I want to use this space to thank Harrell Davis for sharing our worship one Sunday in April. It was so very good for us to stand shoulder to shoulder in the ministry that we share. Perhaps no other moment in our interim season spoke more clearly about the transitional nature of ministry and the one Lord who alone is constant.
Paul put it best to his former parishioners in Corinth when he explained: "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth."
The Corinthians had lost sight of the Lord who is the great head of the Church and were focused on the work and personalities of individual pastors. Paul wasted no time in setting the record straight: God uses some pastors to plant, others to water (and in my case to fertilize—if you remember the sermon); but we must never lose sight of the fact that it is God who inspires and enables the growth within and among us.
Sometimes that growth is physical, at other times it is spiritual. It can be in personal maturity or in social solidarity. The growth God provides in church life is as varied and as beautiful as a flower garden and as nourishing and diverse as a vegetable garden. Our garden may be a small one at the moment, but small gardens produce just as abundantly for God as larger gardens do, and signs of growth are everywhere.
Pastors come and go, for God rotates leadership even as He rotates crops—and sometimes even recycles parishioners; but the mystery of growth belongs to God, and it is beautiful in my eyes. Thank you, Harrell, for returning to the garden in which you labored so well for the Lord.
~David
