Cherry Trees in the Budding Season: Awakenings 2025 Day 1
"My favorite part of cherry blossom season is the budding season. Everything we need for peak bloom is already in the stem – it simply hasn’t bloomed yet. Don’t worry, the bloom is coming..." ~Lisa Rodriguez-Watson
Editorial Note: How do you recap a profoundly deep and prophetically challenging biennial gathering such as Awakenings 2025? Without saying “Check out all the clips and images already on our social channels” (Do this!), the answer is, imperfectly yet with short reflections. Thus, the next few articles will contain a short reflection and key ideas and quotes from plenary speakers during each day of Awakenings 2025.
Several hundred of us gathered in the DC Metro area in early March to seek God, and begin to make sense of this cultural moment. God met us, as God always does, and we left transformed.
We hope these simple reflections spark your own transformation journey with Jesus as you continue to pursue wholeness and beauty in the life of the church alongside our team.
~Missio Alliance
Download a PDF ‘Awakening 2025 Day 1 (Thursday) Notes | Missio Alliance’ here.
“My favorite part of cherry blossom season is the budding season. Everything we need for peak bloom is already in the stem – it simply hasn’t bloomed yet. The cherry tree has everything it needs for full bloom. When we co-labor with God, we have everything we need to bring forth Kingdom beauty and wholeness in our contexts. Are you in a budding stage? Don’t worry, the bloom is coming…”
~Lisa Rodriguez-Watson (National Director of Missio Alliance) “Cherry Trees & Ashes”
What the Spirit of God breathed into our opening session through Lisa’s prophetic words was nothing short of miraculous. Several hundred of us gathered in the Columbia Baptist Church auditorium on Thursday afternoon, March 6th, expectant yet weighed down with the heaviness of this challenging season in the life of the church and our nation. Almost to a person, leaders greeted beloved friends with a shared weariness and collective sense of needing to catch our breath. What was the Spirit going to do in our midst? How would we find a fresh wind and resilient courage to continue faithfully attending to the complexities in our churches and daily lives? Wherever we turned, challenges seemed to mount.
In the midst of these gathering storm clouds, Lisa Rodriguez-Watson spoke as prophetic leaders do – with a calm sense of strength and a clear surrender to the Spirit’s work in our midst. She reminded us of previous seasons that had seemed intense and fractured. God had always come through, even in the darkness and struggle of faithful obedience to Christ in the shadow of Empire’s overwhelming reach.
As Lisa reminded us:
“Empire is no solution for the brokenness of our Humpty Dumpty world. But the Church…But the Church, when we live into the fullness of our mission, when we live as the Church standing against and subverting the power of empire with the Good News of Jesus, when we welcome the stranger and clothe the naked and visit the prisoner – This is when rupture turns the corner to repair. Healing becomes evident. Beauty is brushed onto the canvas of chaos. When we live as the Church, we are living witness to the Kingdom of God in our midst, a place where love rebuilds what sin and empire have torn apart.”
The fullness of our mission? What a powerful and challenging reminder to live fully as God has always intended for us to live, for we are in a budding season in the Church. As Parker Palmer suggests, springtime is a season where we pay attention once more to the “green stems of possibility” in our midst. Within the Tidal Basin of the Potomac River, every April hundreds of Japanese cherry trees bud slowly in the grips of late winter, wrestling with the Atlantic cold towards the promise of springtime blooms. Will the cherry blossom bloom happen this year, residents of the DC Metro area wonder, tiring of the grey chill of winter’s cold?
Every spring, the cherry trees answer in a riotous display of vibrant pink beauty. However, before the beauty of a cherry tree in springtime, and the wholeness of a cherry tree’s summer harvest, comes the budding season. A season of expectancy, of faith, and of wonder.
Church, we are in this season. We are cherry trees in the budding season, and the Kingdom of God is (still) in our midst.
Keep your hope steadfast in Christ, for the bloom of resurrection of the whole church is coming in outlandish beauty.
~Missio Alliance
Download a PDF ‘Awakening 2025 Day 1 (Thursday) Notes | Missio Alliance’ here.
