Farmville Witnessing

This blog is inspired from a conversation that took place in my small group at church regarding witnessing.

To elaborate on the background a little, one member of the small group was lamenting that after bringing a coworker to church for three Sunday's, that coworker had not made a decision to accept Christ yet.

I feel that this is analogous to Farmville. Farmville is a ridiculously popular (for no reason in my opinion) game on Facebook where one can manage a virtual farm and raise crops. I'm sure its as thrilling as it sounds. However, it is hyper successful due to the fact that it constantly rewards players with a series of achievements that they can illustrate to their friends via incessant postings on how many stupid chickens they kicked out of their corn that day. Hurray!

People have even rearranged their sleep schedules to make sure their crops are getting watered when they need to be, and they check in on their neighbors farms to get more points. Ultimately, what has this game brought them?

They are not ever going to be real farmers, but they get to "reap the benefits" of a virtual farm in a fraction of the time a real-life growing season would take. I think sometimes we look for this in evangelism. We plant a spiritual seed and expect to see immediate results.

This is despite the fact that the Bible clearly tells us that one man may reap what another sows and that there are clearly people who invest into someones life and never see any "results" from it as the harvest will not come till after that person is through.

I also think that this may in fact hamper our desire to even attempt to plant a seed. Afterall, who wants to put in work if we can't see any results? We crave those little "achievements". But I'd propose that it is actually easier to scatter seed than to reap in the harvest.

I challenge myself, and each of you, to scatter as much seed as possible. If you get to reap, or water, or get punched in the face, great! But if we scatter as much seed as possible, we're doing our jobs! Also, if you see any chickens in my corn, feel free to kick them out.... or make nuggets out of them.