We are very nearly at the end of our second year together working on the ‘garden’ of our church. (Can you believe that?) During this time we have killed big weeds (our mortgage arrearage), nurtured and given life to two beautiful plants (our Kid’s Church and Youth Group), and seen the revival of a plant that we feared was dead (our choir). The garden of our church is looking better.

But, sometimes what happens with our gardens is, once they’ve been improved, we start to ignore them again. It’s like we figure that the work is done, so now we caan quit working on our garden. But then, what starts to happen? Of sourse what happens is that the weeds begin to grow again, and if we don’t stay vigilant, they’ll soon take over our church again. You can’t just take care of a garden once, and then expect that you can just forget about it.

And yes, we do have some weeds to take care of. Since the first of the year, we’ve only had seven families visit our church for the first time. Why is that a weed? Because if we don’t make an effort to bring in new people, just like our garden at home without new plants, our garden will die. We constantly need to introduce new plants into our garden to make it beautiful, strong and healthy.

Another weed that needs our attention is leadership. We’ve got great leaders, but some of them are getting worn out, and a church without leaders is dead already. New leaders, like new plants, must be planted and encouraged to grow. This means that all of us, but especially our present leaders, need to constantly look for new leaders whom they can in turn nurture.

So, let us continue to attend to our garden of a church. Let’s work on the weeds and encourage the new plants. We can’t turn our back on it and expect it to be a healthy garden without any effort on our part. Together, we must love it, cherish it, and tend it.

I’ll see YOU in church.

-Roy