Sustaining Pastoral Excellence

Where Excellence Can Bloom

By Kenneth L. Carder

One spring, our granddaughter enthusiastically joined her grandmother in planting flowers and sowing seeds in anticipation of a summer harvest of beauty. Together, they carefully prepared the soil, gently placed the plants in the fertile ground and selectively and strategically dropped the seeds into the black earth. When her grandmother went into the house to get a bucket of water, Megan exercised her creative exuberance. She reached into the bag containing zinnia seeds. Reminiscent of Jesus’ parable of the extravagant sower (Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8), she joyfully broke out of the confines of the cultivated space and began scattering zinnia seeds indiscriminately.

Time passed, rain fell, the sun grew brighter and shined longer, warming the earth and drawing forth the beauty buried in the soil pregnant with potential life. Soon, zinnias began appearing in the most unlikely places—in the lawn grass, under the shade of the oak tree, under the boxwoods, and even in cracks in the paved driveway. Many of Megan’s seeds didn’t survive, but we had zinnias in surprising places where nobody else had them. Because of the exuberant and extravagant sowing of a three-year-old, flowers bloomed all over the place.

Circuit riders, missionaries, evangelists and pastors traversed the America of the 18th and 19th centuries, sowing seeds of the Christian gospel and planting congregations across the countryside. Churches were built within access of the farmers and merchants and their families who populated the farms, villages and small towns of frontier America.

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