What Is Growing Among Us?

By Matthew J. Skolnik

Before you gather: Please read the article and Scripture ahead of your meeting. Bring one observation or question to share. Give the conversation the time it needs, and return to it at a later meeting when helpful.

The article that inspired this series: What Is This For?

Formation goal: Recognize fruit honestly, celebrate specific contributions, and choose one practice to sustain for the next three months.

Scripture: John 15:1–12. Additional reading: Galatians 5:13–26 and 1 Corinthians 3:5–9.

Receive and remember

Set aside a few quiet moments before reviewing the series. Recall one conversation, person, difficulty, or practice that remains with you. Invite each member to name one memory, with freedom to pass. Hear the memories before evaluating them. Completing six conversations is an occasion for gratitude; God’s love was present before the first one began.

Pray: Christ, keep us rooted in your love. Give us truthful eyes for what is growing, tenderness toward what remains wounded, and wisdom for what comes next. Amen.

Listen to Scripture

Read John 15:1–12. Notice where life comes from, how fruitfulness is described, and how the passage connects abiding, love, and joy. Allow its difficult language to be heard rather than skipping it.

Read the full chapter: John 15.

Learning to recognize fruit

After several months, a committee may be eager to decide whether the series worked. Perhaps a conversation changed the way members understand their responsibility. Perhaps a new connection has become dependable. Perhaps an attempted practice faltered. There may also be things no one wants to mention: a conflict that remains, an invitation that felt burdensome, or a member who still cannot find a way to contribute.

Review begins by making room for the whole account. A success story selected too quickly can silence what the group needs to learn. An account focused only on failure can overlook small changes that deserve care. We need a way to recognize fruit that keeps gratitude, honesty, and hope together.

In John 15, Jesus speaks of himself as the vine and of his disciples as branches. Life flows through their relationship with him. The repeated invitation to remain directs attention toward dependence, received love, and continuing participation. Fruitfulness is not presented as a project the branches accomplish independently. Jesus’ words turn the disciples toward the life they receive and the love they are commanded to share.

The passage also includes unsettling language about removal, pruning, and burning. It must not become a committee’s warrant for labeling people unfruitful or discarding those whose contribution is less visible. In the image, the Father is the gardener. Institutional leaders are not authorized to identify every painful event as God’s pruning. Illness, abuse, exclusion, and forced loss should not be explained away as necessary lessons that God has arranged.

For this conversation, the image invites humility about the source of life and honest attention to the practices we can change. We can release an unnecessary process without declaring a person unnecessary. We can acknowledge that something has ended while honoring the people whose faithfulness sustained it. Decisions about structure require their proper processes; a spiritual metaphor should not be used to evade those responsibilities.

Jesus connects remaining in his love with loving one another and with joy. Galatians 5 also describes fruit that changes shared life: love, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, and the other qualities of life in the Spirit. These texts give us a richer question than whether the committee became busier. What is happening in our relationships, in the people our work affects, and in our capacity to serve faithfully?

An activity and its fruit are related but different. Holding a listening conversation is an activity. Discovering that a process excludes someone, then making participation possible, is a possible fruit. Inviting a new person is an activity. Supporting them so their gifts influence the work is a possible fruit. Moving a meeting to a porch is an activity. The fruit must be learned from the people who gathered there.

Numbers can help us notice change. A process may take less time, more people may participate, or fewer commitments may remain unclaimed. Such observations are useful when interpreted alongside experience. A larger attendance figure cannot tell us whether people feel able to disagree. One moving story cannot prove that a practice works for everyone. Use modest evidence and remain open to what does not fit your first explanation.

Return to the responsibility you chose in the first conversation. What do you now understand about the people it serves? What did recognizing the season change? Did a relationship with another team improve the work? Whose gifts became more visible? Did a meeting practice help anyone act differently between gatherings? The series has asked you to follow connected questions. Its fruit may appear in a clearer understanding of the same ordinary responsibility.

Celebration should name that fruit specifically. Thank a member for listening before defending a process, a partner for clarifying a handoff, or someone for making an invitation easier to decline. With permission, tell a brief story of what the action made possible. Let the person affected help describe its value. Appreciation can strengthen the habits you hope will continue.

Recognition also needs fairness. Visible hospitality may attract more attention than quiet preparation or the courage to raise an unwelcome concern. Be attentive to work done by staff and by people who habitually receive less credit. Avoid turning celebration into a competition or praising someone for repeatedly exceeding healthy limits. Gratitude should not become a subtle request that they keep carrying an unsustainable burden.

Some practices will have failed or remained unfinished. Ask what happened before deciding what it means. The practice may have been too large, the responsibility unclear, the timing poor, or the invitation unsafe. It may also have exposed resistance that needs patient, truthful conversation. Grace makes room to name these things without pretending they do not matter. It permits correction and a new attempt.

You do not have to produce an institutional transformation in six months. Slow formation can include learning to ask a better question and returning to it when the agenda becomes crowded. It can also require a consequential decision: to share authority, repair a barrier, simplify a structure, or stop assigning work without consent. The measure is whether the next step serves the purpose you have come to understand more clearly.

Choose what to sustain with care. A practice becomes part of a community’s life through repetition, attention, and adaptation. Carry one practice into the next three months with a person or pair to tend it, a realistic scope, and a date to review it. The series ends by entrusting the future to Christ while accepting the responsibility that is yours to carry.

Notice, examine, and discern

1. Notice: What do abiding, love, and joy contribute to the picture of fruit in John 15? Looking back, what specific changes or unresolved difficulties do we see in our work and relationships?
2. Examine: Whose experience supports our account, and whose have we not heard? Where might we be celebrating activity, overlooking quiet contributions, or avoiding a disappointing result?
3. Discern: What should we keep, tend, change, or release? Which one practice can we sustain for three months, and how will we learn whether it contributes to Christ’s shalom?

Make room for different accounts. Nobody needs to claim growth they have not experienced. Keep the focus on practices and their effects rather than assigning scores to members’ faithfulness.

Practice for the next three months

Choose one existing practice to continue or adapt. Complete a short agreement: We will do this, for this purpose, within this scope. These people have agreed to tend it. This is the support available. We will notice these effects and return on this date.

At each monthly meeting, give the practice a brief review. Ask one person affected for their perspective during the three months, with permission and without expecting them to represent everyone. Include the cost in time and energy as well as the hoped-for benefit. If the practice is harmful or unworkable, change it sooner rather than waiting for the review date.

End today’s meeting with specific gratitude. Name an action, the gift it expressed, and the difference you observed. Invite corrections to your account and respect anyone who prefers private appreciation. Include one unresolved matter in your record so that celebration does not erase it.

Return and continue

At the agreed review ask: What fruit is growing, what still needs care, and what faithful response is possible now? Revisit an earlier conversation when it helps. Welcome new members into the purpose of the practice rather than expecting them to inherit unexplained routines. The questions can remain part of your common life long after the series is complete.

Closing prayer

Christ our life, thank you for the gifts we have received through one another. Keep us truthful about what remains difficult. Let gratitude strengthen our care, let learning reshape our work, and let your love give life to what we carry forward. Amen.

Sources and further reading

• John 15:1–12: abiding, fruit, love, and joy. The warning imagery is not a mandate for institutional exclusion or a diagnosis of another person’s suffering.
• Galatians 5:13–26; 1 Corinthians 3:5–9: service in love, the Spirit’s fruit, and God’s gift of growth.
• Heidelberg Catechism, Question 86, Book of Confessions: grateful living as a response to grace.
• For further reflection: the collection’s companions, Mission and the Shalom of Christ and Holding the Conversation and Sustaining the Practice.

Acknowledgment

This article and its conversation were influenced by the wisdom shared by the Presbytery of the Western Reserve (PWR) staff in September 2026: Judy Mitchell, Stated Clerk; Laura VanDale, Associate for Justice Ministries; and Josh Daum, Presbytery Operations Manager. With gratitude for their insight, questions, and ministry alongside Matthew J. Skolnik, the author of this collection.

© 2026 Matthew J. Skolnik. Scripture excerpts retain their separate attribution and license.

Scripture and Sources for the complete series