Planting and I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:6-7 ESV) “
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or la Iglesia, los pastores, los vicarios, los misioneros y las diaconisas.” If only you could hear this the way I do every Sunday when Julio, one of the men from my congregation in Santo Domingo, raises his hand to share his prayer requests before the Prayer of the Church! I will forever hear it in my mind in Dominican Spanish. It’s nearly the same every Sunday. Julio asks to pray for the Church and her pastors, vicars, missionaries and deaconesses. Time after time at our Thursday night Bible study and on other occasions, Julio and others recount the story of our congregation from the first missionary pastor sent from Brazil more than ten years ago, to the vicars who have served the past few years, the ordination of our Dominican national pastor, and most recently, the arrival of more missionaries to support our Dominican pastor. In the mere two years that I have served this mission congregation, I have seen Julio and others mature in Christ, grow in faith, and confess with boldness our Lord Jesus and His salvation, which is ours by grace through faith. Thanks be to God! I am called to serve on behalf of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod as a church planter in the Dominican Republic. I serve an established congregation alongside a Dominican Lutheran pastor and a couple of other missionaries, building on work that other missionaries did before us—“watering,” as the apostle Paul puts it. In addition, we are also “planting” a church on the eastern side of the capital city of Santo Domingo. So, there is planting and watering, but like the Apostle says, God gives the growth. I love this terminology that St. Paul uses in 1 Corinthians! He, alongside other missionaries, journeyed from place to place “planting.” He did some baptizing at Corinth, even though he couldn’t recall all of those whom he had baptized (1 Corinthians 1:16). He preached “Christ and Him crucified”
(1 Corinthians 1:23). The work of the Gospel, the mission, is never about the person or the missionary. It’s all Jesus! It’s Christ, the power of God and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). This wasn’t unique to Corinth, of course. The apostle Paul and others planted. Still others watered. All the while, God gave the growth. Just before our Lord Jesus ascended into heaven, He gave His disciples the mandate to make disciples of all nations through baptizing and teaching (St. Matthew 28:18-20). That’s the essence of planting and watering. While Paul may not have done much baptizing at Corinth, there were certainly baptisms. We read elsewhere in Acts about new believers hearing the Word preached and taught. Then they, and often their whole households, were baptized. On his second missionary journey, Paul took with him Silas, then Timothy. The Holy Spirit led them not to where they planned to go, but to Macedonia. At Philippi, they met Lydia, the seller of purple goods. She heard the preaching of Christ and she and her household were baptized (Acts 16:14-15). The Philippian jailer witnessed a miracle for sure when the jail cells opened during the earthquake, but all the prisoners stayed rather than escape. But that wasn’t the big deal. He heard the Lord’s Word and was baptized—he and all his family (Acts 16:32-33). As I go about planting and watering as a missionary pastor in the Dominican
