"If you're involved in youth ministry, then you're going to be involved in a lot of talk about seeds. It makes sense, considering one of Jesus' most important parables is about sowing them (Matthew 13).

When I think about most of the "seed" conversations I've had in church and ministry settings, one thing is always implied by these conversations, but I guarantee it's missing from both our lists. Does your list say "resignation to failure"? If nobody thinks seeds signify resignation to failure, then why is the phrase "we're only sowing seeds" spoken in defeat so often in youth ministry? The first time I really thought about this, it made me so mad that I decided not to say it anymore.

Teens have a will that's just as free as yours or mine. They're free to make decisions that are bad, and of course we'd be foolish as leaders to think we can ever control them. Besides, God himself has opted not to control teenagers, so we probably ought to fall in line with his way of thinking. Kids can drive you crazy when you've "planted all these seeds" in their lives, a they still make bad choices. It's enough to make you say, "Well, we're only sowing seeds!"

But that's fatalism, not Christianity, and it's an example of how believers can get bogged down in a metaphor like "sowing" and accidentally exchange that for the real point Jesus was trying to make. Jesus' parable of the soils tells us that it's the condition of the soil a seed is dropped in that dictates whether or not it will grow. That gets me thinking about the whole "nature vs. nurture" thing that sociologists like to argue about: Are some kids just "good soil" while others are "bad soil"? And if so, can the "bad soil" kids be enriched in some way to better prepare them for seeds?"