In reading Mark 4:26-29, I had these thoughts:
- The gospel in people’s lives takes time.
- We need to be good farmers, not just harvester’s. So evangelism and ministry is farming: knowing how to sow and different ways of sowing, cultivating and fertilizing, and then harvesting at the right time.
- This can make ministry frustrating at times because we want to see results quickly. Jesus said that growth takes time. There is a part of growth the farmer has no control over.
For ministry it made me think of questions to help evaluate.
Therefore, questions to evaluate ministry would be:
- What have we done to sow seed: the gospel, character qualities, vision?
- Which seed did we sow last week?
- What are we doing to watch over the seed and cultivate?
- How are we evaluating the readiness for harvest?
- Do we evaluate with just individuals, ministry as a whole, or both?
- Who is following up with whom?
- What seed have we sown across the ministry this semester through Challenge, small groups, retreats?
- What are we asking God to do with the seed and the plants?
I would welcome comments on these ideas to help us be faithful campus ministers at CU. We are doing our best to sow the gospel in several ways. It has been working best through relationships our students have with their peers. It has worked some through speaking on campus (Bobby speaks outside when the weather, and policy, allows). The whos new and whos close post mentions how this is going.
Weekly staff meetings are a place we ponder these questions, evaluate, and try to be strategic with what we plan, so that even though there is a part of growth we have no control over, we can be the best farmers we can possibly be by working hard at those things we can control.
Please pray for us as we seek to be good farmers.