Lesson 7 of the 4 Chair Discipling course

The Four Soils

You have the four chairs. Now the first of two lessons on what keeps people stuck between them. Jesus's Parable of the Soils, read from the farmer's view, is a diagnostic of why three out of four who begin never reach fruitfulness. The number to carry is 75%.

The problem this lesson solves

The four-chair pathway is not a smooth conveyor belt. People get stuck, and more often than a comfortable church wants to admit. Jesus's own parable in Mark 4:3–20 says plainly that three of the four soils never bear fruit. Spader draws the sobering inference: if you read the parable at face value, about 75% of those who begin the disciple-making journey never move into Chair 3 or Chair 4 faithfulness. That is not a fringe statistic; it is Jesus's own diagnostic.

This lesson solves two things. First, it gives you a vocabulary for where people get stuck, using Jesus's own three labels: no life, no roots, no fruit. Second, it hands you Spader's alliterated remedies per soil, so you can move from diagnosis to shepherding. Next lesson (Lesson 8) takes the John 15 vine and the three barriers; this one is the soils.

1 · Read it from the farmer's view

Most preaching on the soils treats the parable as a sorting story: which soil are you? Spader redirects. Read it from the farmer's view, and the parable becomes a manual for what keeps the crop from coming up, and what a wise farmer does about each. The farmer is not fatalistic; he changes his method per soil. That is the move a disciple-maker learns.

Jesus's own summary labels, scattered through the explanation, are the diagnostic. Three soils fail, each in a characteristic way:

"No life / no roots / no fruit." Three failure modes, three different remedies. A preacher who can hold those three labels can name, from the pulpit, exactly where someone is stuck, and what to do about it.

2 · Soil one: the path — "no life"

The seed on the path never roots at all. Satan "immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them" (Mark 4:15); the person "never believes." The diagnosis is a hardened, uncultivated heart. This is the Chair 1 stuck-point, and it is exactly the ground Spiritual CPR (Lesson 3) was given to break.

The remedy is cultivation, and Spader anchors it in Isaiah 28:23–29, where four times the prophet says "listen / pay attention / hear." Breaking hard ground is the hardest, slowest, most relational work: plowing (the engine strains, dark smoke), disking, picking stones, sowing carefully. Friendship with a sinner is plowing. A patient answer is disking. You cannot skip it and complain that the seed was stolen.

3 · Soil two: the rocky ground — "no roots"

Here is the Chair 2 stuck-point, the most painful one for a pastor. "They have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away" (Mark 4:17). Note Jesus's realism: not if trouble comes, but when. The new believer receives with joy, has no root, and collapses at the first cost.

Spader's remedy is the alliterated D-S-T-A-P, and it is a usable shepherding plan:

Notice how D-S-T-A-P maps onto Lesson 4's five-fold child-development map (identity, walk, cleansed life, family). The two lessons are two views of the same Chair 2 work. The remedy for "no roots" is simply: do Chair 2 properly. Root them deep in identity before the trouble comes.

4 · Soil three: the thorns — "no fruit"

The thorny ground is the Chair 2→3 stuck-point, and it is the subtlest. Notice the difference: this seed does germinate and grow. The person is alive, not dead; rooted, not shallow. But the plant "brings no grain to maturity" (Mark 4:19 net of Luke's "their fruit does not mature"). The life is real; the fruit never comes. Why? Three thorns, named exactly:

Spader's remedy is D-D-D-D, and it is more aggressive than D-S-T-A-P because thorns are aggressive:

The tithing line is characteristically blunt and characteristically Spader. Money is the thorn you can measure. A disciple who will not steward money toward the kingdom almost always has the deceitfulness of riches woven into the root system. Demand is the right word because niceness does not pull thorns.

5 · Soil four: good soil — 30, 60, 100-fold

The good soil "hears the word and accepts it and bears fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold" (Mark 4:20). Here is the crucial pastoral correction: you cannot manufacture fruit; you can only tend a healthy environment. Spader uses a cactus illustration, too much water kills; each plant needs tailored care. The farmer's job is not to force the yield but to make the conditions in which fruit is the natural byproduct.

That environment is described in 1 Thessalonians 2:7–11, where Paul likens his care to three roles in succession:

Notice the progression: mother → brother → father. It tracks the chairs. A new believer needs a nursing mother; a growing worker needs a brother who toils beside them; a maturing disciple needs a father who exhorts. Fruit takes time, and it takes seasons, and it is always a byproduct of abiding, never the product of striving. (We will press that last point in Lesson 8, the vine.)

6 · Fruit inspecting: three categories

If good soil is measured by fruit, then a disciple-maker must be able to recognize fruit. Spader offers three biblical categories, and this is a tool a preacher can hand to a congregation as a self-diagnostic:

And Spader warns against "plastic fruit": activity that looks like ministry but produces none of the three. A busy church with no character, no righteous conduct, and no new disciples is a tree full of plastic fruit. The 30/60/100 is not attendance; it is real life, in all three categories, compounding.

7 · Why this matters for your teaching

Three pastoral payoffs land from Chapter 9.

First, the 75% reframes the whole pastoral task. If three of four who begin never reach fruitfulness, then the bottleneck of the church is not evangelism; it is the soils between the chairs. A sermon on this parable is one of the most pastorally useful messages a teacher can give, because it names, in Jesus's own words, why people fall away.

Second, diagnosis precedes remedy. The power of "no life / no roots / no fruit" is that it tells you which remedy to reach for. You do not give a cultivation answer (plowing) to a rocky-ground problem; you give a rooting answer (identity). You do not give a rooting answer to a thorny-ground problem; you give a ruthlessness answer (destroy). Preaching the soils is preaching discernment.

Third, fruit is the goal, and it is God's work. The good-soil section ends any triumphalism: you tend the environment; God gives the increase (1 Cor 3:6). The 30/60/100 is His yield through a healthy plant. Your job is to be good soil and to make the soil around you good.

Make it stick

1. Recite. Keep the four challenges fresh: John 1:39 · John 1:43 · Matt 4:19 · John 15:16. Add the three soils labels: no life / no roots / no fruit. Two retrieval cues are better than one.

2. Read the source. Open Chapter 9, "Nine Sticking Points (Mark 4)". This lesson covers the Mark 4 half of the "nine"; Lesson 8 will cover the John 15 half. The chapter has the full D-S-T-A-P and D-D-D-D exposition and the discussion questions.

3. Keep the reference open. The master map maps the soils to the chairs; revisit it with the 75% in mind. The "three sticking-point soils" glossary entry now reads differently.