Blackberries
Originally uploaded by Gary McMurray.
The other day I was out in Invergowrie, a smaller village near to Dundee. One of my heroes, Robert Murray M'Cheyne, used to ride out to the ruins of an old church to sit and pray, to 'come apart for a while and rest'. The ruins themselves are now overgrown and gated to prevent people getting in, but the thing I noticed was the huge amount of blackberries growing there.
Perhaps it struck me more forcefully than normal, because the previous night I had been talking to Bryan about developing fruitful churches. Is this the sort of fruitful church I want to be part of - just ruins, and only producing blackberries? Or the fruitful church where lives are changed and hearts won through the preaching of God's Word; where the fruit of the Spirit is seen to be increasing in the lives of the congregation; where we move outwards in culturally relevant engagement with the world; the fruitful church which only comes about through abiding in Jesus (John 15).
I know which one I want, and it doesn't involve blackberries!
That is the kind of Church I also want to be involved with. The encouraging thing from the Youth Assembly is that young people want to be part of a growing not dying Church and have a real heart to serve God.
ReplyDelete