What is wrong when a Christian feels ill at ease among the people with who he worships? Is he a seeker, longing for a place where he can feel at home, put down roots and begin to flourish spiritually? Or is he ashamed of the people of God, thinking their way of living and expressing their faith is hopelessly behind the times? If that is the case, he is in danger of being uprooted and blown about by every wind of doctrine – a tumbleweed Christian.

When we talk about tumbleweeds here on the Canadian prairies we are referring to Russian thistle (Kali tragus). This is a weed that grows prolifically in poor soils and dry conditions and forms a large globular bush. Cattle will eat it early in the growing season, but it soon becomes too woody and spiny. It dries up in fall, readily breaks from its root in the wind and begins to roll across the prairie, pushed in whatever direction the wind moves it.

ImperfectTommy / Edmond Meinfelder, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Christian can become like a tumbleweed. Disappointments happen, love grows cold, the connection to members of our congregation grow brittle, new ideas of how a Christian should live begin to look attractive, soon we find ourselves being pushed hither and yon, and we call it freedom. Like a tumbleweed we drift freely from one place of fellowship to another. But remember this, when a tumbleweed begins to roll along like that – it is dead.

Last fall someone gave my wife an African violet that had been broken off from its roots. It was still alive, so she placed it on top of soil, kept the soil moist, misted the air above the plant every day, and it grew roots down into the soil, grew fresh new leaves and began to flower. True seekers are like that, they have spiritual life but have not found satisfying spiritual nourishment in any church or group, yet they really want to find a place where they can put roots down and flourish spiritually.

A seeker should never be confused with a tumbleweed. A tumbleweed is apt to find doctrines outworn and guidelines about how to live a Christian life seem restrictive. A seeker may have questions, but a conviction grows within him that these doctrines and guidelines are expressions of what he reads in the Scriptures. This is the place and the soil that nourishes his faith and helps him grow.

Many years ago we attended a service in a small congregation in a major on the U.S. east coast. The preacher took for his text Romans 1:14-16 and told us how the apostle was motivated by three things: he was a debtor; he was willing; and he was not ashamed of the gospel. I was touched by the message and a little dismayed by what I observed. It did not appear that the pastor and his congregation were fully in harmony with the denomination to which they belonged.

As Christians we are debtors for all that God has done for us in Christ. We cannot repay God, neither should we try. God has transferred that debt to the people around us, we owe it to them to tell what God has done for us and what he can do for them. In order to do that, we must be willing to fully identify with the way that faith is lived out among God’s people. If we are even a little ashamed to identify with them, we are in danger of becoming a tumbleweed.