The Trellis and the Vine (4 page)

Throughout the world, the gospel is spreading, propagating, budding, flowering, bearing fruit. People hear it and by God’s mercy respond and are saved. But it doesn’t stop there. Once the gospel is planted in someone’s life and takes root, it keeps growing in them. Their lives bear fruit. They grow in love and godliness and knowledge and spiritual wisdom, so that they walk in a manner worthy of their calling, fully pleasing to the Father, bearing fruit in every good work (Col 1:9-10, 2:6-7).

We talk a lot these days about church growth. And when we think about our lack of growth, we think of the lack of growth of our particular congregation: the stagnation or decline in numbers, the wobbly state of the finances, and possibly the looming property issues.

But it’s interesting how little the New Testament talks about church growth, and how often it talks about ‘gospel growth’ or the increase of the ‘word’. The focus is on the progress of the Spirit-backed word of God as it makes its way in the world, according to God’s plan. Returning to our vine metaphor, the vine is the Spirit-empowered word, spreading and growing throughout the world, drawing people out of the kingdom of darkness into the light-filled kingdom of God’s beloved Son, and then bearing fruit in their lives as they grow in the knowledge and love of God. The vine is Jesus, and as we are grafted into him, we bear fruit (John 15:1-11).

This results, of course, in individual congregations growing and being built. But the emphasis is not on the growth of the congregation as a structure—in numbers, finances and success—but on the growth of the gospel, as it is spoken and re-spoken under the power of the Spirit. In fact, New Testament congregations, as far as we can tell, were usually small gatherings meeting in houses. They were outwardly unimpressive, and had minimal infrastructure. But God kept drawing people into them by the gospel. Or to put it another way, Christ kept doing what he said he would do in Matthew 16. He kept building his church.

Three implications

Now you may not be in the habit of thinking about God’s work in the world in precisely these terms, but I trust you see the implications. There are several, and we will tease them out in the coming chapters. But at this point, we should note three important consequences of this view of God’s purposes in the world.

The first and most obvious is that if this is really what God is doing in our world then it is time to say goodbye to our small and self-oriented ambitions, and to abandon ourselves to the cause of Christ and his gospel. God has a plan that will determine the destiny of every person and nation in the world, and it is unfolding here and now as the gospel of Christ is preached and the Holy Spirit is poured out. Is there anything more vital to be doing in our world? It is more important than our jobs, our families, our pastimes—yes, even more important than the comfort and security of familiar church life. We need to recapture the radicalism of what Jesus said to the young man who wanted to return and bury his father: “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60).

The second implication is that the growth God is looking for in our world is growth in
people
. He is working through his word and Spirit to draw people into his kingdom, to see them born again as new creations, and to see them mature and bear fruit as servants of Christ. Whatever other signs of life and growth we might look for in our congregations—involvement, activities, newcomers, finances, number of staff, buildings, and so on—the only growth that has any significance in God’s plans is the growth of believers. This is what the growing vine really is: it is individual, born-again believers, grafted into Christ by his word and Spirit, and drawn into mutually edifying fellowship with one another.

The third momentous implication is that this people-growth happens only through the power of God’s Spirit as he applies his word to people’s hearts. That’s the way people are converted, and that’s the way people grow in maturity in Christ. We plant and water, but God gives the growth. We speak God’s word to someone, and the Spirit enables a response. This can happen individually, in small groups, and in large groups. It can happen over the back fence, over dinner, or over morning tea at church. It can happen in a pulpit or on a patio. It can be the formal exposition or study of a Bible passage, or someone speaking some Scripture-based truth without even referring to the Bible.

However, despite the almost limitless number of contexts in which it might happen, what happens is the same: a Christian brings a truth from God’s word to someone else, praying that God would make that word bear fruit through the inward working of his Spirit.

That’s vine work. Everything else is trellis.

Chapter 4.
Is every Christian a vine-worker?

In the previous chapter we put forward a simple but profound proposition: that the work God is doing in the world now, in these last days between the first and second comings of Christ, is to gather people into his kingdom through the prayerful proclamation of the gospel. God is growing his vine through his word and Spirit.

Most evangelical Christians would no doubt agree with these ideas. Yes, they would say: Christian growth certainly does happen because God does it through his word under the life-giving power of his Spirit. And yes, they would agree: this means that the two fundamental activities of Christian ministry are
proclaiming
(speaking the word) and
praying
(calling upon God to pour out his Spirit to make the word effective in people’s hearts).

Where it all gets trickier is in translating these motherhood statements into action in our churches. In particular, how are we to think about the ministry of all Christians as opposed to the ministry of designated pastors, teachers and evangelists? What is the ministry of the many, and how does it relate to the ministry of the few?

Or to put it more sharply,
who really does the vine work?
Is it mainly the job of the pastor-teachers and evangelists to tend and propagate the vine through their ministry of the word? Is the main contribution of the rest of the congregation to support and aid that work by maintaining and strengthening the trellis? Or do all Christians play a part in vine work?

These are not simple questions, and they have been answered in different ways in the history of Christianity. Even since the Reformation, with its insistence on the priesthood of all believers, Christians have adopted different models and traditions of ministry—some in which the leader or pastor is so central and dominant that the congregation are little more than spectators, and others in which anti-clericalism has gone so far as to abolish the role of ‘pastor’ or ‘overseer’ altogether.

What does the Bible say?

Disciples confessing

At the most basic level, the Bible says that Jesus doesn’t have two classes of disciple: those who abandon their lives to his service and those who don’t. The call to discipleship is the same for all. Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34-35). There are not two sorts of disciples—the inner core who really serve Jesus and his gospel, and the rest. To be a disciple is to be a slave of Christ and to confess his name openly before others: “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt 10:32-33).

The call to discipleship is thus a call to confess our allegiance to Jesus in the face of a hostile world; to serve him and his mission, whatever the cost. Don’t bother attending your dad’s funeral, Jesus says to a passing enquiry: “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60).

The Great Commission, in other words, is not just for the Eleven. It’s the basic agenda for all disciples. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker.

The radicalism of this demand often feels a world away from the ordinariness of our normal Christian habits and customs. We go to church, where we sing a few songs, try to concentrate on the prayers, and hear a sermon. We chat to people afterwards, and then go home for a normal week of work or study or whatever it is that we do, in time to come again next week. We might read our Bible and pray during the week. We may even attend a small group. But would someone observing from outside say: “Look: there is someone who has abandoned his life to Jesus Christ and his mission”?

When we look at the early disciples in the book of Acts, we see this confession and allegiance being worked out in practice, in the face of opposition and persecution. There is no doubt that the apostles played a leading role in testifying to Jesus, and in teaching and preaching, but they weren’t the only ones making their confession publicly. As the magnificent prayer for boldness in Acts 4 makes clear, the early Christian disciples all regarded themselves as “servants” of Jesus, and all were given the Holy Spirit to speak out in his name:

“And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. (Acts 4:29-31)

That all the disciples were speaking boldly in the name of Jesus shouldn’t surprise us in Acts 4, because Acts 2 tells us to expect it. When the Holy Spirit descends so strikingly on the assembled disciples, he descends upon them all, and they all start declaring “the mighty works of God”, as verse 11 puts it.

This, says Peter, is only what the prophet Joel said would happen. In the “last days”, says Joel, when God’s Spirit was poured out on all flesh, everyone would prophesy—the young, the old, men and women, all the way down to the servants of the household—all would declare the word of the Lord (Acts 2:16-18). All would testify to Jesus, because the “testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Rev 19:10).

This pattern continues throughout the New Testament. There are of course leaders, teachers, elders, overseers, pastors and evangelists—people who have leading roles and responsibilities in declaring God’s word and shepherding his people—but alongside these, there is a constant stream of references to the ‘word ministry’ of each and every Christian. Speaking God’s word for the growth of the vine is the work not of the few but of the many. Let’s look at a few examples.

Speaking the word to one another

In Ephesians 4, Paul famously lists the gifts that the ascended Christ has given the church—apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor-teachers. And, just as famously, he says that the work of these foundational word ministries is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (ESV) or to “prepare God’s people for works of service” (NIV). Older translations put a very significant comma between “equip the saints” and “for the work of ministry”, taking the verse to mean that the job of the foundational word ministers was the equipping of the saints
and
the work of ministry. Their ministry included equipping the saints—not that they were to equip the saints for the ministry that the saints themselves would exercise.

There are good reasons to think that the older translations are actually closer to the mark. However, when we look at the verses that follow, we see that it doesn’t make an enormous difference to our investigation. Paul goes on to say that the goal of all this ministry (whoever is doing it) is the building of the body of Christ to unified, doctrinally sound maturity. We are not to be tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine: “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph 4:15-16).

The picture here is of all the different parts of the body fulfilling their proper function, each part working with the others for the growth of the body. But what is common across this multifarious function of different body parts is “speaking the truth in love”. We may each do this in different ways, in different contexts and with different levels of effectiveness, but the basic methodology of body growth is that all the members “speak the truth in love”, one to another.

We see a similar picture as we read on into chapter 5 of Ephesians. When Paul exhorts them to “be filled with the Spirit” rather than with wine, the result will be that they speak to one another “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”, as opposed to the kind of speech and singing that tends to follow from too much wine. The work of the indwelling Spirit will lead the Ephesians in spiritual speech to one another, in this case via singing.

But it’s not only by singing. A few verses later, in Ephesians 6:4, fathers are urged to raise their children in the instruction of the Lord. Teaching within the family is a vital word ministry exercised by all fathers (and mothers). The requirements for elders (in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1) assume that godly heads of households would be teaching their families the word of God.

A related point comes out in Colossians 3: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col 3:16). This time it’s the word of Christ that is dwelling in their midst, rather than the Spirit, but the result is the same—which shouldn’t surprise us! What ensues is godly encouraging speech to one another, in this case teaching and admonishing. Whether the singing is how the teaching and admonishing takes place, or another result of having the word dwell richly, is hard to say grammatically. It makes very little difference. The point is that all the Colossians are to teach and admonish one another.

Romans 15:14 also assumes that Christians will be teaching and instructing one another: “I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another”.

The writer to the Hebrews twice makes the same point. Firstly, in chapter 3, he says:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Heb 3:12-13)

This can only mean that God wants all Christians to be speaking to each other regularly, urging and encouraging each other to stick with Christ. He makes a very similar point in chapter 10, in one of the few verses in the entire New Testament that tell Christians to ‘go to church’:

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Heb 10:24-25)

A central purpose of getting together, says the writer, is mutual encouragement; to spur one another on to love and good works as we wait for the day of Christ. How this can happen without us opening our mouths and speaking to each other is hard to understand.

But of all the parts of the New Testament that deal with the ministry of the few and of the many, the clearest and most helpful is Paul’s first letter to the arrogant, gifted, divided, sin-prone Corinthians.

Now the Corinthians had real problems, both over the nature of leadership and over how each member could contribute to the edification of the congregation. In both cases, they seemed to think too highly—too highly of different leaders, so that factions emerged in the congregation depending on which leader you followed; and too highly of themselves and their gifts, so that their gatherings became a chaotic exercise in one-upmanship, with everyone more focused on ‘using their gifts’ than on actually encouraging other people.

Paul deals with the leadership question in 1 Corinthians 1-4. His basic message is that the gospel of Christ crucified gives the model for Christian leadership in ministry. It’s a ministry exercised in apparent weakness and foolishness, and yet by God’s Spirit it brings salvation. Paul and Apollos are just manual labourers in God’s field. It’s God who gives the growth, and so any factionalism around the qualities of different leaders is absurd.

In chapters 11-14, Paul turns to the conduct of their congregational gatherings and the contribution each member is to make. There is, of course, a long history of debate about many of the details of these chapters (to do with the nature of miraculous gifts and speaking in tongues, not to mention the regulations for head covering in chapter 11 and the place of women in ministry). However, in relation to our investigation about the ‘ministry of the many’ the important points are clear, and could be summarized as follows:

• Chapter 11 envisages that both men and women will pray and prophesy as a matter of course in the gathering.
[1]

• Chapter 12 emphasizes that while there is a variety of gifts and ministries, we are all members of the one body in Christ Jesus.

• Chapter 13 gives the single criterion for the exercise of these gifts: love. We each make our contribution not for our own good, but for the good of others.

This means (as chapter 14 goes on to say) that we should seek and exercise those gifts that do most good to others, those gifts that build (or ‘edify’) the congregation. Prophecy gets top marks (over tongues, for example), because it consists of intelligible, edifying words.

The summary verse is 14:26:

What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.

These chapters repay some careful reading because they beautifully capture both the singularity and the diversity of the ministry of each congregation member. We are not all the same. Not everyone is a ‘teacher’ or a ‘prophet’, and the way we bring encouragement and edification to the gathering will vary according to God’s gifting. But everyone should be pursuing the same goal, which is to edify the congregation in love; and this edification takes place through speech (intelligible speech, that is), whether a word of exhortation, a hymn, a revelation, a tongue-with-interpretation, or a prophecy.

We may all build (edify) in different ways, but we are all builders. We do not all have the same function, but we are all urged to abound in “the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58). Interestingly, Paul uses exactly the same phrase just a few verses later to describe his own ministry and Timothy’s: “When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing
the work of the Lord
, as I am” (1 Cor 16:10).