Not long after we came to Paihia I planted a metre-high kauri tree in our bush below the house. It has grown quickly for a long-lived native and is now seven or eight metres high. But perhaps it has grown too vigorously. Some time ago, its central stem or "leader" got broken off in a storm. For a young conifer, that’s disastrous damage.
Will it now develop a new shoot from the centre or will one of the surrounding branchlets grow inwards and take its place? Or will the side stem and a revived central stem grow up side by side making our stately tree into a double-leadered freak, perpetually vulnerable to a complete split? Is it possible that the other outside branches will all compete to do the same so that the tree becomes a kind of multiple-header absolutely alien from its destiny?
I am watching it with much more than a little interest. And I’m reflecting on the possibility that, whatever happens this season or next, if our tree is recovered from some swamp 40,000 years after the Great Warming of the 26th Century the growth rings in its cross section will tell the story of what transpired in our front bush in 2008. The scar and the tree’s triumph or failure in dealing with the accident will be locked into its history.
I wonder what it tells us now about small churches which opt for a strategy of ministry based on just one leader?
Will it now develop a new shoot from the centre or will one of the surrounding branchlets grow inwards and take its place? Or will the side stem and a revived central stem grow up side by side making our stately tree into a double-leadered freak, perpetually vulnerable to a complete split? Is it possible that the other outside branches will all compete to do the same so that the tree becomes a kind of multiple-header absolutely alien from its destiny?
I am watching it with much more than a little interest. And I’m reflecting on the possibility that, whatever happens this season or next, if our tree is recovered from some swamp 40,000 years after the Great Warming of the 26th Century the growth rings in its cross section will tell the story of what transpired in our front bush in 2008. The scar and the tree’s triumph or failure in dealing with the accident will be locked into its history.
I wonder what it tells us now about small churches which opt for a strategy of ministry based on just one leader?
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