Trying to Disprove the Parable of the Sower

Ministers are struggling. It’s a major concern in every church conversation I’m party to in the USA. Much of that has to do with current events in our country. But much of it is also a product of cultural values that make ministry harder than it has to be. As one of my mentors used to say, “Disillusionment is the child of illusion.” Or as they say in AA, “Unrealistic expectations are a form of premeditated resentment.” 

I think it is time we reset our expectations. Here is reality without the hype. Ministry doesn’t work most of the time. Most people do not have ears to hear. Most of the traffic is on the wrong road. This is not a secret. Jesus told us it would be this way over and over. He told us not to be pearl pushers on those who won’t see his value. Ministry is like hitting in Major League Baseball. If you hit .300 you are among the best. That means 70% of the time you walk back to the dugout instead of getting on base.

One of Jesus’ most important parables, which is included in three Gospels, is the Parable of the Sower. The point of this parable is to set our expectations appropriately. There are four kinds of hearers. Only one kind produces anything meaningful. The other three fail because they can’t hear at all, lose interest quickly when it gets difficult, or are too distracted by other life concerns to produce anything. However, those who do hear and respond will produce such a harvest that the whole enterprise is worth it. Therefore, don’t be discouraged. Don’t be soil samplers who are reluctant to engage or who target narrowly. Spread the word of God generously, even wastefully, because you never know when it will land in hearts yearning for the good news.

However, since the age of industrialization, mechanization, and mass production, this parable is often offensive to us. In a culture of Moneyball thinking, everyone wants to hack the code and find a formula that works all the time, everywhere, without fail. We want to produce deep disciples efficiently at a low cost per dollar and with minimal time investment. We get caught up in simple strategies designed to disprove the parable of the Sower and then blame ourselves and feel like failures when ministry turns out to be like Jesus said it would be.

It matters that Jesus’ kingdom parables were set in an agricultural world before mechanization and algorithms. Farming isn’t predictable—especially before the current era of corporate GMO seeds and technologically enhanced production. No matter what we do, people are not raw materials that can be rendered into some product in a factory. Disciples are hand-crafted, the process takes years, and it always remains partially incomplete.

So, what does this mean? It means first that we should not expect results that our models can’t produce. It means we are not failures if things seem slow or hard. It means that we should prepare ourselves for long hard seasons interposed with periods of rapid expansion followed by massive problems. That is what ministry looks like. That is real. And it’s worth doing because the good soil produces much by the power of God and to his glory.