Can you cause a person to grow spiritually? When it comes to disciple making, what is our responsibility? At a Greenhouse Training event hosted by CMA Resources, we examined the following text from Mark 4:
26 He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”
From the text, we see that a farmer can cultivate the ground and plant seeds, and even put the sickle to the plant once mature, but can do nothing to cause a seed to grow! In simple/organic church planting, the church planter (or disciplemaker) cultivates and plants, but realized that Kingdom growth is God’s work.
When we plant good seed in good soil, growth and multiplication naturally happen as they receive rain and sunlight. This is true of plants and it’s true of the Kingdom as well. The only thing that can stop this natural process is failure to sow good seed generously on good soil or farming in such as way to impede the natural process that God has in place.
At the Greenhouse training, the leaders made the following comparison between an organic/simple church approach and a traditional church approach to sowing, growing, and harvesting.
| Cultivating | Sowing | Growing | Tending | Harvesting | |
| Institutional Approach | Passive | Passive | Active | Active | Passive |
| Organic Approach | Active | Active | Passive | Passive | Active |
Do you agree that the traditional church focuses most of its energies on growing and tending the garden (flock) while being passive with regards to sowing and harvesting? What would it look like for you to cultivate and sow good seed more generously? What does it mean for us to be actively involved in the harvesting—putting a sickle to the “ripe plant?”
Enjoy this great video that was at the greenhouse training event to illustrate the teaching on the Kingdom.
6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. – 1 Corinthians 3:6
To learn more about attending a Greenhouse Training event visit www.cmaresources.org/greenhouse
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Originally posted on Kentucky Simple Church Alliance – here
We can learn much by comparing the results of the communist revolution in Russia with that in China. Both were bloody revolutions that attempted militarily to snuff out all opposition, close down all churches, remove all missionaries and incarcerate all of the church leaders.