A while back we looked briefly at the Parable of the Four Soils and how it applies to all people.
Ideally, if we are good planters for the Kingdom of God, we want to be planting seeds in the best soil. It is this soil that gives a 3000%, 6000%, or 10,000% return on your investment.
But who is that soil? Which type of person should we focus on for the greatest return in our spiritual investment?
If you look in the average church, we think that the good soil is the rich, powerful, pretty people. Those with seminary degrees, nice hair, and big smiles.
But are these sorts of people really the “good soil”?
I am not so sure.
After all, what makes good soil?
Good Soil People
When I was young, my mom had some flower gardens, and every spring, she would go down to the lawn and garden store, and buy bags of “Manure” to put in her gardens. One year I asked her, “Mom, what is manure?” She said, “It’s cow poop.”
What made mom’s garden grow? Poop.
So what makes good soil? Good soil is that which has a lot of nutrients in it. Good soil is that which has a lot of fertilizer.
I am convinced that the “good soil” people are those who have a lot of sh*t in their lives.
Which people are these? The people we would normally think of as “bad people.” Sinners.
And yet in most of our churches, we work hardest to keep these people out. We say “come as you are” but the fine print says “only when you can act like us, talk like us, and look like us.”
But when we look at Jesus, who did He pick to work with, minister to, and pour His life into?
Jesus was friends with tax collectors, sinners, thieves, murderers, prostitutes, and drunkards. Why? He knew a good investment when He saw one.
In bad people, Jesus saw fields upon fields of rich, fertile soil just waiting to be planted. Bad people make good soil for the seeds of the Gospel to take root.
So who are you and your church trying to seek after, love, and embrace?
(P.S. Credit goes to Neil Cole and his book Organic Church for most of this idea. Buy this book and read it!)
Many evangelicals live thier lives within the “bubble” so much that they don’t even know what a lost person looks like. They wake up to Christian radio, read their devotional or the Bible, leave to drop their kids off at the Christian school on their way to their Christian workplace, come home, maybe pop in a Christian movie or volunteer their time at the church teaching an evening Bible study. And thus their days go week in and week out. Evangelism? Oh they practice lifestyle evangelism. Anyone who sees them knows their life is different.
Of course the only people who see them are those that already have it all together.
Wouldn’t a better point for your purposes be that the sower distributed the seed to everyone, not just the “good soil,” whomever you imagine that to be? Not “us,” not “them,” but everyone.
“Lifestyle evangelism” – very nice, Gabe. Another good example of how everyone, not just Christians, separate the world into us and them.
Gabe,
Thanks for the comment! How is the church plant going for you down in Waxahachie? We’ll be down there sometime this month for that Scarborough Rennaissance Festival. We have lots of fun there!
Bullet,
Yes, you are right. In the parable, the sower does actually scatter seed all over the place, onto all four soils. It would be wise for us to do the same thing, since in our human estimation and reasoning, it is often difficult (and maybe wrong) for us to judge who is the good soil and who is the hard, rocky soil.