We are in the midst of full blown gardening season. I spent the entirety of the Memorial Day weekend preparing the garden to be planted. This year that work was a lot more intense than it has been in the past.
You see, I’d bought these raised garden beds a few years ago. They were warrantied for 5 years and were said to be built to last. Let me tell you what, they were not. But I worked very hard putting them together. Last year, I modified a couple of them to make them work through the summer.
But this summer, the inevitable happened. They were too damaged and too worn for me to be able to plant in them and expect an abundance to bloom. So the kids and I trucked along this weekend, replacing garden beds with more durable ones, shoveling dirt from an old bed to a new bed. Tilling the beds that were staying, and watering (aka soaking as Parker would say) the garden beds that were completed so they’d be prepared to receive seeds.
There’s a lot that goes into gardening. And there’s a lot that goes into a growing a church.
Change is one of the hardest things in churches. We like the old things, we like those things that we’ve clung on to that might not be working anymore, that might be broken or worn down. And it takes a considerable amount of effort and time and intention when it comes to changing them.
Just ask my back after all the shoveling this weekend!
But the thing is, if we want to thrive, if we want to grow into the next season and be around in the next year, if we want to have an abundance, we have to make those changes and transformations.
And that doesn’t mean this is going to be pretty or easy. My garden was in complete disarray before it started to actually look like a garden again. And I imagine it’ll look very similar for us as we continue evaluate where we’re at, where we want to be, and where we’re going.
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