From Donald Miller's Blog: "Following God and Farming"

Donald Miller has a great post at his blog, and I'm really resonating with the themes he brings up, and found his words encouraging. The first year in ministry in a new setting is a year (for me at least) that is trying to find that tricky balance between just getting to know where you're at and being so full of ideas that you want to try out.

Excerpt:

"Years ago, when Rick McKinley started the church plant Imago-Dei in Portland, he preached a sermon about his own experiences in the first year. At the time, the church may have only had a couple-hundred people attending. At the time, he said he thought things would be more exciting, that there would be fireworks all the time. But as he prayed about building the church, he realized that telling a great story is a lot like farming. He recalled hunting on some property in Eastern Oregon, sitting in a duck blind, watching a farmer a couple fields away just driving his tractor back and forth. Rick said that is what building a church looks like, it looks like farming. It figures, because, well, God invented farming. Now, Imago-Dei has a couple thousand people attending, and the ministry affects nearly every corner of Portland. But it happened slowly, with a farmer who kept driving his tractor back and forth in a small field.

So two questions I’m asking myself these days are what is my field to plow, and am I plowing it?"