Are You Hacking Branches or Striking Roots

An article by Matt    No Comments

Long Island’s mild winter has been a good thing for my family and our garden.  We have been enjoying fresh kale at least once a week with our dinners (creamed kale, sauteed kale, kale with garlic and mushrooms, and on and on).  I am a little concerned that the kale we froze over the winter isn’t going to get used any time soon.  The mild weather has also enabled me to put off cleaning up our garden until just recently, when I was able to clear out the plants that were no longer bearing fruit, or were killed off by recent frosts.

My least favorite part of the clean up was dealing with our chives.  The chives were planted in hopes of controlling our the bug population in our garden (unsuccessfully), and while they were not a crop we paid much attention to, they flourished.  The chives had set incredibly deep roots, were tightly bunched together, and were generally a pain to remove from the garden.  I have to admit that several times I considered just yanking the tops of the plants off, and leaving them be.  It was then that I started to think about Thoreau and what he wrote in Walden:

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Everyday we, as church leaders, are faced with challenging situations.  We are constantly dealing with sin, dysfunction, and brokenness on our teams, in our congregations, and within our own families.  The question is, are we hacking at the branches, or are we striking at the roots?

Hacking at branches is easy.  Sure, you might work up a sweat, but within several minutes the branches are beaten back and everything looks pretty once again.  While cosmetically the problem is solved, the issue still remains and will need to be dealt with again in the near future.

Striking at roots is far more difficult.  I have to admit, those chives kicked my butt.  After finishing up I flopped down in my chair and did nothing for an hour or so.  I felt the work in my arms, and have been picking dirt out from under my fingernails ever since.  While I could have just hacked off the tops of plants and been done with it, pain free, I know that failure to deal with the roots would ensure that my garden grows nothing but chives next season.

While the work was difficult, tiring, and painful… in the long run, it is worth it.

From time to time we need to stop and ask the question “where am I hacking at branches when I should be root striking?”  Where are the issues in your church, in your teams, and in your relationships that you continue to deal only with the surface, as opposed to solving the issue once and for all?  If you are in a church that has some serious roots that need to be struck, it might be time to get some help working through these issues (Blessing Point does great work in this area).

What roots do YOU need to be striking?