5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 

8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

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We are continuing in our series on the discipleship pathway known as the Four Fields.

Let’s review.

You Go to where the people are and form a relationship. You create an oikos list by praying for people in your sphere of influence, and you demonstrate hospitality by inviting them into your life.

Then, you tell them the Gospel. This is where you tell people about who Jesus is, what He has done, and bring them to a crisis moment of either surrender or rejection.

Then you Grow them as disciples. You teach new believers how to obey Jesus, including His Great Commission to go out and make more disciples.

Then you Gather them into groups. This is forming a community of believers. This is church. You step up and incorporate believers into the body of Christ by creating a new community of Christians.

And finally, you Guide them. You find people in this new community of believers who are willing and able to go, and reproduce the pattern all over again.

Today we’re talking about growing—discipleship. This is where the field takes shape.

If the Gospel is the crisis moment—demanding a decision—then discipleship, I think, is the crux of the Christian walk. This is when a potential field reaches actualization. This is the germination of Generational Stories.

In the first field, we saw that the performative power of God’s spoken word alone accounts for “descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” And by faith, one is given the power to conceive the seed.

We participate in the performative word of God when we share the Gospel. We have the relative power of God as His Image-bearing ambassadors here on earth to create life out of nothing, because it is His Word that people hear when we preach the gospel.

This is all to produce spiritual children. Generations of disciples who tell stories of transformed lives for years to come. We’re populating the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

Paul implicitly summarizes the first two fields in 1 Corinthians 3:5 and brings us to the third,

“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.” (1 Corinthians 3:5)

Paul and Apollos went out (the first field) and preached the gospel (the second field), which is the only way one may come to believe. 

And clearly some in Corinth believed. Believers are the ones to whom Paul is writing. He’s writing to the church.

But Paul makes it clear that the work that he and Apollos were doing was not the real work. They were a means to the work God is doing, but they are not the workers in the full sense of the word. God is.

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:6).

It is interesting that, grammatically, Paul and Apollos’s work come to an end. The planting and the watering are in the aorist tense, meaning the work is complete. It’s finished. Their job is done. But the growth that God gives is in the imperfect tense, meaning it is a continuous action. 

God will continue to give growth; these generational stories will continue to be told, and we have the privilege of working in His field. 

While Paul concedes there is some difference between himself and Apollos, the difference—much like the workers themselves—is relatively insignificant; one plants, the other waters.

“So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:7).

Paul’s assertion of their insignificance in the process makes a significant point about the work. They are simply servants—field hands. And the field hands can only do what they are told to do. They are utterly powerless to make the seed come to life. That is God’s mysterious power and prerogative.

They are powerless workers with different roles, and yet they are united in a singular task. The labor is the same.

“He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to the labor.” (1 Corinthians 3:8).

The NIV actually captures the sense of the language better: “The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose.”

They are not the same person, and they’re doing different things, but their efforts are complementary parts of a single agricultural project, metaphorically speaking.

The idea of wages or reward is not intended to motivate the work. The idea of reward is only introduced to demonstrate the subordinate position of the one who plants and the one who waters. 

The One who does the real work is the leader—the Head—and does not receive any reward, but instead doles it out to His field hands.

This is where we get to the work of discipleship. The growth.

It reminds me of one of my favorite parables in the Bible. In Matthew 20:1-16, Jesus begins:

“For the Kingdom of Heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.”

So the master hires a few workers at the break of dawn and offers them a denarius—a full day’s wage. Then around midmorning he sees some people standing around in the marketplace and offers them a job as well, saying, “I’ll pay you whatever seems right.” The same thing happens around noon and evening.

At the end of the day, the master of the vineyard told his foreman, “Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.” (Matthew 20:8)

And each of them is given a full day’s wage. Some of the workers who started at the beginning of the day complained that those who came late were paid the same. Everybody got paid a full day’s wage.

But the master says, “Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge me my generosity?” (Matthew 20:14-16)

Jesus concludes this parable: “So the last will be first, and the first [will be] last.” (Matthew 20:16)

This is really the Kingdom discipleship model. When you surrender to Jesus, you get hired to work in His field. And it doesn’t matter how early or late you sign up; you still receive your full pay for the work. 

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a Christian; you still have a job to do.

As soon as you’re given new life, God sets you to cultivating. From the very beginning, that has been God’s method of operation. Go all the way back to the beginning of Genesis.

“The LORD God formed man out of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom He had formed…The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work and keep it.” (Genesis 2:8-9, 15)

Do you see? God created the field. God created new life. Then God placed the new life he created into the field to cultivate it. 

When you become a new creation in Christ, God takes you out of the dust and moves you into a plot of land to cultivate it. That’s your new job, and He rewards you with the fruit of your labor.

That’s what Paul is saying here. You don’t get rewarded because you did an extra special good job. You get rewarded because God generously pays His servants to do what He tells them to do. And each servant has a different role with the same goal, and God places His servants where He wants them.

And just like Adam, God does not leave us to do the work alone. 

“For we are God’s fellow workers…” (1 Corinthians 3:9a)

This does not mean we’re co-workers with God. It means we are co-laborers working for God. 

I love the word Paul uses, συνεργοί. Where we get the word synergy. We are in a synergistic relationship with one another in God’s field. This applies to Christians all around the world in local churches or those who are abroad. You and I are fellow workers together under the authority of God, belonging to God.

This is why we give toward Global Outreach and our missionaries like Jim and Mary Esden, the Chuns, and the AJK7. This is why we plant churches. This is synergy. We’re all working together for the same goal.

It’s easy to affirm this, right? But sometimes it’s hard to live out its practical implications in the church. The most common error is to let your fellow co-laborers do all the work—assume they will bear the brunt of discipleship and evangelism while you think you don’t have anything more to offer than cheering them on from the sidelines.

In 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered outside her home in Queens. The New York Times reported that thirty-seven people either saw or heard the attack, and did nothing to stop it. They didn’t even call the police.

Following the murder, psychologists John M. Darley and Bibb Latané conducted experiments that demonstrated if a single individual is asked to complete a task alone, the sense of responsibility will be strong, and there will be a positive response; however, if a group is required to complete a task together, each individual in the group will have a weak sense of responsibility, and will often shrink back in the face of difficulties or responsibilities.

They called this the Bystander Effect. It’s a diffusion of responsibility because you assume someone else will do it.

I think this happens a lot in the church. We assume the pastor or a couple of extroverted evangelists will get the job done. God has given us fellow workers to tend His field because we can’t do this alone, but we can’t shirk our individual responsibilities. 

Just like Paul and Apollos, our work may be different, but we are all working together toward the same goal.

Sometimes we can take it to the other extreme and forget that we’re all in this together. Too often church leaders, rather than working cooperatively to cultivate God’s field, become embroiled in turf battles. 

The same thing can be true of other individuals in the church. We want to be sure that no one infringes on our little patch of the field. That we aren’t asked to do something that’s not our job. That things are done precisely the way they’ve always been done or the way we want them to be done—because that’s what we’re comfortable with. 

And so the field becomes endlessly subdivided into unproductive subsistence plots.

Just like Paul and Apollos, we may be insignificant on our own, but God uses our synergy to grow His field.

Earlier this year, Pastor Paul asked us to consider how we would respond if God doubled our church in a year’s time. We know something is going on here. We all feel like the Holy Spirit is doing something—something’s bubbling up. Will we be ready for that kind of growth?

This gets to he heart of our readiness to put in the work. God is clearly active. Are we ready to be active in our discipleship as co-laborers belonging to Him?

In keeping with the agricultural metaphor, it’s like Proverbs 24:30-31—

“I passed by the field of a sluggard,

by the vineyard of a man lacking sense,

and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns;

the ground was covered with nettles,

and its stone wall was broken down.”

Without active discipleship, the once fruitful field will become overgrown and useless. It is every believer’s responsibility to co-labor synergistically under God to work His field.

You are either discipling, being discipled, or both. Otherwise you and your field will become overgrown.

It is God that makes the growth, but it is also God who assigns the tasks and doles out the tools for the work. There are individuals with individual gifts all working toward the same goal.

Ephesians 4:11-16 says,

“And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.  

“Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

God has given us different gifts and skills and roles to grow the Kingdom of God and disciple new believers. Our job is to build up the body of Christ. We all grow up new believers. 

We don’t stop at evangelism and leave them as spiritual babies, and we don’t surrender to Christ and then cease to seek Him out—remaining children to be tossed about. 

We either disciple or be discipled.

This was the problem in Corinth at the time Paul wrote this letter. The Corinthians were acting like little baby Christians, being tossed about by whatever wind of doctrine, human cunning, craftiness, or deceitful schemes seemed right to their undeveloped, undisciplined, fleshy baby brains.

Ultimately, the church was divided, and I think this boils down to poor discipleship. Not the fault of Paul or Apollos—they clearly did the work God assigned them—but I think that maybe the Corinthians were stuck as the recipients of Paul’s and Apollos’s entry and gospel fields without taking the next step into proper discipleship.

Let me explain.

The Corinthians were clearly believers. Paul calls them such—“Those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both our Lord and theirs.”

Paul and Apollos had clearly plowed and planted the field. They had gone into Corinth and preached the gospel so that those who heard could call upon the Name of Jesus and be saved. 

Paul and Apollos were making new life in Christ—spiritual babies. But that’s where the Corinthians stopped. They were a community of believers that were not being discipled. They were not active participants in their discipleship. They were still spiritual infants. That’s how Paul referred to them as well.

First Corinthians 3:1-4

“Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.”

They were stuck in the infant stage. They were still suckling spiritual milk. They hadn’t got to the meat of discipleship. That is why discipleship—growth—is the crux of the Christian faith. 

Without discipleship you’re still alive—you’re still a new creation in Christ—but you’re defenseless and can barely be addressed as “spiritual people”—just tossed about by any nonsense that comes along.

You can be justified. You can be sanctified. And you can still be a mess.

You need training. You need orthodoxy. You need discipleship. 

Throughout this letter to the Corinthians, we hear stories of people boasting in their sin. Taking what appears to be full advantage of the doctrine of grace because they had an undeveloped understanding of freedom in their new life in Christ.

That’s where the Corinthians were. They were brand new baby Christians who were still evaluating what was “spiritual” by their own fleshy hearts because they had not yet been well discipled. And, as is almost always the case, those who are not well discipled began to divide, and the disease spread.

Like all life, it instinctively began to grow. But without guidance, without discipleship, it began to grow up deformed and malnourished.

To bring it back to the agricultural metaphor, discipleship is like a garden stake.

The purpose of a garden stake is to provide structural support for weak, top-heavy, or young plants, preventing them from snapping, bending, or collapsing under torrential rain, blustering wind, or the heavy weight of fruit they’re not strong enough to bear yet.

A stake trains plants to grow up vertically, rather than sprawling on the ground where the fruit will rot in the dirt.

That’s discipleship. That’s orthodoxy. That’s what the Corinthians were lacking, and that’s what all new believers need.

You are either discipling, being discipled, or both. Otherwise you’ll be stuck in infancy, sprawled out on the ground.

All life instinctively grows and divides. The church in Corinth was dividing, but it was not multiplying. The church in Corinth may have been growing, but it was unhealthy.

For a thing to be living, as the church is, division and growth are necessary, but they must be inhibited.

Here’s another metaphor:

You might remember from sixth-grade biology that cells divide and replicate. That’s exactly what we want to see the church do. But there are safeguards in cellular mitosis that keep the new cells from mutating or becoming cancerous.

These failsafes are called Spindle Assembly Checkpoints, and they ensure every chromosome attaches correctly to the mitotic spindle before splitting.

That’s what discipleship is. Discipleship is the Spindle Assembly Checkpoint that ensures healthy multiplication when a church naturally grows and divides. It replicates good, healthy DNA in the new life that goes out from the church.

Discipleship is vital to generational stories. Otherwise the generations get inbred, mutated, or cancerous.

Discipleship is vitally important for your spiritual health and the health of the church.

That’s why we have a discipleship pathway.

The Four Fields discipleship pathway is simply a tool—it’s a way to imagine the Biblical discipleship method. It is a good pattern to follow for healthy growth.

But the “Four Fields” aren’t four separate fields—they are four quarters of the same field. God’s field. And there is a place for you wherever you are. 

Whether you got hired on in the morning, afternoon, or evening. Just like Paul and Apollos, “As the Lord assigned to each.” Participation in any of the quadrants is participation in discipleship.

That being said, “growth” is the crux of this discipleship model. So this morning, I encourage you to grow.

Consider where you are in this discipleship model, and take one step forward. 

If you have not yet made entry—made an oikos list—then right now I urge you to think of three people that you know personally—people you can interact with—and begin praying that they hear and receive the Gospel. 

That’s it. Just pray for them. Write their names on the bulletin and start praying for them today. You can “go” without leaving your home.

If you already have a list of people that you have been earnestly praying for and waiting for them to hear the gospel, then be the one to tell them. Make an appointment with someone you’ve been praying for this week with the intention of telling them about Jesus. Tell someone the gospel. Participate in the performative word of God to create new life.

If you’re not being discipled beyond Sunday morning in a Bible study or T-Group right now, then join one. You can find one that suits your schedule. Fill out one of those connect cards and let us know you’re interested. Talk to Paul or Kevin or me. Grow yourself.

And if you’ve been in a T-Group for a while, consider hosting or facilitating a new T-Group or Bible Study. If you have been receiving, maybe it’s time to start giving back. We’ll be offering training in the near future if you’re ready to step up and grow others. 

We are all co-laborers under God. We’re all working synergistically with one another to grow the Kingdom that God is building.

But you are also God’s field. Continue to grow.