Product or Produce?

Dr. Barrett L. Mosbacker
Superintendendent, Briarwood Christian School (Birmingham, AL)
Full post available on The Christian School Journal

I love dessert. One of my favorites is pecan pie. When I sit down to enjoy a piece of warm pecan pie Ala Mode there are two things that I am careful to do: 1) I eat slowly savoring each mouth watering morsel and 2) I am very careful not to waste a single crumb. My dog can lick a plate clean but he has nothing over me when it comes to getting every last morsel of taste off of my plate! When it comes to my dessert, I do not waste it!

Are We Wasting Our Lives and Ministry?
Dessert is trivial when compared with one's life and ministry. One of my fears is that my efforts will be wasted. I sometimes ask myself, "in the end, will all of my hard work and long hours, the stress in dealing with upset parents and the occasional recalcitrant employee, and the energy expended in creating a world-class Christian school prove to be for naught? What if the only thing that I have achieved is the creation of a great product--superior students, excellent staff, and an outstanding school--but I have not borne fruit? What if I am doing many good things but ultimately not the essential thing? What if I am building and running a very efficient factory rather than planting and cultivating an orchard?"

If I build a great school and produce great students but those students do not grow to love and obey Christ and if they do not learn to love their neighbors--and if the fault lies with me because I failed to do what was necessary to produce spiritual fruit rather than creating a great product--then I will have ultimately failed in my calling. I will have wasted the ministry entrusted to my stewardship. That would be tragic.

To ensure that we are cultivating produce and not merely producing a product we need to be clear what produce or fruit is. What does authentic fruit look like in a Christian school?

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