Over the past thirty-five years, hundreds of thousands of hungry visitors have sampled some of the best clam chowder in the world at the annual Great Chowder Cook-off in Newport, Rhode Island. If you’re from northeastern United States, you know how esteemed a good bowl of clam chowder is to the distinguishing palette. We pride ourselves on producing the best chowder a person may ever enjoy.

This past year, the competition drew twenty-one competitors, from Rhode Island to Ireland. That’s right, Ireland - this is no “small potatoes” (pun intended :) ). This is serious business, my friends. One gets the sense that if you cannot present a truly spectacular soup, you might as well refrain from competition, saving yourself a little embarrassment. While the event is meant to be fun, the expectations are very high.

Have you ever wondered what makes one recipe so much better than the next? I often think about such things, given the fact that - let’s face it - there’s a relatively small set of ingredients that are germane to making a good chowder (clams, potatoes, onions, celery, cream, flour, salt, pepper, etc.). I don’t mean to diminish the efforts that have gone into creating the aforementioned masterpieces - God forbid I have an angry mob of chowder-heads at my front door - but, for the sake of perspective, I think it’s fair to say that there are a small number of ingredients included in even the winner’s cooking pot.

After bragging rights, arguably the biggest benefit is the spike in business that funnels to the crowned champion. I mean, who doesn’t want to give the “greatest chowder” a try?…and won’t we pay a bit extra for it, too? The business owners are counting on it!

In the chowder business, reputation means a lot. After all - and I speak for the sake of simplicity - chowder is chowder. At the end of the day, clam chowder has the distinction of bearing the primary taste of clams. I mean, that’s why we call it “clam chowder”, right? And by the by, who’s to say that there isn’t some ancient family recipe floating around in some obscure part of the world that wouldn’t annihilate anything ever presented in competition??? Nonetheless, fortunes have been made by those cooks who have created the most reputable chowder(s).

While all of this makes perfect sense, it makes no sense, whatsoever, when it comes to “cooking the Gospel”. There’s no such analog to The Great Chowder Cook-Off when it comes to spreading the Gospel. Man’s competitive flesh will tell you there is, but there’s no place for competition in evangelism.

There’s no secret “championship recipe” that is meant to make one evangelist stand out over another. God owns the recipe. It has never changed. An evangelist’s job isn’t to be creative, it is to, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

Jesus, the perfect evangelist, made no mention of a “better or best” Gospel, only the Gospel. Why? Because there’s only one. There are no real variants, regardless of man’s viewpoint on the subject. Likewise, there’s no one better to present the Gospel than the one who has it right. For example, Jesus, Himself, never made a distinction between “cooks” (sowers) and “chowder” (seed) in The Parable of Parables, The Parable of the Soils. “And He said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How will you understand all the parables” (Mark 4:13)?

From The Parable of the Soils, we have, “The sower sows the word” (Mark 4:14) and “The sower went out to sow his seed…Now the parable is this: the seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:5, 11). I encourage you to read each record of this (Matthew 13:3-12, 18-23; Mark 4:1-20; Luke 8:4-15). While doing so, make sure you understand Jesus’ audience and the context of the parable - this is critical to understand it, and by Jesus’ own words, the rest of His parables. Remember, Jesus came to “seek and to save” (Luke 19:10), so it makes total sense that His parables, especially this first one, are about the Gospel.

What we find when we read The Parable of the Soils closely, in context, is that Jesus doesn’t spend any real time on distinctions between sowers or seed. Why is that? It’s simple - Jesus doesn’t want undue emphasis placed on distinctions in those areas. Remember, in general, a parable is meant to drive one key point home. In this preeminent one, Jesus wants His disciples to assume the sower and the seed are righteous, leaving any distinctions being made between the soils (the hearts of men). In other words, He’s not interested in any other “recipes” on evangelizing than the one true one that Jesus Christ, Himself, has set forth.

This may take a little time to digest for some of you for the simple reason that this kind of thinking is antithetical to worldly thinking. The world tells us that we ought to strive for creating and hoarding our own “secret recipes”, constantly looking for ways to separate ourselves, to make ourselves special, to create distinctions, to compete…and if that includes evangelism, then so be it! While it’s true that the Lord desires we earnestly pursue truth, we ought never do so for the sake of personal distinction. Our goal is to be like the sower in the parable, indistinguishable from other sowers who sow the righteous seed.

There’s only one truth, one seed. The Lord has given it to us to sow. It’s not better or worse today or tomorrow (John 14:6; Hebrews 13:8). As evangelists (Matthew 28:18-20), we aren’t competitors, we are fellow laborers in God’s fields.

Imagine the pressure the competitors feel on the day of the Great Chowder Cook-Off event. They smile nervously at each other, courteous, but fierce competitors at heart. There’s much at stake, and it all depends on their own recipe being voted best. It’s all about them, you see. The focus is on distinctions between cooks and their chowder. We evangelists don’t have that pressure placed upon us - thank you Lord! We really don’t.

We’re not trying to make names for ourselves (we shouldn’t be anyways)…we are trying to make a name for Jesus Christ.

We already have the winning recipe - the Gospel. It’s up to the “taste buds” of those who hear it to decide for themselves where it ranks. Some will spit it out, some will remain lukewarm about it, still open to alternatives, while others will look up to Heaven and say, “Thank you Lord…it doesn’t get any better than this!” It’s the last group of people, having found and embraced the one true “recipe”, whom Jesus makes fellow sowers of the seed, for that is what it means to go and bear good fruit forevermore.

Love in Christ,

Ed Collins