Pursuing Growth
Dear Friends,
God makes things grow. Four short words (3 in the original Greek) which spell out a very basic Bible reality, a truth which runs through the whole of Scripture.
It isn’t simply that when growth happens, it’s the Lord who’s behind it: it’s more pointed than that. It’s the fact that growth is what God does: He makes things grow. That’s just who He is and what He does.
The parables of the kingdom which Jesus told all bear that out. The narrative of Acts describes the same phenomenon. The story of the church, across the globe and down the years, sounds out the same consistent truth. All the way through the Scriptures, from the first, great, noisy salvo of the Bible’s opening chapters to the roof-raising, choral crescendo of the book of Revelation – all the way through, it’s this great truth which pulses through the history of grace.
God the great Creator makes things grow.
That’s why Paul in his day could boldly declare that “the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world”: and why he could pray with such confidence that God’s people, too, would be “bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God” (Col.1.6, 10).
That’s just what He does: it is, if you like, one of His distinctive ‘trademarks’. He makes things grow.
Wherever you put His people, they grow. Consign them to slavery in Egypt, with a genocidal policy thrown in, and to the fury and frustration of the Pharaoh they still grow! Remove them off to exile, with their tails between their legs in abject shame – and still they grow, with a prophet such as Daniel simply dominating parliament, and an orphaned girl called Esther running rings around the king.
How on earth does it happen .. if it’s not all because there’s this God who makes things grow?
But it’s not magic – growth doesn’t magically happen. You have to pursue it. It’s God who makes it happen, but His people don’t stand idly by as casual non-participants. If you trust in a God who makes things grow, then your faith means you go and pursue it. In step with Him, of course.
Think back to the story of the Exodus and the way God would make things grow. The confinement and bondage of Goshen would give way to the fertile land of Canaan – a ‘good and spacious’ land: a land, that is, with far more space: a land with far more fruit: and a land that brought them freedoms like they’d never known before. Growth for sure!
They had to pursue that growth, though. Remember the spies who were tasked to go up and explore the terrain. And yes, all that the Lord had informed them the land would be – it was. Good? Yes! Spacious? Yes! Fruitful – as in simply ‘flowing with milk and honey’? Yes, yes, yes!
But … When the spies came back they reported gigantic problems. Growth wasn’t ever simply going to happen: they’d have to pursue it. And so they had a choice. Do they major on the problem of the giants in the land? Or do they focus on the promise of the God who makes things grow? Their future all hinged on which way they jumped. And you know the story, I’m sure. They took cold feet, saw giants rather than Jesus, and the moment was lost.
Remember the story of Esther? You see the same thing, only this time the outcome’s reversed. Faced by the threat of a rapid ‘decline’ (a polite way of putting what was wickedly planned as a ‘pogrom’!) Esther was faced by a similar choice: ‘caw canny’, play safe and duck out of the giant-sized risk of her putting her life on the line? Or recognize the striking, sovereign providence of God, the God who makes things grow, and boldly step right through that throne-room door? Again, the future hinged on just which way she jumped: and this time, with her eyes and the eyes of her people, firmly fixed on the God who makes things grow, she jumped into a future where the tables all were turned. Growth never magically happens. We’re called and obliged to pursue it. With our eyes firmly fixed on the Lord.
Coming on for four long years ago now, the elders here spent many months in thought and prayer discerning under God just where His future for us lay: that careful, prayerful process finally culminated in a half-day elders’ conference in January 2020, through which the Lord Himself then chiseled out a template for the ‘next step’ which He called us here to take.
‘By God’s grace,’ we concurred, ‘we will generate growth ..’ God makes things grow, and growth is thus a basic characteristic of the Kingdom. ‘We expect growth,’ we declared, ‘and commit ourselves, therefore, to pursuing the growth of Christ’s church ..’
A pursuit, we could see, that involved us as well in shaping the future: as the spies on the borders of Canaan, looking in on the land ‘next door’, had the chance to shape the future: as the orphaned princess Esther, peeking through the keyhole of the spacious royal throne room – as she, too, confronted her fears and chose to shape the future as she stepped next door.
I’m phrasing it thus to highlight something vital for us all to understand: a constant, basic Bible truth, whose challenge is the essence of the life of faith. It’s this – we either pursue growth, or in the end, unwittingly perhaps, we opt to manage decline. The safe middle ground of simply sustaining the status quo – the option we’d, most of us, choose of hanging around until the Lord makes it ‘safe’ to proceed – it doesn’t exist.
The pattern which the God who makes things grow adopts is this – ‘you go, and I give’. We take the step in response to the call of the Lord, and He then gives what’s required. The priests must first step into the flooded river; and then the Lord pulls back the water. Not the other way around. Esther must first take that step through the door of the throne room in Susa; and then the Lord gives the ‘green light’ from the king. God’s people must ever pursue that growth which is ever the work of the Lord.
You’ll be more than familiar, I’m sure, with the following quote, which points up the same important truth – words first penned by WS many moons ago.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”
(The ‘WS’, of course, is William Shakespeare! I should have made that clear).
There is just such a tide in our affairs today. Having committed ourselves, almost 40 long months ago now, to generate growth by the grace of the God who makes things grow; having committed ourselves under God to step out in a Christ-centred faith, and through Him to shape the future; having recognized God’s ‘next step’ for us here, we find ourselves now, in the timely, sovereign providence of God, at a ‘full sea’, ‘flood-tide’ moment, where growth and expansion beckon.
That’s how we view where the Lord has been leading us here in terms of ministry: His separating out for us here three different but related strands of ministry – the congregation of believers, the ‘constituency’ of our Union Street location, and the city-spanning partnership with other gospel fellowships. And what we’ve now been working at for years in planning for ‘succession’ is much, much more to do with growing ministry, than it is about our simply changing ministers: it’s our careful, intentional pursuit of growth, expanding the range of ministry we exercise, and carefully, creatively, finding the ways to do so.
Growth, you see: the deliberate, intentional pursuit of growth. And shaping the future as we do so: anticipating the challenges which Christ’s church will face in the coming decade and more, and preparing His church to embrace such challenge and to seize the many opportunities which the changing cultural landscape will create. We’re intent, then, on fostering good, strong gospel partnership across the city’s life. We’re intent, as well, on developing a pattern of rigorous training, not as a casual adjunct to our ongoing life, but as a vital and integral part of that prayerful pursuit of growth.
That’s what our planning’s been always about: how, under God, we best will grow these three clear strands of ministry. Carefully, creatively finding the way to do this – by appointing another minister for the congregation here, as I step simply sideways into a non-stipendiary role to pursue in our name those ‘next generation’ and wider-reaching aims. The uncharted waters, in many respects, of our own river Jordan in flood, into which, like Israel of old, we now must boldly step, as we press on into the Lord’s own future for us as His church.
Growing ministry, much more than changing ministers. And all a part of pursuing growth, as we find ourselves now at a critical, ‘flood-tide’ moment in our life: for as well as the Lord being intent, it would seem, on expanding and growing our ministry, we’re persuaded He’s also intent on expanding the use which we make of our premises.
The book of Acts has been more than a little timely in the insights and perspectives which it’s given us. The God who makes things grow, we learn, is the God who ‘marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands’ (Acts 17.26): that’s to say, our location here on Union Street, and at this particular time, is not some mere coincidence. It’s a God-given calling: the call of the God who makes things grow. We recognize both the responsibility and the opportunity which this brings: a ‘flood-tide’ moment if ever there was one! But what will it mean for us now to ‘take the current when it serves’? How are we best to fulfil that call? Where is the God who makes things grow now leading us here in terms of our Gilcomston premises?
We’d thought to explore different ways of configuring the place – and baulked no small bit at just how such a change might be made and what it would have to involve. And then (true to form, I’d have to say!) the sovereign God, who appoints all time in history and marks out what our ‘boundaries’ shall be – the sovereign God who makes things grow threw an ‘out-of-the-blue’, curved ball which obliged us to think again.
We’d been pondering our ‘adjustments’ .. but what if God meant enlargement? The building next door, in the timely, sovereign providence of God, had come up for sale. And we read in the Scriptures, (almost, it seemed, the very next week!) how Paul “.. went next door” (Acts 18.7). If nothing else, the Lord has a great sense of humour! Was this what the Lord was planning all along? The Lord is not only able, but always delights, to do immeasurably more than all that we ask or imagine: He drummed that into our heads and hearts for long enough, did He not?! Is this another instance of His trademark ‘immeasurably-more’? Big, important questions!
We’re much in prayer about this, and we bid you be so too. For these are significant days. There are these ‘tides’ in the affairs of the people of God, as the Spirit of God moves upon the waters of His world; and it is on what the bard described as ‘such a full sea’ that we are surely presently afloat. Exciting days. Challenging days. Significant days. And ‘flood-tide’ days as well, where so much rides on how a people respond.
Shakespeare certainly grasped that truth! Such ‘flood-tide’ moments in a people’s life lead on to either ‘fortune’, or a life that is ‘bound in shallows and in miseries’. Mordecai may have lacked the literary genius of the bard, but he got the same point: and he did, in fact, have a great turn of phrase himself! Aware of God’s sovereign over-ruling in terms of time and place, his words to Esther had such a lasting spiritual resonance that they’re ringing still in our ears today! “Who knows but that you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Such is the moment in which we too now find ourselves. May God grant us wisdom in discerning His will, and boldness in pursuit of His growth!
Yours in Christ Jesus our Lord
Jeremy Middleton