Episode 7 – Vine Grafting; special guest Ray Hollenbach

Show Notes Episode 7 – On Grafting Grape Vines and Special Guest Ray Hollenbach

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It’s a fact: the plants that produce wine grapes don’t come from seeds. You can’t “sow grapes”. More on that soon.

And later, Student of Jesus blogger and disciple-maker Ray Hollenbach and I talk about the fruit of the spirit (debunking the most common myth about it), and a little bit about the Vineyard church he is a part of, and what his “Deeper” seminars and workshops are all about.

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Wine segment:

Wine grape plants don’t come from seeds, so how are vineyards created?

There are two main ways commercial growers get their fields ready for a grape harvest:

The first way is to plant seedlings taken from healthy and mature grape vines. This means that a harvest of good grapes for wine is 4-5 years away. Booo.

The second way is to use an older and mature vineyard and graft in (attach) new plants into the vine.

They prune down the top of the plant. They chop it nearly down to the ground, and expose some of the top to the vine stem. Then, they graft living plants into it. The grafting process means that whole new varieties of grapes in just one year, using the original root system to obtain all the necessary nutrients. Grafted in plants can also inoculate older vines against certain diseases with disease resistant pants (usually hybrid seedlings) that make the whole system healthier.

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It can cost $150, per plant, to graft in new vines and it’s done in a precise sort of way with notching the root stem, adding in plants and sealing them together so they merge.

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(how to graft plants and trees)

Grafting plants has been done for thousands of years. In the bible, the church is compared, by the apostle Paul, to a wild olive plant grafted into an olive tree. The first audience hearing Paul’s words would understand this word picture: the church is an introduction of something very new. Something able to impart a whole new vitality into the current understanding of religion and closeness with God.

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 Sparking your Muse

An interview with Ray Hollenbach

Ray Hollenbach writes at Students of Jesus.com

He does the Deeper Seminar nationwide.

View his YouTube Videos on his new channel.

Interview Notes –

Minute: 4:30

Fruit of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22-23 New Living Translation (NLT)

22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

 

Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

4:48

“Fruit of the Spirit is not a gift that we get; but come as a result or outcome of natural (spiritual) health”. -Ray Hollenbach

6:30 – How parenting matures us in the same way that “making disciples” matures us.

7:30 – The Impossible Mentor 

8:30 –

“The goal of the Christian Life is NOT to get to heaven.”

9:47

The Vineyard Church

• John Wimber

10:06 –

Fuller Seminary

George Eldon Ladd 

Dallas Willard

Richard Foster

Eugene Peterson

NT Wright

12:20

Grape Vines

13:50

Grafting

14:40

“Jesus taught practically and transpositionally.”

(i.e. interacting with the transcendent in a practical way)

15:30

Student of Jesus Videos


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Spark My Muse

The Berry on the Vine? (Wine Series)

I plan to take this series and broadcast it…as a podcast!

The Spark My Muse podcast is coming in May and a “wine for newbies” segment will be on every show.

Two shows are finished so far, and a few more will be completed before it launches officially.
Stay alert for updates!


 

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So, about those grapes!

Grapes are actually classified as a berry. They are berry cool.
(shout out to Strawberry Shortcake, yo!)

What’s so interesting about grapes is that only taste like grapes if they are eaten fresh or squeezed into (unfermented) grape juice at just the right time, with few exceptions.

• Fermented grapes seldom taste likes grapes (among those few exceptions are Muscat, Niagara, and Concord).

• Instead, once grapes are wine they taste like a whole variety of fruits and other things.

The chemical compounds in fermented grapes are even more complex than blood serum and taste far better (unless you’re a vampire).2854238804_a8b92961e9_z

Wine takes on characteristics of many different sorts of fruits, depending on the variety and where they have been cultivated. Additional taste notes happen during fermenting, refining, filtering, aging, and so on, done by the vintner (wine-maker).

Here’s a very short list of the many fruit notes (subtle tastes) that fermented grapes can offer in both sweet and dry (non sweet) types of wine.

Citrus Fruits:

lemon, lime, grapefruit, orange, etc…

Pome Fruits:

Apple, pear, quince, etc….

Stone Fruits:

Peach, plum, apricot, etc….

Tropical Fruits:

Mango, pineapple, star fruit, passion fuit, papaya, etc….

Seed Fruits:

Pomegranate, persimmons, etc….

Berries:

Strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, cranberry, blueberry, etc…

Wine takes on other qualities too, such as vegetal notes, herbal notes, mineral notes, and many more.

Never underestimate the grape!

Do you have a question about wine?

Ask me!

Twisted Fruit (Picture Needs Caption)

Caption Please. Extra points if you Christianize it, some how, as you may be wont to do. So, be creative and bear good fruit.

My market may have the corner on reject grapes. If any image could mar the “Remain in the Vine” metaphor, this one might (John 15:5); or maybe it reflects a different spiritual truth. What do you think? If you had to create a sermon around this photo, what would be the theme?

The surprise was that I expected that a grape so pinched in/by the vine would be rotten at the protrusion, but nope. It tasted fine, even though the squeeze was on.

Other fun, informative and Fruity posts:

12 Fruit of the Spirit that never made the cut
The Giving Rules, plus Jesus with a dinosaur. (helpful gifts and corruption formula)

T-shirt for Selfish Christians?

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Christians against Christians (how typical)

There’s nothing like getting your point across at someone else’s expense. For Christians does it display the Fruit of the Spirit? Um, not so much. Perhaps, it’s just sort of like fruit rotting off the Vine.

Plenty of people might enjoy wearing a shirt like this, but with this sentiment it seems we have another example of how Christians are so often known for, or so often project, what they are against, instead of who they (should) resemble, or claim to adore. 

(And that should be Jesus, the Christ.)

It seems a bit jihad…to me.

(Kristin Tennant has her take on the issue here. I think she’s going to make a bundle. ;)

What do you think?