Orchard parable: The Society for the Picking of Apples
Missions parable about apples
I didn’t write this article but I thought you might gain a great deal from reading it. It is a well known mission’s illustration. It seems that church growth only applies to our country and not the world. Read and enjoy.
by James M. Weber, missionary to Japan
Once upon a time, an apple grower had acres and acres of apple trees. In all, he had 10,000 acres of apple orchards.
One day, he went to the nearby town. There, he hired 1,000 apple pickers. He told them:
“Go to my orchards. Harvest the ripe apples and build storage buildings so they do not spoil. I must be gone for a while, but I will provide all you need to complete the task. When I return, I will reward you for your work.
“I’ll set up a Society for the Picking of Apples. The Society -- to which you will all belong -- will be responsible for the entire operation. Naturally, besides those of you doing the actual harvesting, some will carry supplies, others will care for the physical needs of the group, and still others will have administrative responsibilities.”
As he set up the Society structure, some people volunteered to be pickers and others to be packers. Others put their skills to work as truck drivers, cooks, accountants, storehouse builders, apple inspectors, and even administrators. Of course, every one of his workers could have picked apples. In the end, however, only 100 of the 1,000 employees became full-time pickers.
The 100 pickers started harvesting immediately. Ninety-four of them began picking around the homestead. The remaining six looked out toward the horizon. They headed out to the faraway orchards.
Before long, the 94 pickers filled the storehouses in the 800 acres, immediately surrounding the homestead with beautiful, delicious apples.
The orchards on the 800 acres around the homestead had thousands of apple trees. However, the focus of nearly all pickers on those trees quickly depleted them. The ninety-four apple pickers around the homestead soon found it difficult to locate any unpicked trees.
As the apple picking slowed down around the homestead, Society members began channeling effort into building more enormous storehouses and developing better equipment for picking and packing. They even started some schools to train prospective apple pickers to replace those who would be too old to pick apples one day.
Sadly, those ninety-four pickers working around the homestead began fighting among themselves. Incredibly, some pickers started stealing already-picked apples. Although there were enough trees on the 10,000 acres to keep every available worker busy, those working nearest the homestead failed to move into unharvested areas. They just kept working those 800 acres nearest the house. Some on the northern edge sent their trucks to get apples on the southern side. And those on the south side sent their trucks to gather on the east side.
Even with all that activity, only six pickers harvested the remaining 9,200 acres. Those six were far too few to gather all the ripe fruit in those thousands of acres. So, apples rotted on the trees by the hundreds of thousands and fell to the ground.
One student at the apple-picking school showed an exceptional talent for picking apples quickly and effectively. When he heard about the thousands of acres of untouched faraway orchards, he started talking about going there.
His friends discouraged him. They said: “Your talents and abilities make you valuable around the homestead. You’d be wasting your talents out there. Your gifts can help us harvest apples from the trees on our central 800 acres more rapidly. That will give us more time to build improved storehouses. Perhaps you could even help us devise better ways to use our big storehouses, since we have wound up with more space than we need for the present crop of apples.”
With so many workers and so few trees, the pickers, packers, truck drivers, and the rest of the Society for the Picking of Apples living around the homestead had time for more than just picking apples.
They built nice houses and raised their standard of living. Some became very conscious of clothing styles. Thus, when the six pickers from the far-off orchards returned to the homestead for a visit, it was apparent that they were not keeping up with the styles in vogue with the other apple pickers and packers.
Those on the homestead were always good to those six who worked in the faraway orchards. Those on the homestead always welcomed the six orchard workers warmly upon their return from the distant fields. The 96 percent budget allocation by the Society of the Picking of Apples to bigger and better apple-picking methods, equipment, and personnel for the 800 acres around the homestead saddened those six pickers. In contrast, it spent only 4 percent of its budget on all those distant orchards.
The six pickers understood that an apple remains an apple regardless of its picking location. They knew the apples around the homestead were just as crucial as those far away. Still, they could not erase from their minds the sight of thousands of trees a picker had never touched.
They needed more pickers and longed for help. Packers, truck drivers, supervisors, equipment-maintenance men, and ladder builders were needed. They wondered if the professionals working back around the homestead could teach them better apple-picking methods so that, out where they worked, fewer apples would rot and fall to the ground.
Those six sometimes wondered whether the Society for the Picking of Apples was doing what the orchard owner had asked it to.
While one might question whether the Society was doing everything the owner wanted, the members kept very busy. Several members believed that proper apple picking requires the best equipment. Thus, the Society assigned several members to develop bigger and better ladders and nicer boxes to store apples. The Society also prided itself on having raised the qualification level for full-time apple pickers.
When the owner returns, the Society members will crowd around him. They’ll proudly show off the bigger and better ladders and the nice apple boxes they’ve designed and made. One wonders how happy that owner will be when he looks out and sees the acres and acres of untouched trees with their unpicked apples.
The original version appeared in Let’s Quit Kidding Ourselves About Missions, Moody Press. © 1979 by The Moody Bible Institute. Edited and revised by Howard Culbertson.