by Lynn-Nore Chittom

Created on: July 28, 2009

A concerned friend of mine in a very, small church in New England once impressed upon me her deep feeling that we needed to include some live plants in our sanctuary because there was nothing alive in that room and that maybe it showed the true nature of our small congregation that we didn't have anything growing in the sanctuary. She described how live plants would imply that the room was a place for living things and would encourage church growth, both numerically and spiritually.

While I'm all for green plants and didn't oppose the immediate appearance of a three-tiered plant stand (because interior decorators always position things in odd numbered sets, you know), I did feel it was somehow missing the point.

As a lay leader with many more years of experience with this small congregation than my green-thumbed friend, I very much felt both the spiritual and numerical growth among that body of believers, but the movements were very much smaller than my friend was hoping for. In fact, my friend herself had been a bit of movement in the growth direction of that church not all that much earlier. So, why wasn't more growth obvious, why did it appear it was a room without life and, were a few green leaves really the answer?

My concern for this small congregation hoping for growth and looking for ways to make the church seem more appealing was that the life of a plant is not nearly as significant as life of the church members and the movement of the Holy Spirit in them. I couldn't help but think of God as the giver of life and, eternal life at that, and how it should be the members filled with the hope of that life that is appealing to visitors, not the aliveness of a few plants near the pulpit.

As the years have passed since this particular encounter, my family has moved and subsequently changed churches. As we visited a variety of locations in pursuit of our new church home, I have to say I never noticed the dcor of any of the places we visited as a deciding or even relevant factor. What made a church attractive to us was the preaching of the gospel and the caring response of the members to visitors. The places that received our attention had pastoral leaders and friendly, lively parishioners. No number of green plants could make up for that.

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