our churches are judged by the fruit produced.
Yours in Service,
Laurie D. Kennedy