Old Barns, New Harvest

Growing up I lived across the highway from a barn that looked similar to this one. When my parents finally gave me permission to cross the road, that old barn brought many hours of boyhood pleasure to me. I explored every nook and cranny. I still remember the musty smell that wafted up from the ground floor, where hundreds of cows found refuge, chewed their cud, and left their deposits. I would play on the stacked bales of hay that towered to the peak of that old barn. I played hide and seek with friends and siblings. One year we even built some amazing tunnels in the haystacks. A litter of puppies was born to my favorite childhood dog, "Peppy," in that old barn. She was my dog. She actually came to the house one day and "asked" me to follow her back to the barn, so she could proudly display her kids. Sadly, Peppy was killed crossing the road to that old barn.

That barn lasted far longer than it should have. It was old when I enjoyed it. I often wondered how that old barn long withstood the test of time and weather. I could come only come up with one answer. The farmer who used that old barn kept it filled with hay. While it appeared that the barn held the hay, I believe the hay held up the barn. At least it was a symbiotic relationship.

This is not unlike the relationship between the church and the harvest of souls. It seems that the church holds the new believers that God might give it. There is, of course, some truth to that. But I think it is far more true, that the new believers hold up the church. They keep it from falling down and imploding on itself.

Our guest speaker said yesterday that today's church worries far more about the barn than the harvest. That, I believe, is the death knell of the church. It might take a while, but a church without a harvest is a dying church. It will surely fall down someday. And while it's dying, just like an empty old barn, it will be one dangerous place to be.

Let us Christians and the churches we attend restore our focus on the harvest. We do that by putting our focus back on Jesus. After all, He is the "Lord of the Harvest."