We just started our fifteenth year in Hickory, NC. Hickory is in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a beautiful area with all four seasons. Hickory’s a town of 42,000, so our church has two main campuses: our Lake Hickory Campus about a mile or little less than a mile from Lake Hickory and our downtown campus that we started during Covid. The downtown campus is very small and in the middle of the government housing authority. We had four campuses total, but now we’re down to three, which is a good thing. We also just gave over a campus to the Cherokee Reservation, which they call Palau Boundary. It’s a good set up, and God is moving.
We’ve seen some incredible things take place in and through our ministry time in Hickory, and I’d like to share some principles of growth with you today in the hopes that it will speak to you and encourage you where you’ve been commissioned to serve. I truly believe the Lord has blessed our crew here, and we have some of the best people in the world attending our church. I want you to feel the same about your church.
The first principle is: You need to grow where you are planted. A lot of times we look at how other people are doing things and how their ministry is taking off and what they’re doing in their ministry. We look at pastors like they are coaches. Maybe we can copycat their ministries. But not everyone has the same DNA.
Let me give you an example. When we pastored in Iowa, I had a good friend named Bruce. He and I were driving on a two-lane highway. In Iowa, there are cornfields on the left and soybeans on the right. In the middle of the soybean field, I noticed some stalks of corn growing up. I said, “Bruce, what’s up with that? How come the corn is growing in the soybeans? Are they left over from last year?” We laughed about it. I asked, “How do they sort it out? When they harvest the soybeans, they’re going to have some corn in there.”
That’s when Bruce said something very profound: “Pastor, there won’t be any corn on those stalks because they’re volunteer. They weren’t planted there.” It’s important that we grow where we’re planted so that we become fruitful. We’ll talk about that more in a minute.
The next principle is: Be where your feet are. David said, “This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.” That word “will” really means to choose, to choose to rejoice, to personally do what it takes.
My oldest son, Andrew, is one of our worship pastors. He’s been running for quite some time and encouraged me to join him. I ran years ago, but time and age and whatever took me off the track. So I started running again. The problem with running in Hickory is the foothills. Everywhere you run there’s a hill. There’s a hill by our house that has a 257-foot incline, and when we do a loop, it’s a killer hill at the very end. Andrew was giving me some strategies on how to run the hill. I said, “You know, I can stop and walk the hill too.” Here’s what came out of my mouth, “Even Navy Seals have to crawl sometimes.”
I think we look at ourselves and think we’re not successful if we’re not making big bounds and big gains. Scripture teaches us that it’s ok to take it one day at a time, one step at a time, one moment at a time. Successes are found in smaller strategies. It’s good to have a big vision, a big mission, but it’s also good to have strong strategies. Day by day, step by step – that allows you to get to where you need to be.
The third principle is: Produce YOUR fruit. I capitalized “your” because it’s important. Back in the ‘70’s, churches had choirs, then life centers, then small groups. It used to be that everyone had a choir, everyone had a gym, then everyone had to have a small group. Now we have coffee shops, multi-campuses and church plants. Everything’s good – it’s not bad – it just may not be what God has for you.
I preached a sermon series early this year. In it, I studied trees. I found out through many different sources that trees never die of old age. I’ll say it again: trees never die of old age. They may die of lack of nutrition, they may die of lightening strikes, they may die of illness or disease caused by a bug. But trees will never die of old age. They are geared to live forever.
Also, trees can only produce the fruit that’s inside of them. If it’s a peach tree, it’s going to produce peaches. If it’s an apple tree, it’s going to produce apples. We have to produce what God has placed inside us. It’s important for us to understand that. We may be an outreach ministry, but someone else is in worship ministry. Someone else may be a ministry to the poor and someone else might be a study/discipleship ministry. We need to be all of those. But sometimes we center on one because it’s our niche, the fruit that’s inside us.
The thing about producing fruit is, only a healthy tree will produce fruit, so we have to worry about our health and not our fruit. The fruit will come. The fruit is a byproduct of a healthy tree, and a healthy tree is geared to live forever and never die of old age. That’s kind of the tree of life that’s within us. Our fruit will get us to the next level because our fruit is the byproduct of the seed that God has already planted inside us.
So if we will commit to growing where God plants us, be where we are, choosing to do what it takes day in and day out to make progress, and produce our own unique fruit, we will see God move in our community and the growth of both new Christians and committed believers in our churches.
