In Luke, Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Luke 10:2). If Christians are going to be outward-looking, loving disciples of Jesus, we must hear Christ’s call and go into God’s field and share his gospel of love in word and deed. We will not leave our personal comfort zones and reach out until and unless we hear God’s voice calling us from our current pattern of life into the world to share God’s wisdom and love. That requires a heart for people.
We won’t share God’s love with others until and unless we have a heart for people who need to hear the gospel and experience the love of Christ. In other words, we must have “hearts for the harvest.” God is not asking us to do anything impossible. God is asking us to order our personal lives in love and wisdom to make the world a better place, and then to share his wisdom and love with others as we go about our day-to-day lives. He wants us to be filled with his love and aware and alert to those times when we can share that love with other people.
Mature disciples remember that the Great Commission is part of being a Christian. It is not reserved for a few extraordinary people. It is not just for missionaries in far off places. It is not just for those called to specialized ministries. It is for all Christians. Furthermore, the Great Commission was not a suggestion; it was a commission. In other words, it was a directive from the Son of God and a public transferal of the ability and authority to carry out that direction. [1] We are all called to go make disciples. This is what we were created in Christ to do.
We will not do this unless have a heart for those who are searching for meaning and purpose in life, are suffering without the presence of the One who can heal them, and need God’s love and wisdom. We need a love for those who will not achieve the fullness of life they desire, and which God desires for them, if we do not reach out and touch their lives. We need a love that will take us out of our comfort zone to the places where people need good news. Frankly, I don’t always think I have such a heart. I suspect there are many people like me.
God Desires to Grow His Family of Love
John records Jesus entering a room the disciples occupied after his arrest, trial, crucifixion, death and resurrection. You can imagine the fear, uncertainty, and anxiety they felt. He came into this hard situation and shared these words with them:
Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained (John 20:19-23).
Jesus spent three years with his disciples sowing the Kingdom into their hearts. As his time on earth was ending, he would no longer be restricted by time and by space. Now, he could be always present to his disciples by the Holy Spirit. What did he say? He said, “Just like the Father sent me, I am sending you.” Jesus had been sent by the Father to proclaim and enact the good news of God’s love for the world. Now, Jesus is sending his disciples into the world to sow the seed of God’s kingdom exactly as Jesus sowed the kingdom when he was physically present.
The original disciples were sent to disciple people, and those people were sent to disciple people, who were were sent to disciple people, so that God’s kingdom spread throughout the known world. Contemporary Christians are a part of the long line of Christians called to the task of being sent. We have received the love of God in Christ, and now we are sent. The question is, “Will we go?”
Sowers of the Gospel
One of the most important of Jesus’ parables is the Parable of the Sower or Soils (Matthew 13:1-23; Mark 4:1-20, and Luke 8:4-15). It goes like this:
A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear (Matthew 13:3-9).
It’s obvious that any crop requires a sower. Someone has to get up, load up with seed, go out into the field, and sow it with seed. In today’s world, most people never sow seed in the way seed was sowed in the ancient world. Members of our family who are farmers rarely, if ever, sow seed by hand. Instead, they own a piece of machinery called a “planter.” The planter sows the seed. The planter has a computer connected to the Internet, and a satellite guides its every move. The entire field has been electronically mapped. The planter knows exactly where to put the seed. It drills the seed into the soil at just the right depth to maximize the crop for the farmer. It is a very precise process.
In Jesus’s day, the process was not so exact. A sower got a sack of seed. Then, the sower walked up and down the field spreading the seed by hand. I’ve done this with grass in my own yard. It’s a very imprecise process! It’s difficult to spread seed evenly by hand. You end up with a lot of seed in one place, and not much seed in another. You have difficulty controlling exactly where the seed falls. A gust of wind can blow grass seed into a flower bed or a nearby hedge. As you get close to the edge of the front yard near the sidewalk, seed inevitably falls on concrete. Finally, the first time I reseeded, I sowed my front yard with seed only to find out that the birds ate most of the seed before it could take root. I did not water the seed into the soil. This was the situation in Jesus’s day. Sowing was an imprecise process. Under these circumstances, what’s important is sowing as much seed as possible in as good a soil as possible, and putting up with a certain amount of waste. [2]
This has practical implications for Christians today. For all of the modern church’s techniques and programs, nothing can supplement the personal actions of Christians as they share their faith with others and help those they meet grow into mature Christians. After years of pastoral ministry, and time as a Christian layperson, it is clear to me that the most important change that needs to take place in the church today is a commitment among individual Christians to sow the Gospel in love and service to others.
Unless we have a heart for those outside of God’s kingdom, we won’t sow the seed of our faith into the lives of others. When we do sow the seed of the Gospel, it is important to sow as much seed as possible, because discipling people is an imprecise process. The more sowers, the more seed falls into the lives of people. The more seed that falls into the lives of people, the more disciples there will be. It is just that simple.
Jesus never intended building his Kingdom of Love to be the preserve of a few talented and gifted evangelists. God does not want evangelism and discipleship to be accomplished solely by pastors or by specially trained laypeople. He wanted lots of sowers. Perhaps one reason God chose twelve ordinary people to be his first disciples is so that we could understand that he intends for everyone, ordinary and extraordinary, to participate in building his kingdom. He wants us to do so where we live, work, play, and meet people, etc.—everywhere we go. Just as God sent Jesus to us, we are sent by Jesus into our world to share the Good News with others. God does not just work through special people to share his love. He works through every heart captured by his love.
Knowing our Field
In Mark, Jesus tells a parable of the Kingdom of God. He says that his kingdom is like a farmer who goes out into a field that shows seed:
This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk then the head then the full grain in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe he puts the sickle to it for the harvest has come (Mark 4:26-29).
This parable is a story about sharing the Good News of God’s kingdom. God created the heavens and the earth. The whole world, and every person in it, is God’s field. This is why John can say, “For God so loved the world that he sent his Only Begotten Son that whosoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God loves the entire world and everyone and everything in it. God intends to plant his kingdom of wisdom and love in his beloved field and harvest a great crop of human beings filled with the fruit of the Spirit.
Farmers rent or own fields. That field is the place where a farmer does the work of sowing, fertilizing, weeding, tending, and finally harvesting a crop. Some farms are large. Some are quite small. In the end, it is not the size that matters but what the farmer does with the field under his or her care. [3] When we lived in a rural area, I got pretty good at judging the quality of a farmer not by the size of his holdings, but by how well he or she cultivated the soil under her care. If there were a lot of weeds or a large part of the field that was not properly planted, the farmer was not a good farmer. The same thing is true of sharing the gospel.
Each Christian lives in some small part of God’s field. We may live in a large city or in a small town. We may live in the center of a metropolitan area or in a suburban neighborhood. We may live in a wealthy or poor nation. We may work alone or in a giant corporation. We may be in school or in the workforce. We may be a working spouse or a stay at home spouse. Wherever we are, and whatever we do, that place is our field. [4]
Our Social Network is our Field
A Greek word symbolizes the field into which Christians best sow the gospel. That word is “oikos.” The word “oikos” is the word from which we get our word “economy.” It means “household” in Greek. [5] We think of a household as a small, nuclear family (generally a husband, wife, and children). In the ancient world, people understood their household in a different way. A household in the ancient world included parents, children, grandparents, servants, household laborers, and their families. Most people lived and worked in farms, and so worked in close proximity to their household. Those who lived in cities would live within walking distance of their place of business, assuming their place of business was not attached to their house. As a result, the word “oikos” meant more than just a place to eat and sleep or work. An oikos was an entire household-based social network.
For contemporary Christians, it might be helpful to think of our oikos as a field constituted by our relationships with other people. Like the fields described by nuclear physics, our network of relationships is a constantly changing and evolving set of interactions between us and the many people we come into contact with each and every day. Some of these relationships have permanence and obvious importance: parents, children, relatives, neighbors, fellow employees, and the like. Some relationships are passing: the check-out person at the grocery store, the helper at the building supply store, the teller (if you can find one) at the bank, the repair person who visits our home to repair the refrigerator. The problem with most of us is that are often unaware of the complex network of relationships that makes up our daily life. A great field that needs our love is before our very eyes, but we cannot see what is right before us.
Contemporary Christian’s need to recover an understanding of how important social relationships are in the sharing of the Gospel. [6] My first church was in a small town. There were a limited number of people who might be interested in joining a church like ours. Nevertheless, the church grew. I would like to take responsibility for the growth, but I really can’t. What happened was the people already within the fellowship invited their friends, parents, children, business partners, neighbors, and social friends to become a part of the congregation. We even had divorced spouses in the fellowship of the church! It all happened in a pretty disorganized and totally unexpected way. To me, it was a sign that God was doing something special, touching the lives of people, healing old wounds, and bringing new life.
Since that time, I’ve served in larger churches. Each church has experimented with various forms of evangelism and discipleship programming, with varying degrees of success. In the end, my conviction is that the best, most effective, most biblical, and most Christ-like method of sharing the Good News is to do it exactly how Jesus and the first disciples did it: by sharing the gospel within existing and new relationships with people. When a Christian fellowship does this, it inevitably grows. The more people who participate, more rapidly the fellowship grows. The specific program the congregation uses is less important than is the Spirit-empowered movement of a group of Christians reaching out in love to others.
As we enter a post-Christian era, it’s important for Christians to re-develop the talent of the early church to personally share the gospel within our web of relationships. We are like farmers, and our social relationships are an invisible field though which and in which God intends to share his love, wisdom, and power to heal.
The Right Seed
It is no good for a farmer to have a field and the ability to sow the field, if there is no seed. Every sower needs seed. In fact, good farmers know that it is important to have the right seed for the soil. In the same way, disciples need good seed as we go out into the part of the world that is our particular field. The seed we take with us is the gospel—and the gospel in the right form.
Our family’s years in rural Tennessee allowed me to understand a bit about seeds and sowing: Some fields are so fertile, that they can grow anything. Any seed will do. Other fields are not appropriate for some crops, but are very appropriate for others. We recently moved to Texas, to an area that is much more rocky, dry, and hot than West Tennessee. As a result, there are different flowers in my garden. We had no cactus in Tennessee, but we have a number of cacti in Texas. Finally, for whatever reason, different farmers prefer different seeds. When we were in rural West Tennessee, only a few farmers raised corn. However, there was one farmer who was famous for his corn crops.
This story illustrates a spiritual truth: in different contexts and in different areas of the world, the way we sow the gospel and the precise formula of the seed of the Gospel we sow will be different. Each of us needs to understand who it is we are able to share the Gospel with and how is the best way to share. This does not mean we compromise the Gospel. It means we are smart about how we sow it. My cousin grows hybrid seeds, both corn and soybeans. The seeds are all corn or soybeans. However, he knows that some varieties of the same seeds work better in his soil than others.
Most Christians know of the Gospel, but when asked to put it into words, they do not how to communicate that Good News to those in their own family, community, business and the like. [7] Most of us have never taken time out to think about exactly what is the best way to share the gospel within our unique personal network of relationships. The way I shared the gospel to a congregation rural West Tennessee was not the same as in a suburban area of Memphis or in a town filled with professionals near Cleveland or in San Antonio, Texas. To successfully sow the Gospel, one needs to sow it in the right form—a form in which the hearer can understand and accept what is said. [8]
Jesus was a Jew. Jesus communicated the gospel as the Good News that the long wait of Israel for her Messiah was over. In Luke, the birth of Jesus is announced by angels in such a way that it is clear that the birth of Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, the anointed ruler of God’s special people (Luke 1:1-55). In Jesus, the Kingdom of God for which Israel had longed for generations had arrived (Matthew 4:23; Mark 1:15). Jesus begins his ministry proclaiming the Good News, saying:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18-20).
The Good News is that the Messiah has come to undo the effects of sin and oppression in the lives of the people of God. This was exactly then way in which Israel needed to hear the gospel.
On the other hand, when Paul was in Athens, he shared the gospel in a way that could appeal to the philosophical climate of Greece. He spoke of the unknown God the Greeks already felt might or did exist. He adopted a creation-oriented mode of communication that fed into the philosophies of his hearers (Acts 17:18-34). Paul’s success as a missionary revolved around his ability to adapt the Gospel to Greco-Roman culture.
If we love people as God loves people, we will learn how to share the Good News of God’s love with them in a way they can understand and accept. To accomplish this, it is important for churches to equip individual people to share the Good News by developing the ability to communicate it to other people with whom they come into contact in a simple, concise, appropriate, and non-threatening way. [9]
Expect a Specific Crop
When a farmer sows a field, he expects a particular kind of crop. If I sow corn, I expect corn. If I sow wheat, I expect wheat. If I sow soybeans, I expect soybeans. You get the idea. Imagine how disappointed a farmer would be if he sowed corn seed and ended up with rye grass! When we sow the seed of the gospel, the crop we expect to get is active disciples of Christ. The Great Commission asks us to go make disciples, and that is what God is looking for as a crop.
As important as it is to know what the gospel is, in the emerging postmodern West it’s also important to know what the gospel is and is not, and exactly what kind of crop God expects. Jesus called Israel to repent (Mark 1:8). This implies that there is a moral law that the coming of the new kingdom and new king has not changed. The crop Jesus is looking for is not unchanged people waiting for heaven or the second coming, even with tense anticipation. Jesus is looking for changed lives and active disciples.
The gospel is not just a verbal presentation calling for an intellectual response. There needs to be verbal communication, but that communication should lead to loving, life-changing repentance, acceptance, faith, and trust. Too often, contemporary people believe that accepting Christ means simply believing as a matter of fact that Jesus is the Son of God, forgives our sins, and permits believers to behave exactly as they want for the time being. (After all, we are saved by grace, aren’t we?) This is not discipleship. When we grow a passive, self-centered immature fan of Jesus, we are not growing the crop Jesus wants. As the Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard put it, “God wants imitators, not admirers.” [10]
In Second Corinthians, Paul says that if anyone is in Christ, they are literally a new creation (5:17). When a person accepts Christ, new person comes into being. The gospel is a gospel of transformed lives. The gospel is not a call to believe an abstract truth and then relax and sleep in a bed of grace until heaven comes. Jesus wants disciples who imitate him and reach out to a needy world with their lives changed, so that they can change lives as well. Jesus wants players and not fans. The crop the Great Commission expects is more disciples with changed hearts, reaching out in love to others. [11]
The Sower is Not Responsible for the Response
The bulk of the Parable of the Four Soils concerns the response of people to the Gospel after it is sown into their lives. In farming, once seed has been sown, it is largely up to the seed, soil, weather and farmer what happens next. Any farmer knows that wind, weather and a number of uncontrollable factors influence the results of their labors. The famer does not control the result. You can work all summer on a crop, only to have an early snow or late tornado undue months of work. The same thing is true in gospel farming.
In the Parable of the Sower, some seed falls along a rocky path. This seed is almost immediately eaten by the birds. Some seed falls on shallow soil. This seed germinates, but soon dies. Other seed falls near the edge of the field where there are thorns. This seed is choked out by the thorns after it germinates. Finally, some seed falls on good soil, takes root, grows, and bears a crop.
The disciples did not understand the parable, so they asked Jesus for an explanation. In response, Jesus gave them this teaching:
Hear then the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” (Matthew 13:18-23).
These words of Jesus are as important today as on the first day they were spoken. I never hear these words without thinking about the hardness of my own heart, the shallowness of my faith, how easily worldly concerns choke out spiritual growth, and important it is to bear fruit. The fact is that not everyone with whom we share the gospel responds. They may eventually respond, but not today. Their hearts are closed. Even among those of us who respond, the results are often uncertain at best.
Some people never respond. They don’t even want to listen. Some people initially accept the gospel, but when life gets difficult or prayers are not answered as they wish, they fall away forever or for a time. We do the same thing from time to time. Perhaps most importantly in our materialistic, hedonistic culture, it is easy to get caught up in the business of making a living, acquiring possessions, caring for a family, moving up the ladder of success, and all the other cares and worries of this world. Each of these things, good in themselves, can take us away from a commitment to share the gospel with others. We too can be choked by the cares and worries of life.
Each person, including every Christian, is a strange combination of hardness of heart, shallowness of heart, and a heart separated from its true self by the worries of this world. We all find ourselves someplace in this parable every day, and so do our friends and neighbors. This realization should fill us with compassion for others, whatever their condition. Even those who are far away from God, have a reason for being where they are. It is in a relationship of love and wisdom that we will discover that reasons and be able to effectively share the gospel personally with that person.
Most of us know, but find it hard to accept, that the work of discipleship is the work of the Spirit. In the last analysis, we are only the physical tools, the planters, God uses to sow the seed. This realization should also free us from guilt if our efforts do not end as we wish. Over the years, as a layperson and pastor, I have shared my faith and life with a lot of people. Some of them are mature Christians; some have fallen away. I have learned to accept that fact. This does not mean we ignore new disciples or never correct our own bad disciple-making abilities. It means that we should not take too much on ourselves.
The Time is Now
Mark begins his gospel with Jesus saying, “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15). Jesus loved people and announced the Good News of the Kingdom of God. He came at a specific time and place in human history with the Good News that God loves all people, sent his Son for all people, wants to forgive all people, and wants all people to receive his Spirit so that they can live holy lives in his power. We live in a different time and place, and we are called to proclaim and enact the gospel in our confused and changing world.
For people to become a part of God’s kingdom, the kingdom of Jesus, someone has to call them to repent, turn around, look at themselves seriously, recognize how far they are from God, and then turn from the kingdoms of this world to his Kingdom of Wisdom and Love. That someone is every follower of Christ. Just as the time came in in ancient Palestine when Jesus came, the time is now for us in our contemporary world.
People will never change until they come to appreciate that there is a better, healthier, more joy-filled, more blessed way of life available in Christ. In other words, people will not find the fulness of joy that God has for them until they come to believe, trust, and live into the gospel Christ proclaimed: God loves everyone, sent his Son for the world, and wants all people to be his children, part of his family, citizens of his kingdom of peace (John 3:16). When Christians are sent into the harvest, we are sent to proclaim in word and deed the gospel in ways that helps those who are open to hear, believe, and enter God’s gracious kingdom of love. The question is, “Do we have such a heart?”
Copyright 2020, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved
[1] When Jesus says to the disciples, “And surely I will be with you even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), he means that the personal Spirit of Christ will be with all disciples then and now giving them the power to do that which Christ has asked us to do. When in Acts, Jesus promises that the disciples will “receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” (Acts 1:8), Jesus is promising them and us that nothing will be asked that God will not also give the power to perform by sending the power of Christ upon his followers.
[2] One of the most interesting explanations of this parable is that as Jesus was telling it, he saw a farmer sowing on the rocky fields of Galilee near one of the paths that led up from the Sea of Galilee to the farmland beyond. As the farmer sowed, the crowd could see exactly what Jesus was describing. See, William Barclay, “Mark” in The Daily Bible Study Series Rev. Ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1975), 88ff.
[3] This, of course, is the meaning of the Parable of the Talents. The servants were not judged on how much they were given to invest, but upon what they did with what they were given, large or small.
[4] As a pastor, it’s tempting to judge yourself by the size of your congregation, just as farmers are tempted to judge themselves by the size of their farm. Even church members judge their churches on the basis of size or public recognition. Over many years, I’ve learned that this is a great mistake. The measure of a farmer is how productive he or she is given the size and soil of their farm. There are small churches with great pastors and great missions. There are also large churches with less enthusiasm, less leadership, and less fruitfulness. What matters is not size, but faithfulness.
[5] Kittel & Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Abridged Version) (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985),674-675.
[6] Win & Charles Arn, The Master’s Plan for Making Disciples 2nd ed (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1982, 1998), 58-59.
[7] My wife and I have seen this over and over again in leading small groups. In our experience almost all Christians, mature or immature have difficulty verbalizing the Gospel in a short, clear and concise way.
[8] I have been afraid that this adaptation my cause some people to criticize the presentation. I have several advanced degrees, but have often served churches where most people have never graduated from college. The gospel is eternal and unchanging, but how we communicate the gospel has to be crafted for the audience.
[9] See, G. Christopher Scruggs, Salt & Light: Everyday Discipleship (Collierville, TN: Innovo Press, 2017). The approach taken in this book is only one of the many, many fine approaches to teaching people to share their faith with others in the context of their day-to-day lives.
[10] Soren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity Howard & Edna Hong ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 233.
[11] After proclaiming God’s love for the world and the saving work of Christ, Jesus warns the people as follows: “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God” (John 3:19-21). The Gospel is not a new lawless Gospel, nor does it absolve those who accept of the consequences of sin and short-comings. It is a new beginning for a new life to be lived in loving, wise fellowship with God and others. The crop Jesus wants is lives changed so obviously that the world will take notice.