Tomatoes don't grow in winter

Spades are in the ground in the back hall as it gets redeveloped for the launch of our Youth Club on the 18^th of September. Once again, I am not only grateful but genuinely surprised at the way the Lord is speeding up growth and development in this Church. For those of you who may not have picked up on this yet, my wife and I work very well together because our gifts are polar opposites of each other. She’s a better listener, I’m a better talker. She’s comfortable behind the scenes, I am comfortable on the frontline. She’s the administrator, I’m the pioneer. She’s organised, I’m creative. She must have a plan for almost everything, while I am much happier to improvise. She’s cautious, I’m the risk-taker. She’s the brake and I’m the accelerator – and together we’ve always been able to travel at the right speed. Over the years, I’ve learnt when to let her press on the brake and she’s learnt when to let me press on the accelerator. All this to say – I am perfectly comfortable with speed and all the risks that come with it. Yet, in the last 12 months I found myself almost asking the Lord to slow down a bit (almost).

The speed at which things are developing reminded me of Nehemiah’s comments on the speed with which him and the few returners managed to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem after being destroyed by the Babylonian army almost a century prior. To this day, scholars are still debating how Nehemiah and the relatively few untrained and inexperienced men and women managed to rebuild the walls and all its gates in just 52 days. Nehemiah himself struggled to believe their achievement – and could only explain the speed of their work as an expression of God’s grace: “So on October 2 the wall was finished—just fifty-two days after we had begun. When our enemies and the surrounding nations heard about it, they were frightened and humiliated. They realized this work had been done with the help of our God.” (Nehemiah 6:15-16).

Over the years, I have known other Church leaders that have experienced unusual acceleration. The most recent one is Jon Featherstone, who leads an Elim Church in Wimbledon. For the last two years, they’ve had water baptism every single Sunday and saw the Church growing from around 200 people to 600+. Listening to his story, he does not attribute this growth to himself or a new strategy. Rather, he confesses that after many long years of ministry, him and his wife were ready to pack it in – until God started to move! By his own admission, the growth they are experiencing is simply the result of God ushering the Church into a different season – where they are finally reaping the fruits of years of hard labour. This is also how I interpret the rapid pace of TGBC’s growth and development – the Lord has graciously ushered this Church into a new season.

Not only do we thank God and rejoice in it, but we should take it as a reminder that, from heaven’s perspective, success is not measured in terms of fruitfulness but faithfulness. For seasons come and go and sometimes they do not produce fruit in keeping with our labour. However, where there is faithfulness to the Lord and his work, where there is hope and patient endurance, fruitfulness will invariably follow. It may take longer than we wished for, and sometimes it may follow us somewhere else, but it will come – and as a reward of our faithfulness during the Autumn’s misery and Winter’s barrenness.

So, if any of our readers find themselves navigating a season of frustrat

ion, scarcity, opposition or grief, do not think for a minute that the Lord has abandoned you. It may simply be that tomatoes don’t grow in winter! Rather than get frustrated at a meagre harvest, learn to recognise the seasons and work accordingly. As King Solomon declares in Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything – a time for war and for peace, for building up and tearing down, a time to grieve and one to rejoice (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). But in all things, let us remain faithful to the Lord and his work. For that, is true success.