Strawberry Revolutions

The Gospel is a strawberry plant.

Plants are generally grown from seed, or by transplant.  We’ve got a nice healthy basil in our kitchen window, but it was bought full-grown at Home Depot and we started enjoying it immediately.  It fills our little ceramic pot and our Italian dinners are made even more special when we simply pluck a leaf or two off to enjoy with pasta.

But strawberry plants are different.

They don’t generally grow from seed, or through transplant – though it can happen.  That might be how a strawberry field begins, but it propagates naturally with “runners.”

Strawberry plant runners are like little arms of the plant that shoot out from its base, and find a nice healthy spot of soil about 6 inches away from the original plant.  There may be 4-8 runners coming off of every plant.  The interesting thing about these runners is that they are not extensions of the plant, or branches off the plant, but a brand new plant! Even if you were to cut off a runner, if it successfully embedded itself in some good soil, it would start a new strawberry plant and begin spreading all over the place.

Christians fear that their mission work, their sharing of the Gospel, has to be bought at a Home Depot of sorts.  They spend all their resources in evangelism on getting their friends to “come to church” so that the moving church service will convince them to become a Christian too.  This is like buying your basil at Home Depot. Nothing wrong with it – basil tastes great on pasta!

But basil will never cover the earth on its own…only strawberries, mustard, and maybe kudzu can.

Sharing the Gospel like a strawberry plant means putting out feelers into your local context (don’t try stretching too far at first!) and planting the full Gospel in the soil all around you.  You are never too far from your mission field, and you’ve got it in you to plant not just seeds, but whole new plants in God’s garden. Where are your feelers now?  Where are your church’s feelers planting themselves to make new churches?

Plant strawberries – don’t buy basil.

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