Success and Fruitfulness

I've spent the last few days at a young clergy leadership conference, connecting with colleagues, visiting growing congregations, and learning about best practices in congregational life.

We talked a lot about fruitfulness--kind of the softer, gentler version of success. It's a wonderful image because we all know that in congregational life you don't always put a program in slot A and get success out of slot B; real people with real lives move in different ways, and sometimes you see the fruits of your efforts many years later, or in transformed individual lives, or in plenty of ways that are hard to measure but still powerful.

But the concept of fruitfulness still holds within it the idea that we do want to be fruitful, that all the wonderful work in the world doesn't really get us anywhere if it doesn't ultimately produce something: more people hearing our congregation's message, changed people, communities that are tangibly better in some way.

It has me thinking about fruitfulness in our own lives, too, not just in a congregation's life. What are the things that bear fruit in your life? Practices, exercises, time you spend in special ways--from which of those things can you see immediate changes? And when have you had an experience that makes you realize a planting from long, long ago was finally bearing fruit for you?