By Eric Rafferty
The harvest is waiting where no one else is laboring…
The key work of planting ministry is finding the places where it’s harvest time. Often the places of plentiful harvest are the places where no one else is going. This is what Jesus found in a Samaritan town in John 4:
35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.
Sometimes the fields are just ripe for harvest time! Things grow easy. People are eager and ready to respond to Jesus. In the above passage Jesus spends a few minutes chatting with a promiscuous and poorly treated woman at a town well and within a couple days the entire city comes to faith in Jesus. That is harvest time! And Jesus had to point it out to his disciples because they couldn’t believe the spiritual landscape of Samaria would be one of harvest.
As we look back on eight years of campus ministry we recognize that the times we really experienced the reality of harvest was when we were reaching out to people that no one else was going for. Plentiful harvest is waiting in the fields where no one else is laboring.
A Tale of Two Plants
This pattern was easy to recognize this year because there were two places where the harvest was just blowing up: Athletes InterVarsity at UNO and Black Campus Ministries at UNL.
These two communities didn’t have much in common except that both were cross-cultural for me (not an athlete, not Black) and that both were ready for harvest time.
Athletes InterVarsity
At the start of this semester there were a handful of student athletes who were fired up to start something new and reach out to their teammates. Not much was happening spiritually on this corner of the campus but a couple baseball players and a golfer wanted to see that change.
With just a few hours each week I was able to show up, lead a Bible study, point people to Jesus, and cast vision for a missional movement of athletes on campus. And the harvest time reality was obvious. Nearly every consecutive week of the semester brought more students than the week before. Whenever someone joined the group they brought another teammate the next week. By the end of the semester 20-25 student athletes were gathering each week from eight different teams, and here’s a mark of harvest time: almost half of these students didn’t even have faith on their screen at the start of the semester! They weren’t looking for a Bible study or a ministry to get involved in; many had no spiritual background whatsoever. But when a few of their friends that they trusted were starting something new for them then their spiritual curiosity was piqued. They showed up, heard about Jesus and his mission and they bought in! Four of these teams will even be launching their own Bible studies for their travel seasons this spring.
When we invest time in reaching out to the people and places that no one else is reaching out to then harvest happens. When we plant ministries in places with a vacuum of gospel proclamation the spiritual landscape is changed and hunger for the gospel is awakened.
Black Campus Ministries
Throughout this semester of growth for Athletes InterVarsity, a similar experience of the harvest time reality was happening an hour away in Lincoln, NE. At the start of the semester two African American sophomores, Naba and YY, had a burden from Jesus to create a space where their friends could encounter the love of God and experience deep community. They had taken steps the previous semester to start a Bible study and had already experienced some fruit. But they wanted more.
When they looked at their community on campus, they resonated with Jesus’ words in Matthew 9:
“36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
At UNL there are only 500 Black students out of 25,000 and it is a pretty isolating experience. On top of this, many of Naba and YY’s friends walked away from their faith when they arrived on campus but were left disillusioned with the college experience. There is a lot of great ministry happening on campus at UNL but nowhere felt like home for this community of students. No one was intentionally reaching out to Black students. It turned out that the spiritual fields were ripe and that the abundant harvest was only waiting for laborers to step up.
So Naba and YY started gathering their friends and I made the drive out to Lincoln every Thursday night to point students to Jesus and cast vision for his mission. And again, the harvest was plentiful. A community of 25 students was planted and from the start it was clear that most of these students were coming in pretty far from God. But again, when Naba and YY decided to love their friends and share the gospel in a place where it wasn’t being proclaimed then harvest time arrived.
Plentiful harvest is waiting in the fields where no one else is laboring.
Where are the fields in your community/city/campus where no one is laboring?
Where do you dream of seeing a plentiful harvest?
Who are the people who are like sheep without a shepherd?
Who in your ministry is just waiting to be empowered and sent out to those fields?
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