Return to the Vine

As you may already know, my role with the North Central District is part-time.  I still pastor a local Alliance Church.  This means that I, like many of you, recently filled out my Annual Report.  That is always such an interesting exercise.  It can be easy to view this task as nothing more than a somewhat tedious addition to our list of things to do.  I understand that sentiment.  I also understand that the very idea of filling out a report like this can feel like we are just perpetuating the numbers-biased mindset that permeates American Church culture and reduces ministry context to nothing more than growth models that may or may not accurately reflect the health of a church.  In addition, depending upon the size of our church, or the kind of year we have experienced, recording those numbers can feel like an agonizing, self-condemning act that drudges up feelings of inadequacy, failure, or frustration as we consider our ministry effectiveness.

If you have struggled with those feelings while filling out this report, then I want to encourage you with a passage of Scripture that God has frequently brought to mind as I have considered my own ministry context.  In John 15, Jesus refers to himself as the vine and calls us branches.  His challenge is for us to remain in him, like branches remaining in the vine.  In verse 5 he says: “I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”  That verse not only challenges us to abide in Christ, it also promises that if we do, we will bear fruit.

The problem with filling out the annual report is that it can cause us to look at numbers as representing the fruit or success of our ministry. We are asked to consider: how much our average attendance has grown or declined; how many new members have been added or taken away; how many congregants are involved in discipleship, prayer or leadership development endeavors; how many conversions and baptisms have occurred; how many have gone on missions trips; and how many are regularly giving.  Those numbers can help us consider the health of our churches and may reveal underlying issues that need to be addressed, but numbers don’t tell the whole story.  If we are not careful, those numbers can lead us into a false sense of security, or they can lead us to chase after a human-led effort of “fixing the problem.”

Those are two separate issues, but they both sprout from the same root concern.  In our current church culture, it can be easy for us to be number driven. When asked about ministry success our natural response is often to turn to the kind of results we record in the annual report each year.  This is where John 15 comes into play.  We are reminded in that passage that the key to bearing fruit is remaining in the vine.  If our focus shifts from the vine to the fruit, and our fruit looks good, it might lead us to celebrate the numbers that we have achieved rather than the one who gave us that fruit or it might cause us to miss seeing other things God wants to address in our church.  On the flip side, if we are focused on our fruit and it doesn’t look as impressive as we had hoped, it might cause us to try and manufacture fruit on our own, rather than relying upon the natural fruit that comes from the vine.  In both instances, we can become so focused on fruit that, because our eyes are no longer on the vine, we wind up off track.

In John 15 Jesus is letting us know that fruit bearing is not our job.  Remaining in the vine is our job and if we do that, then the fruit is promised.  That means that the ultimate gauge of success is not how much fruit we bear, but how well we are doing at remaining in the vine.  Now, I will say that fruit or lack thereof can be an indicator of how well we are remaining in the vine, but annual report numbers do not tell the whole story.  The answers we seek can only be found in the vine. Our ministries do not belong to us, they belong to God.  He gets to decide what kind of fruit we bear, and it might look different than we expected.   Success from God’s perspective doesn’t always match the categories we find in an annual report. 

So now that we have filled out the annual report for this year, my challenge for all of us, whether we have been encouraged or discouraged by that process, is to return to the vine.  Let’s look to Christ to help us interpret what our numbers represent.  Let’s give him all the glory and seek his Kingdom and his will for our ministries, as well as for the whole earth as it is in Heaven.

Rob Mapstone

Director of Recruitment and Placement