The Kingdom of God is Like a Farmer…

Jesus told a lot of stories about agriculture and every time He did, I think about an old story told by my extended family, all of whom were farmers. According to them, the story goes like this. A preacher of a rural church was out visiting his congregation when he called on a certain farmer. The farmer was unloading hay from his trailer to the cows gathering around him in the field. As the conversation went on, naturally, the subject of giving to the church came up. The preacher, confident in his point, said to the farmer, “You know, all this land belongs to God.”

“Yep,” the farmer said, “but you should have seen it when God had it all to Himself.”

Nature, while beautiful, requires cultivation to become useful and productive for human use. Churches are the same way. Yes, every church belongs to God and yes, every church, in its way, is beautiful, but they all require a little cultivation to become fully useful to the kingdom of God.

Translate cultivation as hard work.

I’m always surprised at the number of ministers and even long time church members don’t understand how hard local church work can be. There are lots of long hours. Pastors will be at the hospital early in the morning to pray with a member before surgery. They’ll leave the church later that night after a leadership meeting. In between they’ll meet with families, go over the budget numbers and plan the next event with staff. There are multiple disciplines engaged for 6 days a week. (No, Sunday isn’t an off day for pastors). For pastors, like farmers, it’s early to bed and early to rise. Get up. Work the field and get up the next day and do it all over again.

And like farmers, there’s a lot of the work that’s out of the pastor’s control. The farmer can’t control the weather. They’re either praying for more rain or praying for the rain to stop before it floods the lower pastures. They need more sunshine or they need a break from the heat. They pull the stones out of the fields, plow the fields, plant the seed, weed and water…and wait. The local pastor works with their people, preaching sermons and teaching the Bible stories. They work with members helping them understand how the truths of the Bible apply to their actual living. Then, like the farmers, we wait on the harvest, never sure if the harvest will come at all.

Contrary to popular understanding, work was never part of the curse. It was work without meaning that haunted Adam and all of us who followed. In Genesis 2, God places Adam in the garden to work it and tend to it. Work was always part of the plan. Most of us know the satisfaction of tackling a problem and after our work, seeing a useful project come to completion. It’s in those moments we join God is His creative work of bringing order and beauty out of chaos.

And it’s hard work. Being the pastor of a local church is a lot of work. We should not only understand this, we should embrace it. The shaping of people’s souls doesn’t come easily. Growing men and women of character and faith just doesn’t happen. There’s intent. There’s effort. There’s prayer and broken hearts. This is the life of a farmer. This is the life of the pastor.

The only thing we control in all of this is whether or not we show up. Did it rain? Doesn’t matter. We still have to get to the field. Did anyone come to Christ? Yes or no, we still have to show up to the church and do the work. No matter the weather, no matter the season, we still have to show up and do the work. It’s not that we believe everything rests on our efforts. Of course it doesn’t. Only God Himself can do the works of God. My point is when we pray to God to bless our work, let’s give Him something to bless.

For the farmer, there are no parades or trophies, just the joy of the harvest. For pastors, there are no parades or commemorations, just the joy of the harvest. Which brings me to another story. This one is about a very rich man who hired a landscaper to install a very expensive and expansive garden. The owner was insistent on one thing – that the garden required very little tending and maintenance. Every time the landscaper suggested a particular plant, the owner would nix the idea claiming that was too much work. Finally, the landscaper said to the owner, “If there’s no gardener, there’s no garden.”

The field will not plant itself. The weeds won’t pull themselves and the harvest won’t put itself in the barn. If there’s going to be a garden, someone has to do the work.

It doesn’t really matter about the weather or anything else we can’t control. Today, it only matters that we get to the field. For pastors, like farmers, the work is never done. We’re not in control of very much, but we are in charge of whether or not we show up. If there's going to be a garden, the gardener has to show up.

This essay was first posted in Scot McKnight’s newsletter.