The Trellis and the Vine

by Colin Marshall

But it’s interesting how little the New Testament talks about church growth, and how often it talks about ‘gospel growth’ or the increase of the ‘word’.

Returning to our vine metaphor, the vine is the Spirit-empowered word, spreading and growing throughout the world, drawing people out of the kingdom of darkness into the light-filled kingdom of God’s beloved Son, and then bearing fruit in their lives as they grow in the knowledge and love of God. The vine is Jesus, and as we are grafted into him, we bear fruit (John 15:1-11).

In fact, New Testament congregations, as far as we can tell, were usually small gatherings meeting in houses. They were outwardly unimpressive, and had minimal infrastructure.

Christ kept doing what he said he would do in Matthew 16. He kept building his church.

The first and most obvious is that if this is really what God is doing in our world then it is time to say goodbye to our small and self-oriented ambitions, and to abandon ourselves to the cause of Christ and his gospel.

It is more important than our jobs, our families, our pastimes—yes, even more important than the comfort and security of familiar church life. We need to recapture the radicalism of what Jesus said to the young man who wanted to return and bury his father: “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60).

The second implication is that the growth God is looking for in our world is growth in people.

This is what the growing vine really is: it is individual, born-again believers, grafted into Christ by his word and Spirit, and drawn into mutually edifying fellowship with one another.

The third momentous implication is that this people-growth happens only through the power of God’s Spirit as he applies his word to people’s hearts.

In the previous chapter we put forward a simple but profound proposition: that the work God is doing in the world now, in these last days between the first and second comings of Christ, is to gather people into his kingdom through the prayerful proclamation of the gospel. God is growing his vine through his word and Spirit.

Or to put it more sharply, who really does the vine work?

do all Christians play a part in vine work?

There are not two sorts of disciples—the inner core who really serve Jesus and his gospel, and the rest.

The Great Commission, in other words, is not just for the Eleven. It’s the basic agenda for all disciples. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker.

We chat to people afterwards, and then go home for a normal week of work or study or whatever it is that we do, in time to come again next week. We might read our Bible and pray during the week. We may even attend a small group. But would someone observing from outside say: “Look: there is someone who has abandoned his life to Jesus Christ and his mission”?

As the magnificent prayer for boldness in Acts 4 makes clear, the early Christian disciples all regarded themselves as “servants” of Jesus, and all were given the Holy Spirit to speak out in his name:

Speaking God’s word for the growth of the vine is the work not of the few but of the many.

Speaking the word to one another In Ephesians 4, Paul famously lists the gifts that the ascended Christ has given the church—apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor-teachers. And, just as famously, he says that the work of these foundational word ministries is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (ESV) or to “prepare God’s people for works of service” (NIV).

Paul goes on to say that the goal of all this ministry (whoever is doing it) is the building of the body of Christ to unified, doctrinally sound maturity.

The point is that all the Colossians are to teach and admonish one another.

Romans 15:14

(Heb 3:12-13)

(Heb 10:24-25)

Now the Corinthians had real problems, both over the nature of leadership and over how each member could contribute to the edification of the congregation.

summarized as follows:

summary verse is 14:26:

We do not all have the same function, but we are all urged to abound in “the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58).

is somewhat surprising that the New Testament contains relatively few exhortations for ordinary believers to speak the gospel to others. Scholars and missiologists have debated the reasons for this. One possible answer lies in the reality that the gospel was advancing irresistibly from one region to another, powerfully breaking into first-century society, saving individuals and forming communities of Christ. The first believers were inevitably caught up in this dynamic, Spirit-inspired movement and could not have avoided ‘evangelism’, even if they had wanted to. If you stuck your head up as a convert to Christ, whether Jew, God-fearing Gentile or pagan, you were in danger of getting it lopped off.

The gospel had so transformed their world view, and the Holy Spirit had so enlivened them, that the word of the Lord “sounded forth” from the Thessalonians, both locally and further afield. The Greek word used here (execheõ) conveys the picture of God’s word ringing out from them as the sound from a clanging bell. They could not keep the message to themselves, even though their social relationships were now very difficult.

(1 Cor 10:31-11:1)

It is very striking that Paul calls upon ordinary believers in Corinth to be imitators of him, as he is of Christ. And this imitating is not in some general sense, but in actively seeking the salvation of others.

The Christian without a missionary heart is an anomaly.

We are called to pray for the bold proclamation of the gospel in the world (Col 4:2-3).

Penn Jillette is an avowed and vocal atheist, and one-half of the famous comic-illusionist act Penn and Teller.

“…I’ve always said, you know, that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell, or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward… How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe it, and that truck was bearing down on you, there is a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that…”[2]

ten ways in which any Christian might “speak the truth in love” to someone else in the name of Christ, and thus participate in God’s great work in the world:

We all exist in three spheres or contexts of life: our family or home life; our interaction with friends, colleagues, neighbours and the wider community; and fellowship with God’s people in our congregations.

If you want yet another way of expressing the same point, what we are really talking about is a Bible-reading movement—in families, in churches, in neighbourhoods, in workplaces, everywhere. Imagine if all Christians, as a normal part of their discipleship, were caught up in a web of regular Bible reading—not only digging into the word privately, but reading it with their children before bed, with their spouse over breakfast, with a non-Christian colleague at work once a week over lunch, with a new Christian for follow-up once a fortnight for mutual encouragement, and with a mature Christian friend once a month for mutual encouragement.

For a start, it radically dissolves many of the traditional distinctions between ‘clergy’ and ‘laity’. Many of us minister in contexts where the unspoken (or even spoken!) assumption is that it is the pastor’s job to build the church, and the members’ job to receive that ministry and to support it through involvement in a range of jobs and roles—counting the money, organizing morning tea, ushering, serving on committees, and so on. The pastor (or pastoral staff team) is really the one who does the vine work and the rest of us do what we can to maintain the trellis, not least by giving money.

The pastors and elders certainly take the lead in vine work (in prayer and proclamation), and are responsible for guarding and teaching the word and maintaining the gold standard of sound doctrine. But one of the effects of this work is to equip and release the members to do vine work themselves. We saw this in Ephesians where the whole congregation was to “speak the truth in love” as a result of the ministry of the pastor-teachers.

Does this sound too extreme? Or too demanding on the struggling Christians you know? Or just too hard to persuade people of?

Is it really true, we often get asked, that the normal Christian life includes disciple-making? What about those who are barely hanging on to faith in Christ?

For daring to preach Christ as the true king rather than Caesar, Paul was in prison, probably in Rome, and facing the very real prospect of execution (1:13-14, 21).

The fellowship that the Philippians shared with Paul was not a cup of tea after church, or a pleasant evening of Bible study. The Philippians and Paul were sharers together in God’s grace through Jesus Christ (1:7).

The Greek word behind “let your manner of life” in verse 27 means to “live as a citizen”. The noun form of the word is used in 3:20: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus

This is why unity is so important in the congregation, and why complaining, grumbling and discord is so totally out of place. The wonderful passage about the other-person-centred humility of Christ in chapter 2 is, in context, a call for the Philippians to put aside selfish motives and petty rivalries so that they can strive together for the sake of the gospel, shining like beacons in the corrupt society around them:

(Phil 2:14-16)

Did you get that? Epaphroditus was distressed not because he was ill, but because they heard he was ill. How many of us can say that about our attitude when we are sick?!

The gospel itself demands that we stand with our leaders and preachers in profound unity, teamwork and solidarity—not because of their personalities or gifts, but because of our common partnership in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There aren’t two classes of Christians—the partners and the spectators. We’re all in it together.