Sitting In Fertilizer
Feb 11, 2021
Until 100 years ago, the only fertilizer available was animal manure. Farmers across the globe used it generously to increase the yield of their crops. In other words, there was always a moment in the harvest cycle when things got smelly. Have you ever felt like you were stuck in one of those smelly seasons? Have you felt like your church has been sitting in some fertilizer lately? It might not be as bad as it feels.
#JesusStories: In Luke 13, Jesus tells a parable about a tree in a garden that was not producing fruit. The owner of the garden became frustrated and asked the gardener to cut it down. But the gardener appealed to the owner: “Sir, let it alone this year until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that, you can cut it down.” We don’t know the ending to this story precisely because Jesus wanted to focus on the process of turning dormant lives into fruitful lives. He wanted us to know that when we get a shovel full of manure poured all over our lives, it is designed to make us more fruitful. And when our church suddenly find themselves sitting in smelly circumstances, that too is call to prepare for greater fruitfulness.
If this Pandemic has done anything, it has dumped a truck load of issues all over our lives. Shutdowns have led to massive business closures, and heated debates about reopening schools have erupted all around there land. The courts have become filled with charges and counter-charges about orders and regulations. Just this past week alone, two supreme courts have struck down governors’ orders to continue to shutter churches in their States for reason of constitutional overreach. Yes, our governmental leaders at every level have struggled to find balance: Vaccines, no vaccines, masks, double-masks, indoor distancing, outdoors distancing, no church, no more than 25 people in church, and if you go – no singing in church. Yes, the smelly circumstances continue to press in all around us. AND YET, the Lord is doing something important! Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, is using this particular version of manure to ready his people and his Church for an upcoming season of fruitfulness. If we focus on the fertilizer, we will feel hopeless. But if we focus on the forthcoming harvest, we will find our spirits saying, “Lord, do in me and my church what you need to do. We want to be at our best come harvest time.”
#DinnerChurchQuotes: The Great San Francisco earthquake, WWI, the communist revolution in Russia, The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918, and the Great Depression all contributed to the rise of America’s Great Awakening that started at Azusa Street. -Daniel Tomberlin
#PracticalStuff: This is a great time to prepare for the forthcoming harvest by doing dinner Church training with your team and your church family. Might I recommend my book, “Welcome to Dinner Church”, as a training tool. It is a small book that is priced so that a leader can grab one for each of their people, purchase one video companion for the entire group, read one chapter at at time, answer the questions in the back, come together once a week, play a 10-minute segment from the video, and use the remaining 50 minutes for discussion. In this way you can help your people, who were discipled in a traditional church, learn how to become effective at a Jesus Table Church. This is the season to get ready for something great. And if your church has already been delving into training – GET OUT THERE! Even if your State disallows indoor gatherings, set up a canopy tent on the sidewalk and serve up the New Passover from there. Our neighbors are struggling; they need us now.
Blessings & Boldness,
Verlon
Dr. Verlon and Melodee Fosner have led a multi-site Assemblies of God Dinner Church in Seattle, Washington since 1999 (www.CommunityDinners.com). In this decade when more churches in the U.S. are declining than thriving, and when ninety-six churches a week are closing, Verlon and Melodee sensed that a different way of doing church was needed for their 97-year old Seattle congregation. It soon became obvious that they were not the only ones in need of a different path. They joined the FX team in 2016 and founded the Dinner Church Collective. And then in 2019 founded the Dinner Church School of Leadership. There is a lot to be gained when church leaders begin to see open doors in the American landscape that they had previously overlooked. Therein lies the journey for those who will forge a new future for the American Church.
Categories: Uncategorized
02.11.21
By: Josh Gering
What a word picture! I don’t enjoy being fertilized. I don’t like the stink, the waiting and the feeling of having a serious lack of fruit. Thank you for the reminder that it’s in those times that Jesus is preparing me personally and the churches I’m involved in for greater fruit. Sometimes we need to stop and reflect. Are we doing the church things or are we doing the RIGHT things. Lord help us to stop and reflect in the times of fertilization in order to see where we need to grow so more fruit is produced for the Kingdom. No matter how much waiting it takes and how stinky it is!
02.12.21
By: Marion Sortore
Love this! Some of the most beautiful flowers and largest, tastiest fruits, flowers and veggies we have grown have done so because they had lots of farm animal fertilizer! I agree with Josh – I don’t like being fertilized or pruned – but the results are always worth it. For me, it is about finding balance in life during those (these) seasons. Not easy, but oh so necessary so the stink of fertilizer on me doesn’t spill out unintentionally (or intentionally) on someone else.
02.13.21
By: Gifford Claiborneaw
Aw, come on. Talk about Dinner Church. That’s why we’re here. Blessings.
02.17.21
By: Roger Bird
I love this analogy. We live in a semi rural area, and we still have those stinky seasons, so it certainly evokes vivid memories! The prophetic word that we believed we heard from God in January 2020 was, “Wake up”. At the time we could never have predicted the wake up call that we would receive just a few months later…and that’s the lens that I’ve tried to see Covid through, as a catalyst for an awakening rather than just the destruction of the known church.
It also makes me think of the stories I’ve heard of the grape growers in Israel. Not for one year, or two years, but for three full years the grape vine is pruned back to the nub and is not allowed to produce any fruit. Then, in the fourth year, the vine is finally permitted to grow and when it does, it produces enormous bunches of sweet, juicy grapes! Because the gardeners are wise enough to know what it takes to grow good fruit. It makes me realize, though that, in those first three years, that vine has no idea what’s going on, it only knows that it’s small and ugly and unfruitful, and it can’t do what it wants to do. It gives me hope that maybe, right now, we are being pruned and fertilized because our Gardner knows better than we do and wants us to be more fruitful than we could have dreamed.
02.17.21
By: Rodney Martin
When I was a kid I loved helping my uncle on the dairy farm. One of my jobs was scraping the walkway after the cows came into the barn, because it would be covered with fertilizer. You had to be careful while working around the cows or they would fertilize on you, which inevitably was the case because stuff splatters.
Some consider animal waste something that needs to be disposed of. On a healthy farm animal waste is fertilizer that is not wasted. It is spread on the field to provide nutrients for the next season of crops. Without it the soil would die because the crops deplete the ground of nutrients. Today with larger industrial type farms there is too much fertilizer. If too much is spread on a field it also will kill the soil.
God knows how much fertilizer we need at any given time. What the world considers a problem is fertilizer for new opportunities. The quote attributed to Winston Churchill is apt for today “never waste a good crisis”. They smell and splatter across the walkway but are nutrients for tomorrow.
02.19.21
By: Nicole Fike
Yes! We don’t like to get messy. Sometimes that’s exactly what is needed. God sent Jesus into our messy and stinky world. We just need to partner with him in the messiness and be the sent people we are.
02.23.21
By: Shawn Rutan
This reminds me of my time as an Amish taxi driver. As I drove them by a big pile of turkey manure they would always say, “mmm do you smell that?” “It smells like money!” To me, it smelled like rotting flesh. The smell was so bad I would want to vomit. This Pandemic is horrible and frankly, I’m tired of the political, emotional, and mental decay of our nation. I hope the church is in a period of dormancy waiting to spring forth with new fruit and new life. My great hope in all of this is that We The Church can bring the church to our homes
02.24.21
By: Carl Bauchspiess
I live in a very rural part of Wisconsin and am surrounded by fields and dairy farms. When we first got here we were overwhelmed by the smells, especially liquid manure that is literally sprayed over the fields. Well, after 10 years we’re semi-used to it. It is the “fertilizer” that makes our lives. Prior to my first wife’s death, I was not a very empathetic person. my attitude was pretty much “suck it up cupcake, time to move on”. But after that excruciating experience, I can now weep with people who are going through. I know the father didn’t cause my wife’s death to teach me a lesson but He used it. I thank God for the lesson. It seems we don’t learn without the fertilizer.
03.2.21
By: Michael Cox
When I started working with homeless people twenty years ago, I learned about the aroma of Christ. People who are living on the street don’t have regular, consistent access to clean water or showers. I have many fond memories of literally, “changing the atmosphere” in church with my friends from the street. One particular instance that I am quite found of, occurred with a small group I was leading. After sharing about how God was revealing his humanity and divinity to me through the lives of homeless teenagers, someone asked me if “the runaways were smelly”. His attempt at humor was baffling to me. How could a homeless kid that was fleeing physical and sexual abuse be a punchline? My response may have involved the f word that isn’t Father. I have since spent many hours with folks who are “unclean” and have always found Christ to be among them in radical ways. As for funny small group attendees, the fertilizer of Christ always reveals who is full of S! “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? (2 Corinthians 2:15-16).” May we continue to grow and mature in Christ, praising God when it gets stinky!