The Art of Letting Our Fields Lie Fallow
The Art of Letting Our Fields Lie Fallow
A Meditation on Generative Rest
Near the end of 2022 and only a few months after resigning as lead pastor of CityChurch, I was approached with opportunities to contribute in ongoing ways to two national ministry teams. With a long-term substitute teaching job and the start of seminary classes looming in January, I was torn. On one hand, I was worried I would miss out on important conversations and opportunities if didn’t say yes. On the other hand, I didn’t want to over-commit. I know what it is to stay up late and rise early, day after day and week after week. Thankfully, I’ve lived only seasons like this–the years of new babies, church planting, book manuscript finalization, and side hustles. However, my tolerance for achievement via a constant stream of adrenaline is now practically non-existent.
After receiving the two invitations in one week, I prayed for wisdom. Before I woke up the next morning, words flitted through my brain like they often do, divine wisdom disconnected from images or storylines: Let the ground lie fallow for a year.
I knew immediately that these words echoed God’s agricultural mandates to the ancient Israelites. “On the seventh year, you shall let the land lie fallow.”
This commandment is repeated later in the Pentateuch: “But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest.”I took the word-dream seriously and said no to the two invitations, hoping that in a year’s time, there would be some other kind of “farming” that God would allow me to do.
Yet, despite the specific answer to my prayer for wisdom, I felt confused. Here God was, telling me to let the field lie fallow, and yet all fall I’d been prompted by the unambiguous whisperings of the Spirit in certain and specific directions to cultivate and produce other, entirely new and unexpected things. When the invitations came, I was in the midst of multiple, time-consuming creative ministry projects. I wasn’t doing nothing (although I did and still do practice a weekly Sabbath).
When we think of “letting the ground lie fallow” or implementing a meaningful pause of any kind–we may fear a great nothingness, an overwhelmingly empty and unfruitful time. But take heart. See the rest of these instructions about the resting field:
Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you—for yourself, your male and female servants, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you, as well as for your livestock and the wild animals in your land. Whatever the land produces may be eaten.
The ancient Israelites were instructed to set their sheep loose on resting fields; livestock and people could eat from the field during the year, but there was to be no systematic planting, no formal harvest. Something magical and organic happens in the land when it’s resting. Things grow (not necessarily things we’ve intentionally planted) that are sustaining and nourishing to us and to those who look to us for provision and guidance.
Unrested land, on the other hand, eventually produces terrible food. Not being a shepherd or farmer myself, I was fascinated to learn this from James Rebanks’ account of English farming. Regarding a friend’s worn-out field, he writes:
…it has the worst and sickliest crop on it that they have ever known. It has been used for grain for fifteen straight years and now needs to rest and get its soil right again with grass, and some livestock on it to replenish it with their muck.
When a field is given regular rests from the cycle of plowing, planting, and harvesting the same kind of crop, the soil maintains its nutrients. The invisible and visible ecosystems of the field flourish. The field grows plant life that feeds the livestock, who stumble around, fertilizing the field and spreading indigenous seeds, which grow into more plant life that attracts a diversity of living creatures. And, crop seeds that fell to the ground during the last harvest sprout roots, too, and fly heavenward, producing food for people. The point is that things grow in different and new ways when a field takes a rest.
Up to the end of last summer, I’d been in two formal staff roles in local churches for fourteen years. I was called to those ministries. Year after year, I tended my ministry “field” in cycles–planting ideas, themes, and communicating vision–for small groups, spiritual formation, worship, prayer, giving, and missional outreach. In the last six years, I also tended the field by preaching to keep congregants connected to the larger themes in Scripture according to the lectionary calendar–Advent, Lent, Easter, and ordinary time, all in rhythm.
I think I am still called to vocational ministry in the local church. But this year, I am learning the art of letting the field lie fallow–restraining myself from cultivating the same field and planting the same kind of crop all over again. I’m finding out what grows and bears fruit when I let it rest. It’s required trust and courage; it’s not been without fear. But it’s yielded surprise and delight.
Rebanks says that in farming, “the unbreakable law of the field [is] sustaining soil health and fertility.”
There’s a parable for us. What do you need to let rest in order for it to remain fertile? What shall you leave uncultivated or paused for just a season in your life, your job, your ministry, or your church--so that something new can grow? Perhaps the fixer-upper needs to not be fixed up this year. Maybe an outreach program repeated every year needs a pause and re-evaluation. God transforms our fields in wild and delightful ways when, every once in a while, we allow the “same-old-same-old” to come to a grinding halt.Here’s a disclaimer: If your field is really run down, it won’t offer immediate and wild delight when you pause. You might be required to rejuvenate it first. As Rebanks re-introduced native plants and trees to his fields, you might need to introduce therapy, spiritual direction, coaching, exercise, nutritious food, regular times set aside to be in the presence of friends and sunshine, or extended times of prayer, solitude, or silence. Your church staff may need a reset, with margin built into the year’s calendar, leaving days or months un-programmed and unscheduled in advance. If your field’s exhausted from too much plowing, planting, and harvesting, then biodiversity and new growing things will take some time. Roll with it.
If, however, your field’s ready for just a regular “maintenance rest,” then by all means, sit back and wait for the purple coneflowers to grow. Listen to the choir of black birds, cicadas, and wind through the tall grasses. Forage and find good things to eat. There’ll be plenty to sustain you and everyone else until harvest season comes ‘round again.
Hey! I’m a book-obsessed pastor, author, and holistic life and leadership coach. Find out more about coaching and my other creative projects at www.heatherweber.org. Subscribe to my Dear Exiles newsletter at heatherweber.substack.com. I’m is the author of Dear Boy:, An Episotlary Memoir* and the host of the Your Pastor Reads Books podcast.
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Ex 23:11
Lev 25:4-5
Rebanks, James. Pastoral Song, 201.
Rebanks, 107.