Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed.  As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.  Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.  But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.  Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.  Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 13: 3-9)

Oh no, we can’t do that.  We tried that in 1969 and it didn’t work.  (Church Boards everywhere).

I had a boss, quite some years ago that was on his way to retirement.  We all thought he needed to go; he had a whole career in one place and basically seemed to have coasted for the past decade.  Don’t get me wrong, he was easy to work for.  He never interfered with what I was doing.  In fact, I’m not sure he even knew what I was doing.  But he was kindly and friendly whenever I had a conversation with him. 

One time, over lunch, we were chatting about his upcoming retirement and what his career was like, and I was giving him a run down about the new and innovative work that I was doing.  He grinned at me and said, “yeah, we did that back in the 70s”.

“Because you know, Lynne, if you stand still long enough everything comes around full circle and once again you find yourself on the leading edge”. 

I was kind of offended at this.  I was a progressive, forward-thinking staff member.  What I was doing was not repackaged old ideas.  Or so I thought.  Because when I delved into things it turned out that it was repackaged old ideas.  And so the whole thing got me questioning the effectiveness of what I was doing. 

But what I was doing was effective.  And frankly, it was effective 30 years earlier.  So were other programs that once were ‘new’ and ‘innovative’ but then got abandoned for something else that was ‘new’ and ‘innovative’. 

Our church – the Global Christian Church,  is going through what some of my colleagues have termed ‘a crisis’.  Church adherence is way down.  The differences between Protestant denominations seem to be widening into a gulf that is no longer bridgeable.  Many mainstream denominations are planning for closure and the ends of their worshiping communities; with ‘palliative care for the church’ being a term that ministry personnel are using far more frequently.  Other worshiping communities are feverishly planning ‘new and innovative’ ways that they can get together in a feverish attempt to regain relevance and, well, maybe, credibility?  But when you look realistically at their plans, it mostly seems to be around ‘cooperative’ ministries or ‘ministry clusters’, begging us to look back 100 years ago to the world of circuit riders.  Other faith communities are regrouping into smaller home venues; calling themselves ‘house churches;.  And yes, this was another well established model of doing church from wayyyyy back to, well, St. Paul’s time. 

And all of this leaves me wondering; what if we’ve completely got this wrong? 

What if God’s plan is that the corporate church actually dissolve?

 Phyllis Tickle, in her 2012 book The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why  looks back on 2000 years of church history and suggests that what’s happening right now is something that happens every 500 years or so, and is a necessary thing in order to birth a new way of being.  She talks about it like it’s a Giant Church Rummage sale; where we get rid of all of the old stuff that isn’t working so that we can make room for the new.  Until the next 500 years!  She then lays out the gradual steps leading up to this current Rummage sale, including the influences and effects of Darwin, Freud, Einstein, the automobile, and technological advances and then sets her sights on where we’re going, leaving us with a vision of an exciting future for the Church.

 I like what she has to say, because it brings meaning to all of the insecurity and chaos that all of us experience in our church life.  I also like that she really believes there is a future to the church; a different future than we thought we had growing up, but a future nonetheless. 

Which brings me to the Parable of the Sower (yeah, I could hear you all saying “did she just put those verses at the top to take up space or to remind us that she’s the minister?’).  Because, you see, the parable of the sower just begins with the farmer sowing seed.  Every where.  It doesn’t matter to the farmer where the seed lands, it just gets sowed.  And of course, some of it germinates, but some of it doesn’t.  Some of it grows, but then, it doesn’t.  Some of it grows with other things that take over, and then it dies. 

But the farmer just sows the seeds. 

And I wonder, maybe in this parable, that we are actually the sower.  I know that the traditional interpretation is that God is the Sower, and that makes a lot of sense, but I wonder too, if we need to be in the business of sowing things just like God.  Sowing things regardless of whether or not we think its going to take.  Planning and doing, just because it’s the right thing to do at this time; and some of it will be good and last through the Rummage Sale, and some of it won’t. 

Because, that’s where hope is.  Hope isn’t in whether or not things work.  Hope is in the sowing; or the trying of things to make it work.  Even if its just a repackaging of old ideas. 

Come, Sow some seeds with me my Bethel Friends.  We may be surprised at what crops up.

Blessings Today and Remember you are Loved,

~Rev. Lynne