Luke 13:19 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.

This parable is about church growth. The issues are not clear unless you look to the harvest. Mustard trees in those days were pruned back to stop vertical growth. The harvest of mustard seeds was performed by hand at a height where workers did not have to climb ladders.

What does that have to do with this parable? When a church gets really big, it attracts “fowls of the air”. The harvest is hindered and the fowls eat the seed. In modern terms large churches remove the pastor away from the flock. An organizational structure isolates the shepherd from the sheep. Size and structure require maintenance, insurance, utilities, cleaning, repair, subsystem upgrades, all the things that drain resources.

All these “things” hinder the harvest. The harvest is still done at the personal level, not above their heads. We see larger and larger portions of tithes being used to support things that have little to do with the harvest. Is that an effective stewardship of God’s resources? Doesn’t that isolate him even more so from the flock?

Matthew 20:27 And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

That cannot be done from the lofty branches for the workers are on the ground.