I once heard Pastor Shane Hipps state this at a leadership conference and it certainly got a lot of people's attention. Now regardless of whether or not you “agree” with that statement, I think he had a point! He went on to say that the medium is the message, challenging the prevailing notion that the methods change but the message stays the same.

Consider Jesus' parable on the mustard seed growing to become a great tree where the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches. The seed and the tree are the same yet very different. There are aspects of the Kingdom of God and the Gospel that never change. Jesus—born of a Virgin, Son of God, Son of Man, crucified, resurrected, ascended on high, returning to claim His Bride…these aspects of the Gospel never change. But our growth in understanding this message and how it affects our daily lives and future will continue to expand and change.

When Jesus told us that new wine must be poured into new wineskins, we often miss the fact that both the wine and the wineskins are new, both the container and the content, and both the medium and the message are new. 

Hipps suggests that maybe we should become gardeners of the gospel rather than guards. Guards are out to defend and protect the truth. But does the truth need protecting? Will it not always win out over falsehood? Do we really think we have what it takes to defend the truth, and, if we fail, the truth will not prevail?

So I really like that metaphor of a gardener. Let's nurture and cultivate new expressions of the Gospel that remain true to its DNA but affect and transform those who will not hear or understand it in an ancient, irrelevant form.

[Next week we will look at five critical systems that need to be radically upgraded in every organization.]