A Terrible Gardener and a Good Outline

When I was an American Airman stationed in Germany, we rented a house off-base in a suburb of our little city. Germans don't have what we call a backyard. They have a garten. Often it is surrounded by a hedge or fence and you cannot see into it from the road. It's not a vegetable garden or a well-manicured lawn, but usually a series of plants, bushes, and trees around a porch of some kind — a respite from the world outside your home.

I am a terrible gardener. I don't have the eye for it. At the time our children were toddlers who kept our hands full, and my travel schedule was intense. Our garten was already overgrown when we moved in. I wasn't helping solve the problem.

Eventually my landlord encouraged me to improve our lot, so I took time to regularly trim back odd growths. It was easy to chop down the obvious weeds.

Then I began to notice things.

One plant grew in a spot where the sun came through the trees — once an odd branch was trimmed back. Behind an overgrown hedge, a limb had been tied back years ago so another plant could flourish. Once those things were out of the way, I could make out the original outline of the garten. From there I could see what needed to be done.

It's more fun to listen to sermons than to read them, but some wonderful old sermons were preached before recording existed. I've wanted to learn from the Puritans of England, Scotland, and the Netherlands, but they are hard to access. The language and style are from an older time and are foreign to me. When I read them, I'm looking for more than a good quote to repeat. I want to follow their logic.

The logic is in the sermon outline. Most Puritan sermons have billboarded points, sub-points, and sometimes sub-sub-points. They are enumerated and then expanded with reference to Scripture. So I trim back the language. I cut away the old style. On a plain Word doc I copy only the outline.

It is just like being back in my German garten. I see those little spots where the sun shone through on a small plant.

I see the logic.

A handful of times I've taken those Puritan outlines and used them to teach through the same passage or topic. Their branch, but my leaves. The garten grows in a new way for a new generation.

We could pretend the voices of the past have nothing to say to us. We would be wrong. Often we are so blinded by our own modern overgrowth that we can't make out the logic behind our own thinking. Stepping into the time machine and following the logic of those older, godly voices — and how they walked through Scripture — gives us at least three things.

First, a sense that truth is timeless. Plants have always grown with good soil, water, and enough sunlight. Gardeners learned that then, and it still works that way now. The same truths of God's goodness and love in creation and redemption were preached then, and that is the same message the church needs to hear now.

Second, a window into our present age. When you look at old pictures, you see outdated styles and settings. The human faces, though — those you recognize. The style and language of these old sermons feel outdated to us, but the expression of faith, hope, and the love of Christ is still there. Our own turns of phrase will feel outdated one day too, even as we reach for the same faith, the same hope, the same love of Christ.

Lastly, confidence that as God was faithful to them then, so he is to us now. This is a plain truth. It is the lesson of all Christian history. We stumble along in a life of repentance and faith, and so did they — and God did not toss them aside. He brought them to a good end. The Puritan pastors had a vision for helping their people die well, with confidence in the Lord. Pastors and people today could learn from that vision. Not because those saints had something we lack. Because the God who kept them is the God who keeps us.

What will you cultivate?

Sometimes the work we fear is less than we think. Trim back that first layer. Find the good outline. Then follow it — not alone, but in the company of saints who walked ahead, whose Gardener is still tending his garden.