To Be a Spider Plant

Ministry is a rewarding career.  I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than being able to share the good news of Jesus Christ in a variety of ways.  However, there aren’t very many concrete measuring tools.  The kind of success that I generally value is not related to numbers but more about the spiritual growth that goes on inside of a person. It is hard to hold that up to a yardstick.  That’s when I look at my spider plants.   

When I moved in to my office at Trinity, formerly occupied by Pastor Sam Hamilton-Poore,  I inherited a spider plant.  I remember meeting with Pastor Sam before I started and making a joke about the poor plant.  It was laying sideways in a pot with very little dirt.  He said he would leave it for me as a gift.  Within the first month of starting at Trinity I took the plant home, re-potted it, and put it outside in the spring sunshine to see if it would survive.  By the end of the summer, I was overwhelmed with spider plant “babies” hanging off the plant.  I cut and potted a few and returned the original to my church office.  Since that time, they have multiplied with so many new spider plants that I haven’t known what to do with them or where they have all gone.  My college age kids have them in their apartments and dorms.  I put them in with my annuals flowers outside at home and at our businesses.  They adorn the front entry of the cafe downtown.  I have given them away to friends and strangers who then have given them to others.  As I started to move my plants inside for the winter this year, I potted numerous spider plant babies to give to the youth to sell at the Scandinavian Bazaar.  One forlorn little spider plant at Trinity has given birth to countless other plants that have gone all over our community and beyond in the last 5 years.


When Jesus talked about discipleship, he used familiar images from his environment:  vines and branches, sower and soils, mustards seeds and trees.  I wonder if Jesus lived in north Iowa today, he would say, "You are spider plants."  We are to send out shoots of growth, creating new plants.  These plants then find their own soil where they can grow and create more new plants, eventually to the point that no one is sure where they all came from or where they all have gone.   


Sometimes, I like to think about the ministry at Trinity as trying to live up to my spider plant.  In the last five years, it is my hope that some words and actions of comfort, hope and challenge have reproduced in others.  And it is my belief that shoots of spiritual growth from Trinity have made an impact all over our community and beyond.


(For those of you wondering... After a 3 week silence of returning to regular ministry responsibilities and evaluating some responses to this blog, I have decided to continue writing.  Because of other time commitments, the entries may not be as often as they were during my sabbatical but will evolve as my life experiences reveal God to me in fresh ways each day.)