Root-Bound

Just weeks before the pandemic shut down the world, we moved back into our house following a major (and lengthy) renovation. We had planned a big open house for friends and neighbors, but that was not to be. We were able to have a thank you party, though, for those who had worked on our old house, even with boxes all around and without much of the furniture in place. One of the guys came with a small plant, an anthurium, in a little red pot. In all the to-do of the party, I just set the pot on the window sill over the sink. And there it stayed for months and months and months. It was in a convenient place for watering, and it got good sun. But after a while it stopped growing and it stopped blooming. It was badly root-bound. A while back I decided to repot it. With its roots loosened and fresh soil, and in a new sunny spot, it began to grow and put out new shoots that started blooming. 

And I think that so many churches are like that little anthurium – they have become root-bound. It is so comfortable and convenient to stay the same, do things the same way, avoid the kind of uprooting that change can bring. Those churches may not die but they don’t grow either. They don’t flourish. They don’t bloom. 

The pandemic has kept us all in place. Now that the threat seems to be easing, maybe it is time to repot, to change the things that have hindered growth, to look for new ways of being. This is hard and disruptive and often painful. It is so much easier to keep on with what we were doing before the pandemic. But the stark reality for many churches is that if they can’t change, if they can’t spread their roots into new soil, if they can’t enlarge their vision beyond their own s(pot), they will die -- maybe not overnight, but eventually. But those who can be honest about the past, who can do the hard and messy work of repotting themselves, the ones who can change, may just start to thrive and grow and bloom again. May it be so!

Anthurium in a new pot and a good sunny spot!