We use the language of ‘planting’ churches because it’s more organic than, say ‘founding’ churches or ‘building’ churches. And ‘planting’ also helps us remember that it’s only Christ who builds his church; it’s only Christ who founded his church, and he himself is the cornerstone, but ‘I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.’ (1 Corinthians 3:6 ESV)

But if we’re going to evoke that imagery of planting, let’s also remember that it takes a long, long time, for a sprout to become a sapling to become a mature tree that actually bears fruit.

I want to see our church grow. I want there to be more people in our church next year than there are this Sunday. But if our church is going to grow — and not just by gobbling up and assimilating erstwhile believers from other congregations — that means we have to make disciples. We have to be fruitful as a branch of the vine, organically and integrally connected to Christ the true vine. And that means we have to become mature in Christ.

You don’t pick apples from saplings, and nobody plants a vine one year and gathers grapes the next. And as believers, as a church, we have no right to expect God to jolly well jump up and start growing our church the second we decide that’s what we want.

Jesus said,

‘Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.’

John 15:4-6 ESV

A branch on a vine needs to grow, thicken, deepen, before it can produce fruit. It has to be pruned for several years before the branch will bear a good crop of grapes. When a branch first shoots off of the vine, it’s thin and green and soft and it won’t bear a thing. But a branch that is mature, with a deep and strong connection to the vine, that branch bears fruit. And it bears it repeatedly, season by season, year after year after year, and in ever increasing abundance, because it is mature.

So the beginning of growth, the beginning of fruit — by which I mean making converts, baptising them, and discipling them — is becoming mature. It’s abiding in Christ, drawing deeply on Christ, by committing deeply to the means of grace: the preaching of the word, prayer, the sacraments, fellowship, meditating on the word of God. These are the gifts given to us for our abiding in Christ. It’s these means of grace that mature us as a branch, so that we might bear fruit.

It seems crooked — ‘Are you saying that instead of reaching out with the gospel, we should be coming to church and going to Bible study? Isn’t that backwards, inward-looking, institutional thinking?’

I’m saying that if you want grapes, you have to plant a vine, prune it, and wait. And if you want to be a church that is bearing the fruit of making and discipling new believers, you have to be abiding in Christ.

If we want to make disciples — if we want to see our churches grow — if we want to participate in the mission to which Christ has called us — then we need to dedicate ourselves first and foremost to being people who deeply abide in Christ. Apart from him we can do nothing, and as he says, you want to see someone who bears much fruit? Look for someone who abides in Christ, and Christ in him.

When is the best time to plant a vine? 20 years ago. When is the second best time? Today.

So if we want to see fruit, the first thing we do is not necessarily to immediately start a 7-week evangelistic course. If we want to see fruit, the first thing we do is to abide in Christ — put our roots down deep into him, as a fellowship, and as individuals. Prayer. The Word. Service. Worship. The sacraments. That’s how we go deep. That’s how we abide in Christ. That’s how we bear fruit.

It’s not fast. There’s no flatpack solution to this, no algorithmic wizardry, no shortcuts. But if we want true growth, true fruit in the life of our church and in our town, we need to be thinking, not of next year, not of five years from now. We need to be thinking, who will we be, what will our church be in thirty years, and start to prepare for that. We need to be beginning the slow, deep, organic practices of abiding in Christ. If we want our children’s children to drink good, aged wine, we need to plant a vine right now. And if we want our children’s children to worship in churches that are deep and strong and bearing fruit, we need to get about the business of abiding in Christ right now.