“Down the Rows” employs an agricultural metaphor to capture the birth and growth of a church through the eyes of a pastor. In 2009 God began to flower a seed into a church in Lincoln, Nebraska. Though I was no more important than any other individual in the initial core group, God called me to lead…to Shepherd His people there. So, deeply aware of my own weakness and insufficiency, I began to plead with God in prayer that He would enable us to see His glory and to know Him more deeply. I wanted our core group to see and experience through this journey that God is alive and on His throne and still at work saving people and changing lives for His glory…to believe! I can vividly remember moments in my office on my knees begging God to work – to bring the rain of His grace on the soil of this young church to produce growth.
Indeed, God has poured down the rain of His grace upon us. Though we have experienced necessary seasons of drought and periods of pain, God has been so faithful and good to us. Souls have been saved and lives have been changed. My life has been and is continuing to be changed and I’m eager to see how God will continue His work among us in the future.
As I’ve pondered our experience and have contemplated the life of every local church, I have continued to come back to this agricultural metaphor of seeds in the soil. Every local church that God raises up is like a seed that that was purchased 2,000 years ago through the work of Jesus and planted today. A pastor is like a farmer who tills and works the soil and tends to the seed and yet is totally dependent upon the sun and the rain. He works but he doesn’t produce the growth. Like the farmer, the pastor does have the privilege and the joy of sitting in awe of the Creator who brings forth supernatural growth out of the clay.
