Ministry is long term because we want to see fruit

We've got 2 apple trees in our garden, they've been there for 7 years already.  They take some looking after.  Initially the soil was poor so it had to be dug up and lots of nutrient rich material dug in.  Every year the same thing needs to happen, every year it needs tending, with different things done at different times of the year.  If you look at them they aren't very impressive, you can tell in their branches years when they haven't been cared for well enough.  But they have begun to bear fruit, and as they grow and grow they'll hopefully, if carefully tended, grow more fruit.

It's no wonder the Bible uses the fruit analogy is it.  We know from our own lives how slow change can be, how incremental it seems, in fact so incremental that we only really notice it when we look back after a period of time and see what God has been doing.  Change takes a lifetime.

I was reading today of a pastor who had the privilege of baptising the grandson, and years before the son, of a man who he had also baptised even more years previously.  I couldn't help but reflect on the need for longevity in order to grow fruit.  As pastors we should count our tenure in decades not years.  It takes decades to know, sow and grow the gospel.  It takes decades to build trust so that we listen to the preaching of someone who we know is as invested in us and our church family as we are and know the wounds come from loving study and application of scripture, that the application isn't just a hobby horse but a deeply held conviction, and that they will stick around to help us through the painful process of transformation as we apply it.

Such pastoring for the long term, or maybe even the life term, is so counter cultural to not just the world but often, tragically, our ministry culture.