How fruitful you think you are for Christ depends partly on what you think fruit is. Mark Greene explores a rich and liberating framework for everyday fruitfulness.

Shona had turned round two failing primary schools in East Glasgow – an economically deprived area of the city. She’d positively impacted the present and future lives of hundreds of children, brought hope and happiness to their parents, friends and wider families, and significantly lifted the morale of communities going through tough times. It was an extraordinary achievement. And yet she didn’t think she’d done anything significant for God.

How could that be?

Tomato syndrome

Shona is not alone. The vast majority of Christians I engage with are often very fruitful for Christ but don’t think they are. And one of the reasons is because they have tomato syndrome.

Tomato syndrome is thinking that something is a vegetable when it’s actually a fruit. Consciously or subconsciously, many Christians believe there are only really three types of fruitfulness: volunteering in the local church, doing some form of social action and having evangelistic conversations. We believe it because that’s what our many church communities tend to affirm.

The problem is that, on an average day looking after three kids under five, or working in an office for nine hours, most of us are unlikely to also be volunteering in our church, engaging in social action and having an explicitly evangelistic conversation. Have we been wasting our time? Do we really have to accept that 95% of the Christian life is doing things that are of no interest to God, that bring him no pleasure and no glory?

Maybe not. Maybe we have tomato syndrome.

To combat tomato syndrome, we at LICC developed six overall categories of everyday fruitfulness – six Ms: modelling godly character, making good work, ministering grace and love, moulding the culture around you, being a mouthpiece for truth and justice, and being a messenger for the gospel. And you can do the first five of those pretty much every day – unless you’re alone on a desert island.

Everyday faith, everyday fruitfulness

Take modelling godly character. Often we focus on the ways we’ve failed, but what of the ways God may have helped us succeed? Think of yesterday. Did you model any facet of what the Bible calls the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, kindness or self-control? Almost certainly. Did you manage to keep your cool when a colleague, child, friend or spouse got angry with you for something that wasn’t your fault? Did you manage to find a way to courageously respond with truth and grace? Well, that’s fruit.

Making good work could be a crisply ironed shirt, a neatly welded joint, a thoughtfully-served customer, an elegant piece of code... Any task done in the power of the Spirit to the glory of God is fruit that God wants to see. Similarly, every day gives us opportunities to minister grace and love: a listening ear, a meal for a struggling neighbour, a helpful link for a colleague, the offer to swap shifts with someone who really needs to... Opportunities abound. And are often taken without our even thinking: ‘Oh, aren’t I being fruitful!’

And that’s the case with moulding culture, too. We often affect the culture around us – the way things are done in our homes, workplaces, gyms – without being consciously aware of it. Sometimes it’s our very presence. As one co-worker said to a Christian, ‘Things are so much more peaceful and friendly when you’re in the office.’ Sometimes, it’s a tiny thing: you light a tea light at a family meal and it suddenly feels special. Or perhaps you’re the manager (or a parent) and you decide you’re going to say ‘sorry’ whenever you make a mistake. And quite quickly the atmosphere changes.

Being a mouthpiece for truth and justice can sound quite grand, as if it’s all about big causes, but essentially it’s about everyday conversations and everyday practices: snuffing out gossip at the school gate, making sure the right person gets the credit at work, and the wrong person doesn’t get the blame.

Unsurprisingly, when we see how God has been at work in one or two of those Ms, our confidence grows that he might, by his grace, help us with the Ms where we’re weaker. The Ms become a way of giving thanks for God’s work in our lives and a framework for praying for him to work in the future.

Growing more fruit

But how do we become more fruitful? In John 15:1-17, Jesus makes it clear. He tells us that he’s chosen us to bear fruit, that there is no way to bear fruit without him, and that there is only one way to do so: abide in him. And he repeats the word for ‘abide’ (menó in Greek) eleven times in the first ten verses. Abide in him.

May it be so. And may you bear much fruit for his glory this day and every day, whatever you do, wherever you find yourself, whoever you’re with.

Mark Greene is Mission Champion at LICC, and the author of Fruitfulness on the Frontline (IVP) and its small-group video resource. Mark has been engaged with the Navigators for over 46 years. He served as LICC’s Executive Director for 21 years and before that as Vice Principal at the London School of Theology. Mark traces the focus of his ministry all back to the impact of the Navigator emphasis on everyday discipleship and the way his first church, Trinity Baptist, NYC, made it such a gleaming reality.