My kitchen is overrun with fruit flies. I have vinegar traps set, but they seem to serve more as refueling stations for the tiny pests to congregate and laugh at me—and to make more fruit flies. Our daughter-in-law walks around with one of those racket-shaped bug zappers, lighting the house up with satisfying little electrical pops, but then she’s reduced to tears when even more show up. Some days it seems never-ending.
I don’t mind them as much as she does—and probably as much as most people do. I find them interesting. Maybe it’s because my dad sent me a drawing of one from prison when I was ten years old. He was a talented artist but, sadly, I can’t show you any of his drawings. When you move as often as I have, you lose things or give things away or, you know, burn them in a pagan ritual to purge reminders of hurtful people. (I can’t remember the specifics, but it must have been one of those. Don’t worry. Since becoming a Christian in my late twenties, I’ve discovered much healthier ways to deal with life.) Anyhow, that sketch was like an Audubon bird illustration—very detailed. All the body parts were labeled, and in the negative spaces, he had written facts, the most fascinating of which was that the fruit fly only lives for one day. How in the world can anything be born, grow up, and have babies in one day? I wondered about that for many years.
Well, I learned in junior high science that fruit flies actually live for seven days—or more. (Did I mention that my dad was not exactly the most reliable source?) I still think it’s amazing that any living thing can mature enough to procreate in that amount of time. I also learned that all living things in every taxonomical kingdom mature and reproduce before they die. Otherwise, populations become extinct. Ever heard of the Shakers—that peculiar religion that didn’t believe in sex? Well, I probably don’t have to tell you that they’re almost extinct. But they did leave behind some nice furniture. I have fruit flies hanging out in my Shaker cabinets right now. I’m killing some of them in my traps, but as John’s mom always says, “You kill one and a hundred more come to its funeral.” They multiply at a rate I can’t keep up with.
The church is a kingdom, too. We need to be reproducing ourselves—and not just by having children—or we’re headed for Shakerville. Surely the charge to go into all the world involves taking the gospel further than our own living rooms. We have amazing resources in the Western world to grow and express our faith. I drank coffee from a Corinthians 13 mug this morning. I have self-help books on my shelf and scriptures and crosses on my T-shirts and jewelry. But does any of this make me a mature Christian? Unless I’m willing to share this good stuff with other people (and by good stuff, I mean the gospel), then I would venture to say it does not.
But nobody can do this alone, and surely nobody is meant to. Do you suppose Jesus’ charge to “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” isn’t specifically directed to those with the gift of evangelism because it’s supposed to be a collective effort? I’m just one member of the body of Christ, and I happen to be comfortable doing a Bible study with a non-Christian, but there’s a whole lot more to making a disciple than that.
When my daughter-in-law was still our son’s girlfriend, John and I studied the Bible with her, but it was our son’s faith and character that drew her toward us in the first place. Faculty and staff at the university encouraged her to believe, while friends prayed for her. The local church even modified its Sunday schedule to accommodate her baptism. And let’s not forget the people who sit in the pews each week, faithfully tithing so that the building was air-conditioned and the water was warm. We all play a part in the maturing of the saints and the birth of a new generation of faithful disciples. In that sense, we’re not just making disciples but disciple-makers.
Reproduction is God’s way of propagating future populations of all living things, including the church, and the mark of a mature organism is that it duplicates itself. Those of us in Christ raise our kids to know God, but each generation is having fewer and fewer children, and the intention of Matthew 28 to ”Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,” is surely farther reaching than simply perpetuating our own last names. Our family is praying for revival, and you can join us.
Most of you reading this are supporting our ministry in Malawi. You have the unique privilege of growing God’s church on both sides of the globe at the same time. The next time fruit flies show up on your ripe bananas, let it inspire you to continue to play your part in evangelizing and multiplying the Kingdom at a rate that will irritate our enemy and make our Father proud. After all, we’re not so different from the fruit flies. James 4 tells us we are “vapors that appear for a little time and then vanish away.” As long as we’re here, let’s do our best to overwhelm this evil world with good.
