Moved By Light

Today I write about someone we both know, someone who has profoundly influenced my life and work.

If anything, Bruce Menning is a gardener. To see his garden is to admire it. Tomato plants stand at attention with their orbs so red I start searching pockets for salt shaker and knife. Pole beans wind their lacy way to the sky. Zucchini sprawl, indolently awaiting wok or woodchuck–whichever gets them first.

Bruce knows how to get good things out of dirt and manure. He was green before it was Color of the Decade. He turns the soil, he plants, he tends, he prunes. He knows what to fence out, what to fence in. The result is good fruit. And good vegetables.

Bruce serves God by also gardening people. He leads by helping things grow–not just grow large, but grow nice. (Give me a tasty pumpkin for a golden pie, not some tasteless behemoth, I say.) When leading consistory, he wouldn't just help people get work done; he helped them grow while they got it done. He did the same for me while I interned with him: challenging, pruning, fertilizing. And the part that I really love him for is how he has dealt with failures–his, mine, others'. God seems to have gifted him with an ability to just till what seems like waste back into the soil and come out with something richer.

Of course these past years he's been nurturing a slightly bigger garden: the Reformed Church's missions program. Our denomination does Kingdom work around the globe, and if you think tending zucchinis is hard, I'd say RCA missions makes zucchinis look easy. It takes an exhausting amount of travel. There's the hard labor of planning, budgets, staff, meetings. And all that's just if you want to get seed in the soil.

But if you want to truly tend the garden, if you want to see people and organizations grow and ripen and bear good fruit, you can't stop there. Bruce doesn't. Time and again I've seen him do things the right way instead of the easy way or the expedient way. Not that he could help it much. I don't think the gardener in him would allow anything else.

As you may know, Bruce retires in March. We get to miss his labors (again–that's twice now for you and me). I doubt he'll stop tending plants or people anytime soon, but the role changes. I'll deeply miss Bruce's hand in this garden, but I'm so very grateful to God for his time nurturing RCA missions.

(Assuming Bruce's role we've got a really great guy, Jhonny Alicea-Baez. I have to tell most Dutch people how to pronounce his name: “John-ee Ah-lee-say-ah Buy-ez. It takes them a couple tries. Even when I say it slowly. He's my current supervisor, a great preacher, and did I mention he's a really great guy? Pray for him.)

We'll have to peek at Bruce's garden this August. I'm anxious to see how it fares when he actually stays in the states for a whole summer. See you there when the tomatoes are ripe.

Bring salt.

In Christ,
–Brad