GROWING SPIRITUALLY

Stafford Greer, Bearspaw Lead Site Pastor

"And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness." - Colossians 2:6-7

Moving can be difficult, and while there are many things to look forward to, there is also a sense of loss as one chapter of life ends and another one begins. Overall, our move from Southern Manitoba to our home in Cochrane has gone exceptionally well for all of us as a family and we have felt God’s blessing and provision along the way. One of the difficult things about saying goodbye to our place in Morden was leaving our yard and garden behind. While we do love our new place, it simply doesn’t have the same soil, growing season, and size of our old place. Plus, we’re completely starting from scratch, so that requires some more up-front effort to get the gardens in and growing.

While Joanne was the brains behind ensuring our gardens were planned, planted, and harvested, I also enjoyed my tag-along role in maintaining and building them. There was something satisfying to cultivate, plant, water, and weed the garden as we waited for late-summer harvest.

We would wander out to the garden at 6 a.m. in our house coats, coffee in hand, plucking little weeds and delighting in the new green shoots coming up from the soil. Eventually, the garden would be bursting with green foliage (and weeds). Each year, there would be times that we’d notice something concerning with a certain garden plot or plant… it would be very green and leafy, but there would be no fruit on it. The squash plant would take over a whole corner of the garden, hogging the sunshine and spending all of its nutrients on spreading its vines everywhere. It was pretty to look at, but was so disappointing when the harvest would come. We had so little fruit - if any - from this plant that looked so green and lush.

Jesus also has much to say in the gospels about a vine (or tree) that grows but does not bear any fruit - it is useless. Fruit bearing plants are expected to bear fruit, and not bearing any fruit is for that plant to be useless and needing to be uprooted to make way in the garden for plants that do produce fruit.

Similarly, the plants that do bear fruit require constant maintenance through the skill of pruning - the intentional cutting back of the plant so that its energy and nutrients are distributed to the fruit and not just the leafy greens.

As a church, we are entering a season where we are going to be exploring what it means for us to live out our purpose of following and teaching the way of Jesus so that people near and far would encounter and be transformed by him - through our GATHER, GROW, GIVE, GO framework.

This week, we are exploring what it looks like for us to be a church that GROWS spiritually. There is research that shows that significant spiritual growth happens through the practice of reading Scripture on a regular basis. As such, we’re inviting people to read Scripture together on a regular basis through our weekly Scripture reading plans (you can find a link to the plan right on our website rockpointe.ca or through the YouVersion bible app under more→events→RockPointe).

We are also going to be strategic in offering other ways for RockPointers to grow spiritually through intentional prayer and worship evenings. Three times a year, we will set apart time for a corporate worship. The first one will be held on Sunday February 23 from 6-7:30 p.m. at Bearspaw. It is open for all ages, and will help give us the opportunity to continue to GROW in our faith. Looking forward to seeing you there!