May 15 is the starting gun for gardeners in Columbus, Ohio. An imaginary shot is fired from a starting pistol on this date. What makes May 15 so special?
This date represents the last possible time for a frost. The planting season can now begin. Amateur gardeners like Peggy and myself begin packing nurseries. Flooded with spring-fevered gardeners, our local nursery hires police to direct the traffic!
While standing in line with a cart filled with annuals and perennials, I realized that this nursery was providing plants to hundreds, perhaps thousands of homes in Central Ohio. Nurseries have a simple vision, populate a community with your living plants and then watch them multiply.
My mind drifted to another place of plants that my family had recently visited, the local conservatory or botanical gardens. In a tightly controlled environment, we experienced a tropical rain forest, marveled at the ages of the bonzai trees, and crept up close to savor the orchids. Plants were not for sale in the conservatory. We could only look and smell.
As I guided my cart towards the check out, I asked the question: “Which one should the church be like — a nursery or a botanical garden?” “Should the church be a place to grow and remain in an artificial environment OR should it be growing and sending plants out to the community?” I think you know the answer. The church should be like the nursery.
Christ’s body was conceived to be a “hothouse,” growing believers to be planted in neighborhoods, workplaces and in family networks. Unfortunately, it’s easy to become a conservatory, staying in a building with an artificially controlled setting, calling it “church.” Like the orchids, we enjoy the nurturing shelter of this artificial environment but struggle to live outside in the world. The world is where insiders live.
Jesus is the nursery owner who sends us into the harvest (John 4:34-38), working among the hopeless and hurting (Matthew 9:36-38), sheltered by the Holy Spirit (John 17:15-17), living as insiders on mission (Mark 5:19). He wants to sow in the soil of our neighborhoods, workplaces, and family networks the “good seed” of people’s lives, seeds which yield an eternal harvest (Matthew 13:23).
What is your church like? Is it like the nursery, planting men and women in every corner of the community to bear fruit? Or is it like the conservatory, conserving the lush vegetation in artificial settings? The author Howard Snyder captures this challenge when he observes, “The gospel says ‘Go’ but our church buildings say, ‘Stay.’ The gospel says ‘Seek the lost’ but our churches say ‘Let the lost seek the church.”
For a church to function as a nursery takes hard work. We love to keep our healthy plants. It’s difficult to release them to the cold world outside of our safe fellowship. The evil one will do all that he can to mire a church in congregational politics, building programs, and one more discipleship program. It’s just easier to stay safe in the conservatory. Our Master Gardener calls us to a different standard, “As you sent me to the world, I have sent them to the world” (John 17:18).
May our churches be like nurseries, growing and releasing people to be God’s insiders in neighborhoods, workplaces, family networks, hobby clubs, and public schools — insiders who are Jesus’s gospel carriers. Let the planting season begin!
This is the last posting in the Living the Insider Life series. Look for a new series to begin soon.
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