Soils in the Church (book starter)

I've been contemplating a book idea, and I wanted to jot down some notes in case a moment comes to write it. The idea is to use the Parable of the Soils to analyze the church (rather than using the normal lens of the evangelism of those outside the church). Why is the church susceptible to the Nixons and Trumps of this world? Why has the church so often stood on the wrong side of justice (slavery, civil rights)?

Seed on the Path

• There are people in the church who are not in the church. While the church always meets visibly, its membership is ultimately invisible.
• There are the obvious of those who go to church to get "street credit" or to look respectable, your run of the mill hypocrite.
• Matthew 7:15-23 -- false prophets who bear bad fruit (with love as the measuring stick), not everyone who says "Lord Lord"
• Matthew 13:24-29 the weeds
• Matthew 22:11-13 the improperly dressed
• Matthew 25:44-46 the goats
• These are not a matter of belief or orthodoxy. It is about fruit and action (love in action). These are those who do not bear the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. Concern about right belief is a subsidiary theme of the new Testament (e.g., the Pastorals), and even then it is probably more about teaching on living rather than ideas in themselves.

Seed in the Shallows

• Frontal assault is the point of the parable, inability to stand persecution because of lack of root.
• But I would like to focus on shallow Christianity, Christianity without proper rooting and anchoring. 
• Shallow Christians are easily deceived because their roots are misplaced. Our roots should be in Christ, the person, and in the God who is focally revealed as faithful, loving, and gracious. 
• I think a key to the deception of the church in recent days is a faulty placement of faith in something disguised as the Bible that is not the Bible. So there is rooting in a simplistic understanding of the Bible, something easy for us to understand but that is easily manipulable into ungodliness or an obstacle to true godliness.
• There is often rooting in a faulty conception of God, a God that is easy to understand but easily twisted into an abuser.
• Because we are not anchored deep, shallow ideologies take over--ones we may actually think are deep but aren't.

Seed that is Choked

• The pressures of life is the point of the parable.
• But I would like to broaden the consideration to anything earthly that takes our eyes off the heavenly reality. These earthly things can choke out a deeper sense of God. 
• This can be the ideologies and positions of human denominations. 
• It can be the mistaking of civil religion and political parties with God. There's Christian nationalism. 
• Any earthly tribe can do it. 
• Of course, money fits well with the parable ("you cannot serve God and money").

Good Soil

• The good soil is everything the other soils aren't. It is rooted in Christ, a proper sense of God as love, and a proper sense of the Bible as a witness. Its values are oriented around self-surrender and love. It yields the fruit of love-in-action.