A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
14 January 2024
Mark 4.1-34
One of the slightly odd things about Mark’s gospel,
is that Jesus is often described as a teacher,
but doesn’t actually do much teaching.
Indeed, scholars suggest that this is one of the main motivations
behind Matthew and Luke’s re-writings of Marks gospel
- to add in the missing teaching.
But Mark is not entirely devoid of Jesus’ teaching,
and in today’s readings we meet some of his most famous parables:
the sower, the lamp,
the scattered seed, and the mustard seed.
However, we also get the rather strange saying,
which is actually a quote from the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 6.9-10),
where Jesus says that he uses parables
not in order to explain the kingdom of heaven,
but to conceal and confuse it.
And this is very interesting,
because it seems that Jesus didn’t see his use of parables
as the answer to the question
of how best to communicate his message
Jesus didn’t see parables
as the solution to the problem
of a world which doesn’t want to hear his message.
And, contrary to what some of us were told in Sunday School,
he didn’t use parables as pithy sound-bites,
cunningly designed to get his point across in thirty seconds or less.
Rather, for Jesus and, we might suspect, for the readers of Mark’s gospel,
the parables encapsulated the problem of communicating the Gospel
in a world which can often seem wilfully ignorant or actively hostile
to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The reality, which I’m sure many of us can relate to,
is that whilst those who already have a faith-relationship with God
will find the faith-world created by parables compelling,
those who don’t read these stories through the lens of faith
remain blind and deaf to their challenge.
There is a strange paradox here,
which is that the Kingdom of heaven is revealed
precisely where it is most hidden.
The New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham
captures this enigma in his comment that,
“The Spirit who inspired the Scripture
also inspires its believing readers
to accept it as God’s message
and to understand it.” [1]
Parables, it seems, are not teaching that explains the Kingdom,
but rather they are stories that embody it,
and which invite participation rather than understanding.
Anyway, let me tell you a story, or possibly a parable.
Some school children went on a field trip from the city to the country,
and their teacher was showing them natural environment.
She spotted four plants - one, a tiny new plant
- two, a shrub about a year old
- three, quite a large bush
- and four, a small tree.
The teacher invited one of the larger boys to try and uproot them
He succeeded easily on first one,
the second took more effort,
the third was really difficult,
and the fourth could not be moved: it was too deeply rooted
The lesson the teacher was trying to put across
is that the strength of the tree
came not from what was going on above ground
it’s increased size there actually gave the child more to hold onto
but rather the strength came
from what was going on below the ground
the growth in the root system
was what protected the tree from being uprooted.
The smaller plants were vulnerable to being uprooted
but given enough time
they too would have grown to enough of a size
to withstand the child’s attempts to uproot them
Well, this morning, we’re going to be thinking about growth
and seeing what truths we can hear
from Jesus’ story of seeds growing into plants.
The context here is the values, vision, and mission statements,
that we worked on as a congregation a few years ago;
and the metaphor we worked with as we arrived at these,
was that of the church as a tree,
deeply rooted in its values
held strong by its vision,
and bearing the active fruit of its mission.
I think that probably most people who come to church
would be in agreement that church growth
is, in principle at least, a good thing.
What is not so clear-cut, however,
is how to go about growing a church.
Mostly, I suspect, we tend to think of church growth
in terms of numerical growth
the “bums on seats” type of growth.
Because this is the kind of growth that we can most easily understand,
and something we can see and measure.
I mean, we know the capacity of our building,
and we know how many people are here today,
and we can clearly see where there is room for more people to sit.
However, simply linking church growth with numerical growth
without also emphasising the need for healthy growth
is a recipe for disaster
Unless there is strong, healthy growth
which will often be hidden like the roots of the tree
then when the strong winds of adversity come along
the church is in danger of being uprooted
Simply growing numerically,
without a corresponding quality of growth below the surface
is a recipe for a boom-and-bust revivalist approach to church growth.
For a long time now,
the Western world we live in has thought
predominantly in mechanical and scientific terms,
influenced by the enlightenment and the industrial revolution.
And the church in our country
has been greatly affected by this kind of mechanical
and scientific thinking,
applying the rational reasoning of cause and effect,
to issues such as church growth.
An example of this mechanical way of thinking
is found in our approach to methods of evangelism.
We hear about a church which has been claiming amazing successes
with a particular method of evangelism
which they have discovered and developed
We then hear that a few more churches have tried it
and they are claiming it has worked very well for them
So we conclude that this programme must therefore work
in every church
and that every church should put it into practise
The problem of course,
is that what is right in one type of church
might be completely wrong in another.
But when we try something new
and it doesn’t work as well as we had hoped it would
we can get very disillusioned
and convince ourselves that the fault must be ours
Much of the time, the way churches plan for church growth
is a bit like making a toy robot
Think about it for a moment
all the pieces arrive together on the conveyor belt
and are all assembled according to a fixed plan
All the end products, the toy robots, are identical
and all of them work in the same way
doing what they are programmed to do.
And this is just fine – if we are making toy robots
Factories are great for making things to design.
But this is not a model we can transfer successfully
to the growth of a church.
If we try, we will fail
Churches cannot be made on a production line
where you pop in the right ingredients
sing the right songs
run the right courses
do this, do that, do the other
and hey presto you’ve got a growing church
Things are more complicated than this.
Consider a different picture…
When a child is conceived
the beginning is a single cell which begins to divide
The one cell becomes two, then four, then eight…
and at this stage the end result could be anything
because this process of cellular division
takes place for every living thing.
However, as the embryo develops
the different cells take on different functions
and it becomes clear
that this is a new human being in development.
The result is an extremely complex living organism,
and no two human beings are the same…
with even identical twins
who come from the same initial cell
developing differently after the point of conception
The result of this process of division is growth
natural growth, which takes place all by itself.
It happens first in the womb, and then, after the birth
it continues through childhood and into maturity.
Things grow by very different mechanisms
to the way things are made.
And churches are grown, not manufactured.
They are grown by God
not made by humans.
The church is not the end result of a human production line
where we bolt the right bits together to make a church.
It is not a franchise, with a common logo and brand loyalty.
Rather it is grown by God,
and as the parable of nature tells us,
each created being grows differently.
Like the infinite uniqueness of snowflakes,
so with people, plants, and churches.
Our modern western culture
has largely become divorced from the world of agriculture
And for those of us who live in cities
food comes from the supermarket
not from the field or the cow.
The way we think is so informed
by the industrial and scientific revolution
that our thought process are not tuned into thinking
about the natural process of growth
which Jesus uses as a parable for the kingdom.
When Jesus spoke and taught about growth
he used simple, natural terms
which were familiar to his audience
Think of the parable of the seeds from our reading earlier (4:26-29)
In this story, Jesus compares the kingdom of God
with a farmer scattering seed on the ground
Once the seed was sown, what happened next, the growth,
took place all by itself until the harvest arrived.
Of course, the farmer had done all he could do in the preparation of the soil
and in the careful sowing of the seed,
But the growth came from God.
The farmer could not bring about growth
all he could do was to remove as many obstacles
to growth as possible
There is a partnership between farmer and soil,
where the harvest is the result of God-given growth,
and the farmer’s careful preparation.
And church growth is always also going to be a partnership
as we become co-workers with God.
Yet so often we still try and understand church growth
as if it was a production line.
Christians persist in trying to take mechanical or scientific models
and apply them to the church
as if the church were a machine not an organism.
But Jesus’ way of describing growth
encourages us to think in terms of seed, fruit, harvest,
and God-given growth.
Such growth will take place most effectively
when we play our part in preparation
and in the removal of the obstacles to growth,
whilst allowing God to play his part
in bringing growth, health, fruit, and harvest
The farmer of Jesus’ story has to work in partnership with God
and we in the church must work in the same sort of partnership:
we are God’s co-workers.
This way of thinking about church growth
as a natural process in which God does the growing
can be really useful to us
as we understand the things we do and are when we are together
So I’d like to draw out four principles from this,
as we consider our church, here at Bloomsbury.
1. We are dependent on each other
The church of Jesus Christ is a complex organism
with its many parts interrelating with each other.
Where Jesus uses the parable of a plant,
Paul uses the comparable analogy of the human body,
noting that it is made up from many different parts
each of which has an essential role to play
in the healthy functioning of the whole.
So with us: each of us is dependent on the others
and when one of us suffers, we all suffer;
when one of us is honoured, we are all honoured.
If we have weak roots, the plant will be easily uprooted,
if neglect the leaves, the plant will die.
However, a positive outcome of the dependency we have on one another
is that the sum of the parts
is greater than the individual parts on their own.
The person who thinks they don’t need the rest of the church
is sadly mistaken.
And the church that thinks it can do without certain members,
is similarly misguided.
We all need one another
and it is only together than we make up the living organism
that is the church of Jesus Christ.
So we must invest in forming meaningful relationships with each other,
getting to know each other,
forging friendships across the boundaries that might divide us.
We will be coming back to this conversation
about relationship building for growth and strength,
at our church meeting this afternoon.
2. Multiplication is Normal natural process
If we are thinking naturally about our church
we must recognise that an unlimited increase in size
is just not normal.
Every form of organic life
has an ideal size,
and at some point,
reaches its natural limit.
No plant or animal increases in size indefinitely.
In the plant world, some trees live for centuries
while other plants last only a few days,
Some grow to be huge,
whilst others stay small.
But always, eventually, the cycle reaches its end;
and everything eventually dies
However, plants do so much more than just live and die:
they produce many more of their species along the way.
A plant’s mission is not to permanently increase in size,
it is to create new plants before it dies.
Sometimes the lifespan can be very long,
at others very short,
but the cycle is always the same.
In the animal world the same principle is at work
a maximum size is reached, and then reproduction begins.
In humans we grow healthily up
until we reach a height limit during our teenage years,
And then for some of us, less healthy growth continues
– it just becomes outwards rather than upwards!
But the injunction from God to Adam and Eve
was to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ (Genesis 9.7),
in accordance with the natural way of things.
And Jesus applies the same approach to his kingdom:
multiplication is built into its natural life.
Continual unchecked numerical growth of a single congregation
should not be expected.
Unconstrained cell division is not growth,
it is cancer.
Which leads me to observe that
death, as a normal part of life, is to be expected
Some aspects of the ministry of a church will come to an end
and their completion should be celebrated.
There will be things that were great in their time
but whose time has ended.
Sometimes a church itself will die
and this is to be expected
it is a normal part of life
Also, it is not enough to continually increase in size
A tree is not designed to get bigger indefinitely
it is designed to produce more trees
which in turn will produce even more.
It is impossible to predict the life cycle of an individual church
Bloomsbury will be 176 years old this year, and is still going.
But there is a life-cycle
And I would also observe that
the ultimate fruit of an apple tree is not an apple!
It is the new tree that grows from the apple seed
The apple is an important stage in the process
but it is not the end.
Similarly in church life, the ultimate fruit is not a large church,
it is the growth of the kingdom of God in the world,
beyond the border and boundary of any individual congregation.
And so, different ministries within a church work in just the same way
The true fruit of a leader is not a follower
but another leader.
And the true fruit of a disciple is not a convert,
but another disciple.
3. All Energy Should be Transformed
There are two distinct ways to deal with the forces of nature
The first is to be like a boxer
who uses all his strength to combat his foe
strength against strength
with the strongest winning
The alternative is used in Judo
where someone who is much weaker physically
brings down the strong man
by using the strong man’s own strength against him.
The difference in these two is that
instead of seeking to destroy the natural forces
at work in our church
by using a counter-force,
we can learn to harness what is already there
and turn it into something different.
This is the principle of levers
where a small force is able to prise something much greater
because a lever is used.
The crew of a yacht can use the force of the wind
to go wherever they want
even into the wind by tacking backwards and forwards
The wind can be very destructive
but the sail of the yacht takes that force
and turns it into forward motion
Too often church life has been governed
by the boxer mentality
when problems arise,
force is used to overcome them
and great energy is expended in the process.
There has to be a better way,
and natural thinking enables us to discover
that every form of energy can be productive
It may take some inventive ways of thinking,
and much prayer,
but God causes all things to work together for good.
I have a deep conviction God is at work even through the worst of times,
to bring new good fruit into being in the world.
God never gives up on us,
and is always loving us back to life.
So we must always remind ourselves of the need
to use the energy of the environment around us,
rather than fighting against it.
Storms will come, threats will arise,
and our task, like the crew of the yacht,
is to discern the winds of change, and harness them
to keep us moving towards our goal.
Sometimes we might get to a point
where the people who are involved are tired
and there just don’t seem to be enough workers to go around.
And one answer to this may be that sometimes we need to do less,
to allow a particular aspect of the church’s ministry to die well,
and celebrate its passing with thanksgiving.
But it also raises the question for us
of whether we are using the wrong people in the wrong roles.
Sometimes, people take on a job in church life,
and then they get stuck in it
for years after they would rather have moved
onto something else
And in the meantime, they are blocking others
who would like to get involved
but don’t realise there’s a need
This is why we need to be continually investing in relationships,
working hard to ensure that everyone is included,
whether first-time in the building, or part of the furniture!
We need to ensure that we use our energies wisely
doing things that we are gifted in doing and called to do,
rather than forcing ourselves into doing things
that are completely outside our vocation.
If we can ensure that we are using our strengths wisely
then the church will be like the judo expert
who uses the strengths around them to their advantage
Rather than like the boxer
who makes heavy work out of every battle.
4. God made us to be fruitful
In the natural world
nothing is an end in itself:
everything always has a specific function
God has created all living things to bear fruit
and where there is no fruit, something is decidedly wrong
because fruit is essential to preserve the species.
Fruit is also clearly visible:
The reason apple taste so nice
is so they will attract those animals that will take the seeds
and spread them so that another tree will grow.
If all natural life is characterised
by its ability to bear fruit
the church must be seen in the same way
So the quality of a congregation
can be checked by looking for the fruit,
not simply the number of people attending.
The difficulty in churches
is that when activities are begun
they have an important function,
which is why they were started!
But as time passes and matters change
that function is not always updated
The result is that, unless the purpose of the activity itself
is regularly updated
it can become no longer relevant to the present day church.
Similarly, some things in the church
have never fulfilled their true function
because they were never designed to be fruitful.
It’s all too easy for us to envisage our activities and programmes
by criteria other than the principle of fruitfulness.
Tradition and fear of change are two important factors
in holding us back from making
what might be necessary decisions.
Much of what the church does today is based on tradition
even a so-called ‘free church’ like ours!
And it may be that for some of what we do
the reason is no longer there for doing it
but we carry on doing it anyway
because that is the way it has always been done
But hear this, tradition is not inherently wrong:
there is great wisdom in learning from the past.
But what is wrong
is hanging on to it, when the need has changed.
The pandemic brought about many changes in our church life,
some projects died, and others have begun.
The opportunities for growth opened by the basement redevelopment,
after three years of lying fallow
are lying before us.
And as we anticipate this future, we need to remember
that the most important aspect of being fruitful
is the producing of fruit
In individuals this will be the fruit of the Spirit
while in churches and church activities
it will be corresponding spiritual growth
We need to be constantly asking ourselves
whether the things we invest our time and energy in
are going to be fruitful,
or whether they are never going to be fruitful,
where fruitfulness is measured not primarily by numbers,
but by love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal 5.22-23)
[1] Bauckham, ‘Scripture and Authority’, Transformation, 15/2 (1998): 6.
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