Bee Keeping and Growing a Church

I am a beekeeper now.  But it is mostly by accident and I don’t deserve much credit.  In fact, I would like to keep track of who does get the credit.  Let me give a little backstory and then make an application for the church.

Late last summer, a friend called and asked if I would like a couple of bee boxes.  Her ex-husband had bees in town, but the colony died off due to the city spraying for bugs.  I have long been interested in keeping bees, so the offer of free equipment was a no-brainer. 

·      Credit:  My friend and her ex-husband.

A couple of days later, I make the arrangements to go pick-up the bee boxes and a few other things associated with bee keeping.  It was more than would fit in the back of my little Honda, so my son agreed to help me and to use his truck to haul all the  stuff home.  Counting the cinderblocks on which the boxes sit it was actually two loads of stuff.  Not only did my son use his truck he did the heavy lifting and loading the collection. 

·      Credit: Mostly my son, but I get a little.

Once home we found the boxes had been neglected for a long time.  They were dirty and I thought they might need to be burned.  But with the advice from real beekeepers and the hard work of my wife and I, the boxes cleaned up very nicely and were stacked and ready to use.  (Side bar: of all the hobbyists in the world I believe that beekeepers are the most helpful for novices.  Their willingness to offer council and to help is remarkable)

·      Credit:  Beekeepers, my wife-and I will take a little.

I learned that late summer/early fall is not the best time of year to start beekeeping (see above comment about the helpfulness of beekeepers).  So, I stored the boxes by my shop where they sat through the winter.   During this time I talked up by new hobby with a neighbor who sells honey; naturally, he was interested.  Then last Saturday his wife calls and asks if I wanted some bees.  Their neighbor discovered a honeybee colony in a lawn decoration that looked like an old fashioned well house.  I was out of town, but later that evening I went over to look at the bee colony.  There were a few bees and some comb in the overturned well house.  Not a lot of bees, but it would be a start.  I told the neighbor I would come and get them as soon as I figured out the best way to do it. I had the beginnings of a bee colony.

Credit: My neighbors

Saturday night I re-cleaned a bee box, affixed a jar of sugar water and began to look up Youtube videos on how to capture a bee colony.  I came up with a plan (which was not a very good one) and went to bed anticipating the beginnings of a new hobby.  Sunday morning before church I walked over to the over turned well house to find less than a dozen bees.  I was crestfallen.  When they turned the well house on its side the bees were so disturbed they swarmed off.  After church I finished setting up the bee box planning to buy a colony soon, but I did so without much excitement.

·      Credit:  In this, the least successful part of the process, I get the credit.

In the middle of the afternoon, I was checking on a sick chicken when I heard a buzzing roar.  I could not tell where it was coming from.  I called my wife, who had been over near the chicken pen a few minutes before, to help me identify where the sound was coming from.  I think it is coming from the old water oak overhead.  My wife came over and points to the bee box and says, “There they are!”  Thousands of bees were swarming around the box, hundreds were hanging off the front, and thousands more were in the air above us. 

·      Credit: The bees.

As of sun up this morning, the bees were coming and going, and now I am the most unmerited and unqualified beekeeper in America, perhaps the world.  I did very little to get the bees.  The most that can be said is that I provided an environment that was conducive for bees.   They would not have come if I had put kerosene in the feeder instead of water.  Based on my experience I should not expect to be asked to speak or write about beekeeping, at least not beyond this blog.

Many times in ministry we work hard to grow a church.  We do all the right things. We pray, we serve, we teach, we care, we market, we do all the things recommended in the books written by the guys at the big churches and yet our churches don’t flourish.  We blame ourselves.  We blame our people and if we don’t blame God we might occasionally question Him and His ways.  There are things we can do to provide a environment conducive for church growth, but we can’t make it happen.  I know a church where folks swarm in every Sunday and within a few miles are dozens of other churches that experience very moderate growth.

The point of this blog is not to argue for or against church growth principles or techniques.  Nor is it to offer advice on how to make your hive conducive to growth.  It is simply this word of encouragement for minsters, pastors and church leaders: if the bees swarm to another church and not yours, don’t assume that it is because in some way you are not adequate to the task or deficient in personality.  The other preacher is not as good as they may look and you are not as bad as you may feel. 

BUZZ ON