Mark's Letters

I am relearning the trees of eastern Kansas and western Missouri. It is a formidable task. There are about nineteen species of oak trees. Some like the willow and shingle oak have leaves that look nothing like an oak. There are also eight species of hickory. Mixed into these forests are maples, walnut, elms, poplars, hackberry, locusts, and ash trees. In the understory are pawpaw, persimmon, and redbuds. Some of the tallest and easiest to identify are the sycamores whose white branches shine brightly in the blue sky of Kansas.

Wrenching one’s neck to see the leaves and crowns of the trees gives us a glimpse of the glory of a hardwood forest but is not much help in identifying the trees. The branches move in the wind and intertwine with other trees. Different kinds of vines snake into the lower branches of some trees mixing their leaves with the leaves of the tree.  

Some identifications can be made by looking closely at fallen leaves. Many of the leaves, however, look similar: chinquapin and chestnut oaks, and also the blue, white, and black ash trees. The leaves blow around on windy fall days, so it is easy to assign a leaf to the wrong tree.

Looking at the trunks of trees can also be helpful. The shell bark hickory has peeling bark. Persimmons have a cork like bark that could be used as a bobber at a fishing hole. Honey locusts this time of year have myriad small yellow leaves that flutter down in the wind, but the trunks have devilish bundles of thorns long enough to skewer your hand. The bark of many trees, however, changes as it matures, making identification difficult.

The easiest way to identify these trees is by kicking around in the leaves under the tree and discovering what kind of fruit it has dropped: the seed pod, acorn, or nut. A close look at the acorn is the best way to identify the oak trees. Each acorn has its own shape and wears a different hat. Here we have many bur oaks which have the biggest acorns. The cap covers half the acorn with curling burs, thus the other common name–mossycup oak.

The hickories are best identified by their nuts. Two hickories, the bitter nut and pignut, have nuts too bitter or tasteless for human consumption. The mockernut hickory is so named because the nut is covered by a thick-shelled fruit but yields a very small edible kernel. The shellbark hickory has shaggy peeling bark as it ages but is called the kingnut hickory because of the large and delicious nuts it drops.

One often finds a circle of grass under black walnut trees. The leaves and fruits of walnut trees contain natural herbicides that prevent the growth of other bushes or saplings. Locust trees and Kentucky Coffetrees litter the ground with unmistakable seed pods. The most noticeable of all fruits are the large yellow green hedgeapples from the Osage orange tree. If falling from one of the higher branches, these are large and heavy enough to knock a person out.

As you can see, in the Midwest forests, it is best to look down to see what is up. I have realized this is true when judging ministries and spiritual shepherds. The crowns of trees dancing in the wind can easily attract and distract us. But kicking through the leaf litter for the fruits of a ministry will often give us the best understanding of the kind ministry we are examining.

If ministers and ministries can be compared to trees, the Kansas City area is indeed a mighty forest. Recently, a major minister and ministry has fallen into scandal and disgrace. Teckla and I have been gone for over thirty years, so we are looking for a church home and kicking around the leaf litter to see what ministries have good fruit and would be a good fit. We have been impressed with the kindness we have shown at the Vineyard Community Church, but we know there are many excellent congregations in the area.  

One way to examine the fruit of a pastor or leader is to watch how they interact with “the least of these” in their congregation. How much time do they spend talking to the person who is neediest and has the least to offer the church? At our home churches in Myrtle Point—Freedom Fellowship and First Presbyterian–we saw good fruit expressed in caring for the broken in our midst.  We were shown abundant grace, mercy, and kindness by God’s people in Myrtle Point. Here at the Vineyard Community Church the pastor, who had not met Teckla or known of her dementia, prayed for her and then whispered in her ear, “Keep coming just as you are.” These simple words made Teckla feel seen and valued even though she struggles to express herself or remember words.

Small acts of kindness and holiness in ordinary life are the fruits that best reveal the nature of a ministry. Like acorns, these small acts of obedience and faithfulness contain all the DNA of the ministry. Careful examination of the leaf litter beneath a ministry will help us know if we are seeing a bitternut, pignut, mockernut, or kingnut hickory.