The Fields Are Dead Because We Stopped Planting
By Marko Pretorius
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
They were sitting on the pavement together — Floyd in his white shirt and black tie, Bible under his arm, and a young American who had come all the way to Kabul looking for something but had ended up stranded, addicted to heroin, with no way home.
Floyd had spent weeks with him. He thought they were making progress. So he asked the question he'd been building toward: "Listen, I've been spending all this time with you. What do you think? Are you ready to make a decision?"
The young man turned to him, barely keeping it together, and said: "I really like your Jesus, but I can't stand you."
"I really like your Jesus, but I can't stand you."
That line has stayed with me for years.
Floyd didn't argue. He went back to his room, got on his knees, and asked Jesus a question of his own: "Help me. What do I need to become so that people will see you and not stumble over me? My culture, my methods, my rigid way of thinking."
What happened next matters more than the punchline.
Floyd put away the white shirt and tie. He let his hair grow. He moved into a commune with the people he was trying to reach and started responding creatively to the brokenness he saw around him. And hundreds of young people began following Jesus — people whose faith communities are still alive today.
Nothing about Floyd's theology changed. What changed was his posture.
I think about that story often when I'm sitting with leaders across the world — people who are genuinely passionate, gifted, and called — and they tell me they feel stuck. Discouraged. Quietly disillusioned with the way disciple-making has been handed to them. My instinct is always to want to give them a new tool or a better framework. But most of the time, that's not where the work starts.
The work starts where Floyd started: on his knees, with a single question — what do I need to become so that people will see You and not stumble over me?
The farmer who loved to harvest
Before I offer any frameworks for thinking about cities, I want to share a parable.
There was a farmer who lived on a big piece of land. Every spring he went out to plant seeds, but he hated every part of it — the planting, the waiting, the weeding, the endless work of keeping the soil loose so the roots could breathe. All summer he grumbled. But when the harvest came, he came alive. Golden grain. Sweet grapes. Bright red fruit.
“This is the good life,” he said. “My wife will bake bread. My kids will press the grapes. We'll have a feast.”
But when the feast ended, he looked at his empty fields and made a decision. No more planting. No more watering. No more weeding. From now on, he would only harvest.
He went back out and gathered what little food had been missed the season before. A few grapes here, a shrivelled apple there. Every day he told himself it was enough. But as the weeks passed, the land dried out. The trees stopped producing. The fields turned grey. Only tough weeds survived.
And when spring returned, nothing sprouted. The soil was too hard. The few plants that tried died without water.
Finally his children cried out: "Dad, what have you done? You've kept harvesting, but you've stopped planting. Now the fields are dead. We have to leave this place if we want to live."
I believe this parable describes many of our cities.
In many parts of the world, Christian ministry for the last century has focused on building structures and systems for harvest — and not the tilling of the soil. It has left the soil hard and dry.
What Jesus and Paul say about fields
I want to be careful here, because I'm not the first person to notice that something is wrong and there are no shortage of diagnoses. But I am struck by how consistently Jesus and Paul reached for farming metaphors when they wanted to describe the kingdom of God — and how different their instincts were from ours.
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. Some fell on good soil and produced a crop.“
“A man scattered seed, and night and day it sprouted and grew — “though he did not know how”. All by itself, the soil produces grain: first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel.”
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, planted small, growing into something birds come and rest in.”
“I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener.”
“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow — for we are coworkers in God's service. You are God's field.”
It's beautiful, right?
There is something in that cascade of images that gently undoes the assumption that the work of the kingdom is primarily something we build, manage, and deliver. The seed sprouts and the man does not know how. The soil produces all by itself. God makes it grow. We plant. We water. We tend. But the life is not ours to manufacture.
If that is true (and I believe it is), then the question for those of us who want to see our cities transformed is not only “What should we be doing?” It is “What kind of soil are we working with, and what have we done to it?”
The posture that changes things
I've shared Floyd's story many times, but what I keep coming back to is not the hippie clothes or the commune or even the fruit. It's the prayer.
“What do I need to become so that people will see you and not stumble over me?”
That is a different question than most of us start with.
It is a formation question — and most of us have never been asked it. In my experience, leaders who are willing to sit with it — really sit with it, not rush past it to the practical next steps — find that the ground around them starts to soften.
So before anything else, I want to ask you two things.
First: what would it look like for the people in your city to see Jesus — and not stumble over you, your methods, or the way you've always done things?
Second: if your ministry were mapped out like a farm, honestly — are you tending the soil, or are you harvesting what's left?
You are God's field. And that changes everything about how you approach the work.
Getting practical
As you think about God's vision for your city and/or affinity group:
Read Mark 4:26–29. The seed sprouted and grew — "though he did not know how."
Where are you currently working harder to explain or manage the growth than to tend the soil — and what might it look like to release what you can't control?
Floyd's prayer was devastatingly personal: "What do I need to become so that people will see you and not stumble over me?" If you prayed that prayer this week — and meant it — what habit, method, or assumption would you need to be willing to put down?
The farmer kept going out to the fields every day, telling himself the leftovers were enough.
What does your ministry rhythm currently assume about where you are in the cycle — and what might an honest look at the soil actually reveal?
Marko runs with a small group of leaders and teams tackling the complexity of bringing God’s kingdom to urban and peri-urban environments www.twofoureight.org.
© 2026 Marko Pretorius. All rights reserved.
