By: Rev. Eric Van Meter*

Bishop Bruce Ough wants Methodists in the Dakotas to be more intentional in their manure spreading—metaphorically speaking.

Photo: Bishop Ough delivers "The Manure Plan, the 2016 epicsopal address during opening worship of the Daktoas Annual Conference. Photo by jlynn studios.

In his episcopal address to open Annual Conference 2016, Ough reflected on the model of living generously set forth by Jesus in Luke 13:6-9. In this parable, a gardener lobbies for the life of a fig tree that has not borne fruit in three years. He offers to spread manure on the soil in hopes that, with one more year, the tree will bear fruit.

But this is not a particularly “churchy” story, Ough notes. It’s filled with earthy and even crude language that highlights the parable’s meaning.

“Be fruitful or perish,” he said. “The message is clear.”

The good news for the Dakotas Annual Conference is that the journey toward vitality is already bearing fruit. Missional offerings and number of people sent into mission are up from 2013 levels, and 42% of Dakotas churches are growing—a figure outpaced only by the Oklahoma Indian and Alaska Missionary Conferences.  

Still, the barriers to fruitfulness continue to pose a danger to this momentum, according to Ough. A lack of imagination can cause us to miss out on God’s work among us, and scarcity thinking can trick us into drawing false boundaries.

Ough compared scarcity thinking to a popular PlayStation 2 ad that depicts fleas being “trained” in a glass jar. After three days, according to the ad, the fleas will only act within the boundaries of the jar, even they are released from it.  Those who follow Christ should not allow themselves to become so entrenched, since doing so can force us into patterns that blind us.

Especially when it comes to those who differ from us in any significant way.

“We have to resist the temptation to define our neighbors as narrowly as possible,” the Bishop said. “Jesus was constantly expanding boundaries of whom God loved and included in the kingdom. It is God’s extravagant, unmerited love and grace that sets the ultimate boundaries for God’s kingdom.

“We cannot put off any longer seeing that everyone is a child of God.”

Photo: Bishop Ough delivers the 2016 Episcopal Addres. Photo by jlynn studios.

Once our eyes are opened to our neighbors, the example of Christ is to share with them. Ough called on members of the Annual Conference to consider their “Pearl of Great Price,” taken from a parable in Matthew 13. What stories of God’s work in our lives, he wondered, are pearls? And what good are those pearls unless we give them away?

In all of this, he reminded the Annual Conference, God is our patient ally.

“This is a debate deep within the heart of God,” he said. “Should we receive a justified judgment, or miraculous mercy?”

The answer, according to the story of the gardener, is mercy. The manure spread over the fruitless tree is a metaphor for forgiveness, the Bishop said. But the expectation is that the combination of fertilizer and time will bring forth a harvest. The gardener has interceded on our behalf so that we will be engaged in our task as fruit-bearers.

Ough exhorted the Annual Conference attendees to give themselves completely to that work.

“Go live in generous abandon,” he said. “And unleash a mighty, magnificent torrent of God’s grace and mercy upon God’s world.”

Click here to view or print the 2016 Episcopal address.

*Rev. Eric Van Meter is the campus pastor at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, SD.