a time to sow

By Young Lee Hertig

In one of my favorite books, There is a Season, Joan Chittister quotes an Arab proverb: “Every morning I turn my face to the wind and scatter my seed. It is not difficult to scatter seeds but it takes courage to go on facing the wind.” Chittister continues, “The ability to stand steadfast in the face of opposition is the real charism of the sower.”

Once one accepts a call to sow, then one would rather sow in fertile, not futile soil. Pleading for less toil and snares, we are tempted to seek instant fruits living in this fast-paced success-driven culture. It is this embedded culture of instant success that one is easily tempted to bypass labor of sowing. We live in a society where one’s labor and capital are disconnected. Dangerously, folks in Wall Street made billions of dollars without labor, but simply transacting someone else’s toil that bypasses tax obligation. When the norm is set on high for living like kings and queens, the folks in the main street also mimic extravagant life depending on debt economy—buy now and pay later credit card system.

Marketdom, not Kingdom value has seeped into Christianity with the Church Growth Movement in the mid 80s and ‘90s. It has tracked many pastors who want to see instant result of growth. I am not against growing church. However, what I observed looming danger was its one dimensional aspect of numerical growth. Painfully watching many pastors visiting all the mega churches in the united states, adopting all the programs and formulas for their instant success—the numbers in both membership and offering, leading to all sorts of remodeling and building projects, rather than laboring to offer long term theological reflections that would mark the church in the world.

Three decades later, a key champion of successful Christianity, Bill Hybel’s daring acknowledgement of mistakes in the very foundation of Willow Creeks’ church ministry, finally ushers epiphany toward transforming Marketdom into Kingdom of God. I used the term “marketdom” because Willow Creek church utilized a corporate model of creating a multi-million dollar organization driven by programs and measurement. They have promoted their model to other church leaders for duplication. Based on research by the Executive Pastor, Greg Hawkins, Hybel confessed in October 2007 during the leadership summit:

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

Whereas such a confession appears as a wake-up call, the very same measurement-based paradigm remains to be the same. I wonder how we can measure one’s faith let the alone Kingdom of God. Unlike Marketdom, living out the values of Kingdom of God is described in the book of Habakkuk:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
Though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior (3: 17-18).

Only then, can we face the wind from all different directions without feeling gloom and doom. The moment we live today calls forth prayers of the minor Prophet, Habakkuk to rejoice amidst wind blow and continue to sow knowing that God is sovereign.

Young Lee Hertig, PhD, is an ordained pastor and serves as a professor at seminaries and Christian colleges. She lives with her husband and daughter in Southern California. To contact Young, please send your inquiry to AAWOLblog@gmail.com.