“The growth of the church is both natural and supernatural. The church was designed by God to grow naturally, but all church growth is a supernatural miracle. In truth, the church will experience growth if we remove artificial and often selfish barriers we have used to keep our church artificially small– to keep it a bonsai church.
… The bonsai church may be cute, but it’s not practical. It is ornamental rather than fruit-bearing. It is a distortion of God’s original plan.”
-Ken Hemphill, “Bonsai Theory of Church. Grow Your Church to Its Natural God-Given Size.”, pp. 106-107.
55 year old Sequoia sempervirens (California Redwood or Coast Redwood) “Informal Upright” style bonsai tree from Brooklyn Botanic Garden, in New York City. Copyright 2007 Jeffrey O. Gustafson, released to Commons under the GFDL and CC-BY-SA-3.0. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
MMM -- Mission Musings 