Planting Seeds That Create Movement

By Heather Baker Utley

One of the highlights of Clay’s and my ministry journey with teens was about six years into our full-time ministry. We took a group of teens to the Free Methodist Youth Conference (FMYC) for a week of discipleship, community building, and service. On one of the last nights of the trip, our teens had a spiritual breakthrough in response to a sermon by Bishop Matt Thomas. Walls came down; students asked to be baptized; honest confessions were made.

Soon after we returned, one of the students who had a breakthrough weekend in her faith pulled back from a relationship with us. The following year she graduated and moved to college. It was always a source of pain for me that after a tremendous breakthrough, she pulled back and disappeared. I felt like a failure. I didn’t know if she was angry or embarrassed. I felt like something I’d done had eroded her trust in us. I wanted to do whatever I could to make it right. I texted her every so often to let her know we loved her and missed her, and she rarely, if ever, replied.

A few years later, she became a woman on fire for the Lord. She met God in a powerful way through her college campus ministry. She raised funds for a summer mission. She also organized an outreach project to the city and mobilized our youth group to participate.

After she graduated from college, she reached out to me and Clay again. She had been called to ministry and had joined her college ministry full-time. She called to meet with us as she was in the process of raising funds. We happily agreed to meet with her. She met us for lunch and told us all about her love of God and evangelistic ministry. She seemed surprised that we were eager to financially support her work.

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“We had been there when her first seed of faith was starting to emerge.”

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We knew she couldn’t possibly understand what it meant for us to see her heart full of love for the Lord and a desire to serve Him. We had been there when her first seed of faith was starting to emerge. Now we were seeing it bearing fruit! Six years later she is still serving the Lord. She has been called to a challenging ministry setting that she absolutely loves. She has led countless people to the Lord and radiates the joy of Christ.

The funny part of all of this is that when we asked her when her faith journey began, she pointed to the significance of her college ministry. We reminded her of her breakthrough on our high school trip, but she seemed like she was struggling to recall it. In my understanding of the way God works, those early days she spent in children’s and youth ministry were the work of planting seeds. As ministers, we planted the seed of the whole gospel for her to carry forward with her. It wasn’t a seed of the salvation message alone. Her early teachers taught her the Scriptures and invited her to follow Jesus’ teachings. Her youth leaders cultivated a Christian community where she could be herself and experience belonging. We created trips where she served in ministry with marginalized people and retreats where she encountered God’s Spirit.

The trip to FMYC was a pivotal moment when she had a tremendous spiritual breakthrough; it was a time when the seed of the whole gospel began emerging from her heart. Several years later in her college ministry, she fully awakened to the God who had been planted in her heart all along. It was then that she became a true disciple, seeking after God with her whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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“She now is a part of planting and cultivating gospel seeds in them.”

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Thanks to years and years of kids ministers, youth ministers, and college ministers investing in her, her seed is fully matured, and she’s transforming the lives of other young adults. She now is a part of planting and cultivating gospel seeds in them. She also now sees and understands how those early days were so important to her faith.

Small Seed, Large Capacity

J.R. Woodward and Dan White Jr. say it this way:

“Movements are built on the smallest seeds; the apple seed carries the potent power of the whole apple tree. Discipleship is the work of shaping disciples to carry the seed of the entire mission” (The Church as Movement: Starting and Sustaining Missional-Incarnational Communities, p. 89, InterVarsity Press).

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“We cannot anticipate how much fruit a seed can bear in the future.”

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The movement of discipleship in God’s kingdom is built with the tiniest of seeds that have the capacity to transform the whole world. In corporate models of success, we can be tempted to focus on the trees already producing fruit. One risk of this temptation is we may miss out on the seeds that are still germinating. We cannot anticipate how much fruit a seed can bear in the future.

I look back at how many different people came into the lives of this one student year after year after year. It took dozens of people working together by the power of God’s Spirit for her gospel seed to take root. It took a whole church investing its time and finances into youth and children’s ministries to cultivate the seedbed for her flourishing.

Tending, Cultivating, Praying

All of that to say: our entire church community can participate in movement-based discipleship. First, we need to tend to the seeds planted in the heart of a new or young believer. Their flourishing must always be the priority in our ministry. Second, we need to cultivate a church community where we extend love and grace to the people who disappear. We literally have no idea what God is going to do in their lives in the future. Third, we need to prayerfully remember them before God, praying for God’s Spirit to cultivate a rooted faith they can carry into the future. We cannot anticipate the obstacles they face in building a faith that will last.

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“It’s about taking seriously our commitment to prepare our children, youth, young adults, and new believers.”

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These are my questions for our churches:

• Is the faith we are sharing the whole gospel?
• Have we given the people in our church everything they need for their seed of faith to take root?
• Are we making disciples who are enabled to carry the seed forward with them?

Movement discipleship is focused on producing people who carry with them everything they need to join God’s mission. It’s about taking seriously our commitment to prepare our children, youth, young adults, and new believers. Our mission is to prepare disciples who carry a seed of the whole gospel with them to the place God is calling them to go.

This is an expanded version of an article that initially appeared in The River Conference’s newsletter, The Current, and it is republished with permission.

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