ShepherdLeader.com

The summary question: "Are we driving our flocks to religious activity or encouraging healthy spiritual productivity?" has been on my mind and when I read it in this devotional, it gave me another chance to think about it.

I interviewed at a church recently where an elder asked me, "How can you help us from becoming a country club? We don't want to grow for the sake of growing, but we want to grow around Christ." This is a good question, how do we prune areas not Christ centric and encourage true spirituality?

Is productivity really 60 teenagers spending $600 each to ski out west? What does this teach about Jesus? That to be a part of his group, you got to have money.

How do you help teens (and adults) produce fruit that serves the good of the community? And not just a Christian Country Club mentality.

Isn't fruit produced spontaneously by being in relationship with the vine? But relationship is different from just believing the right things. It is true connection to the vine. How do we better nurture that? Or is that purely the job of the Holy Spirit?

Hey April, I appreciate you sharing the interview experience and I trust things went according to your desires...God has really been doing a number on me in terms of leadership and how I can't do anything without being connected to the Vine, Jesus. It seems from John 15 that we are powerless without him and his srength. I imagine not many followers of Christ or leaders of his church want to be intimate with him and die to their self desires...Yeah, that would make religion boring and our relationship with Jesus everything. Doing other things to get the church moving forward may look appealing, but I think it only brings temporary satisfaction. We will never be satisfied without growing in our relationship with our Lord. It may not be a popular topic or program, but it seems that this is the reason for ministry and why we give ourselves to serving him...I look forward to seeing you in Charlotte at the end of this month. I'm so glad you're a part of our DMin cohort!

Hey! Good to hear from you! It is just a few weeks until we are all reunited! I can't believe it has been a whole year.

Something you said in your post, "how I can't do anything without being connected to the Vine?" reminded me of a sermon I heard once. The pastor pointed out that if you have ever looked at a vine... you can't differentiate the vine from the branches. The Vine is the branches and the Branches are the vine. In other words... it is "a connection" like none other that we have with the Vine. Jesus (through the Holy Spirit) actually dwells within us and we dwell within him.

So many people think the Christian life is lived by having the correct theology or right list of rules to follow or a strong enough resume of good works that we have performed. But really... the fruit we produce is not produced because we do (or have) those things, but fruit is produced spontaneously if we open our viens to the life of Jesus that coarses throughout the vine. You are right that it is our relationship with Jesus (our dwelling within him and him in us) that matters for fruit production.

Pretty interesting too that he doesn't get rid of our personality and passions (which he created) in this unique connection, but he joins them to himself -using them to his glory - so that we can live vibrantly and produce fruit spontaneously. :-)