Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ…If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.  1 Corinthians12:12,26

Last time we were talking about nurturing new believers and used Paul’s analogy of a mother nursing a child. Another metaphor that might help, is vineyards. Jesus used this in talking about vines and vine-dressers (Jn 15).

Sure, having a healthy vineyard includes weeding out the ugly, and often that’s all the help people will get from their more entrenched churchmates because it’s all we can see. But nurturing Christians can see a lot more and go much further.

A nurturing vinedresser can take the newly-growing shoots and attach them to a trellis so they can get the support sunshine and watering they need to grow higher, stronger, and more fruitful. Otherwise, the newbie might just wallow in the dirt and never go anywhere.

And while the nurturing person might do some weeding, too, they are also backfilling. Like Jesus’ warning about chasing out a demon and leaving the host clean but EMPTY, we often find that Christian discipleship programs are good at ‘weeding’ out the ugly in the lives of people we minister to, but leave craters in their place—like an open invitation for seven-times worse problems in the future (Lk 11:26) if we aren’t backfilling the hole that left with Jesus.

Hurt people are often the ones who are drawn to Jesus. He offers solutions they know they need. But hurt people have a real knack at getting themselves into situations where they will be hurt again and again. Nurturing disciple-makers know that removing the weeds from hurting people’s lives is not enough.

Hurting people need to be cultivated, fertilized, and tended… nurtured. Cultivating the beautiful in the people who come into our lives—people who are bearing the wounds. Encouraging them in overcoming debilitating disappointment, betrayal and bitterness. Supporting through the forgiveness process and rebuilding their lives with love, joy, peace, etc. (Gal 5:22,23)

It involves holding their disappointments up to the light of the things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable (Phil 4:8) and helping them choose that path of recovery (often, over and over again). As we saw last time, when this doesn’t happen, the whole Body suffers. And that might be some of the reason so many local churches are suffering.

With local churches being pulled in many directions, it’s not unusual that congregations are not equipped to nurture and maintain a vibrant spiritual life. That takes too much time and attention from the professionals (church staff) who may be suffering their own wounds and disappointments.

The true nurturers among us are the ones who see the nurturing ministry of Jesus, and are working with Him to set the oppressed free and bear-up the wounded.

The error of the Pharisees was in thinking that they could attain a level of spiritual vitality by distancing themselves from the hurting. They didn’t see the need for Jesus’ nurturing ministry of liberty for the prisoners and setting the oppressed free (Lk 4:18). Invariably, that attitude made them vulnerable to becoming oppressors in their own right (11:46)! And so it is today.