Is discipleship a People Path or People Garden?

We know we are journeying on a pathway towards eternity.  Jesus said, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." Mt 7:13–14.

For this reason, we, pastors, often categorize discipleship as a "people path." We think of the maturity process as if it were an assembly line or college degree, as if one step down the road leads to another, as if one set of knowledge builds on another.  We plan start-and-finish projects or programs.  We say to ourselves, "We are growing when we've completed that thing..."  I am wondering if it is possible that we've made an error with our imagery, or at least an error focusing so much on this particular image?

What if discipleship is more like being a garden on the path?  What if its not about walking further down the endless road, adding parts, and adding pedigree?  What if its not about walking into the far distance, but plowing the soil nearby in our own small patch?  Really, we move down the path just because time itself moves us down the path.  We can't stay at one point on the path even if we wanted to.  We are always moving closer to eternity.  Whether we are growing to maturity or not, Jesus is coming again.  So what if we choose on which path to plant ourselves and then maturity is like tending to the soil around us?  We float down the path we've chosen and our garden floats along with us?  Does that change how we think and what we do?

In some ways it won't change what we do.  We'll still have projects and programs to help us acquire knowledge and to organize ministry.  We'll still worship together, listen to preaching together, participate in the Lord's table together, and pray together.

On the hand, I do believe it will change how we think.  We will start saying, "We are not mature when we've completed that thing...  ...rather we are mature when we are personally cultivating righteousness and weeding out sin.  We don't always have to be moving into the unknown but rather we grow when we thrive right here in this space.  I don't always have to be moving on to the next thing at the church, but I grow here myself even as I float in and out of those things.

Missionaries don't grow just because they go.  We don't grow just because we are busy.  We grow when our day-to-day lives reflect the glory of The Father through faith in Christ and submission to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

We do have to choose a path, we do have to enter it through one gate, but once we are on the path, is it more like cultivating than journeying?  There's seasons, there's weeds that spring up and die out, and there's fruit.  I am not always moving and hitting targets.  I am rather digging, pruning, being still, and watering the patch of land around me, even as I go into the situations the Lord sees fit to bring me.

18 “Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” Mt 13:18-23.