LEAVING THE GROUND FALLOW
by Dawn Sneden
The word “fallow” doesn’t seem very appealing, but before you skip over this article, hear me out. As my family and I traveled through Virginia and Pennsylvania several weeks ago on a family vacation, I noticed several fields where the farmers had not done anything to the land since they cut the corn last fall. Having been raised in a farming family, I began to think about why farmers choose to leave some of the ground “fallow” for a period of time. In farmer terms, leaving the land “fallow” means to not plant it with a specific crop for harvesting purposes. If a farmer produces the same crop on the same piece of land every year, eventually the land with “tire” and the crop production will be reduced. Instead, the farmer deliberately chooses to let the land be foul for a year. Sometimes they will plant something that will only maintain the soil from erosion and keep nutrients from washing away, but they won’t use the field to produce a crop for harvesting for profit. Basically, the land needs a break!
The Bible uses many word pictures that include farming: sowing seed, tilling soil, producing harvests, etc. It occurred to me that we could correlate the idea of leaving ground fallow with our need to take a break from spiritual “production”. How many times do we feel burned out, especially if we are ministering in the same way, each week, year after year? Do we find our “crop” reduced after several years? Maybe it’s time to leave that area of ministry as “fallow ground” for a period of time. Maybe we need to let our “ground” rest and be revitalized and replenished with more nutrients.
So what would this look like? Perhaps you are leading a bible study each year. After several productive years where you have grown the group and brought God’s truth to many hearts, you are beginning to lose steam. You are not as passionate or as prepared. The group is not bearing the fruit it once did. What does this mean? Sometimes it means that God is calling you out of that ministry and into another one, but I would like to suggest that most times God is just calling you out for a period of time so that the group can be replenished and revitalized.
MESSAGE SPOILER HERE: This is not meant as an excuse to give up and quit! I recognize that the danger here is that we will get too comfortable leaving our ground fallow and never go back to planting and harvesting the ground. I also recognize that we can use this idea as a cop-out when the going gets tough.
That’s why I suggest that before you consider leaving the ground fallow for a time, make it a matter of prayer, and don’t do it unless you have peace. Also, you should have someone hold you accountable for getting back to the ministry during a specified period of time.
If you have God’s approval to go ahead with the “fallow ground” idea, seek His direction for any changes you need to make, and don’t let the time slip by without getting revitalized and replenished. Seek out new materials; go to conferences; fast and pray. Then when you go back to the ministry, you will feel a sense of newness and excitement, and the ground will begin producing a bountiful harvest once again.
(c) 2008 Dawn Sneden
