The Danger of Extracting Fruit from the Process

When Provision Replaces Presence, the Soul Starves

By Josh Singleton | Founder and Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

In a world obsessed with visible outcomes and fast solutions, we’ve been tempted to separate the gift from the Giver and the fruit from the formation. But the Kingdom doesn’t work that way. This is a warning, an invitation, and a return to what is real. We cannot bypass the slow work of God and expect the fruit to last.

For my first twenty years—ages fifteen to thirty-five—I grew food. From home gardens to commercial operations, my hands knew how to bring fruit out of the soil. It became second nature, something I could do in my sleep. But it was all outcome-based. The fruit was the goal. The metrics, the yield, the performance—they shaped the rhythm. I was successful by every external measure, but unaware of the deeper disconnection forming beneath the surface.

Then, three years ago, God called me out of the comfort of outcomes and into the discomfort of process. No longer was I to grow food simply—I was to cultivate people. And this couldn’t be rushed. He led me out of production and into presence. Away from mastery and into mystery. What once came easily now gave way to something far more costly: the threshold of transformation. I now sit in that threshold for others—waiting, discerning, holding space for those ready to cross from scarcity into abundance, from performance into Presence, from extraction into abiding.

What grieves the Holy Spirit most in our modern landscape is not simply rebellion—it’s when we try to extract the fruit of the Kingdom without embracing the process that grew it. We want the outcomes of God without walking with Him. We long for love, but resist surrender. We crave peace, but avoid pruning. We ask for abundance, but won’t make room for alignment. The cry of our culture is clear: give us the fruit, but spare us the formation.

And yet, the fruit was never meant to live apart from the Vine. Jesus said it plainly: "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). The separation we’ve created between fruit and process is not only artificial—it’s dangerous. In reality, they were never separate. But somehow, we’ve built a culture and even a Church that elevates fruit over formation, outcomes over obedience. And in doing so, we’ve inverted the order of the Kingdom. Fruit detached from process is no longer nourishment—it’s noise. It looks good, but it no longer carries the substance of the Spirit. We’ve taken what was sacred and made it transactional. When we extract fruit without formation, everything begins to unravel. Nourishment becomes performance. Generosity turns into a calculated exchange. The soil—the very place of encounter and becoming—gets reduced to a supplier, rather than preserved as a sanctuary. The garden becomes a vending machine instead of an altar. And tragically, the fruit becomes the idol we worship, instead of the testimony that points us back to the Vine. 

But perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is this: when we give people the fruit of God without revealing the face of God, we don’t lead them into intimacy—we lead them into confusion and spiritual dullness. We don’t point them home—we hand them souvenirs from a place they’ve never actually been. We distract them with the benefits of the house while keeping the Father hidden behind walls of performance and production. That is not mercy. That is feeding the flesh while forsaking the very Spirit that makes us whole. It’s giving people calories without clarity, a full belly without a full heart. It’s pacifying the outer need while neglecting the inner ache for the One who satisfies. And slowly, quietly, we disciple people into dependency on provision rather than Presence. It feels generous, but it’s hollow. It looks fruitful, but it’s disconnected. It tells people they can have what God offers without walking with Him, without transformation, without surrender. We unintentionally teach them that the fruit is the prize, when the Father is the inheritance. And in doing so, we raise up a generation that consumes what is sacred without ever being changed by it—overfed yet under-formed, full yet still far from home.

The truth is, fruit is never the goal—it’s the evidence. It’s the visible witness of something much deeper: abiding, dying, becoming. It testifies to intimacy with God, not just success in the world. And when that intimacy is missing—when Presence is absent—we may still move, speak, work, and serve, but it is the movement of the walking dead. Science affirms what Scripture has long revealed: plants rely on an unbroken connection between root and fruit. Once a plant is cut from its root system, the vascular tissues—especially the xylem and phloem—cease transporting the water, nutrients, and sugars needed for life. For a short time, the fruit may still look vibrant. The leaves may still appear green. But cellular degradation begins immediately. Photosynthesis halts. Moisture evaporates. The outer beauty remains, but death has already begun at the core.

So it is with people. The body can survive for a time with systems in motion, but without breath, without Spirit, it cannot live. Just as plants severed from the root may appear fresh for a day or two, those disconnected from Presence may appear active, even fruitful—but the withering begins within.

This is the spiritual reality of separation. Those disconnected from Presence may look fruitful, even appear effective—but they are sustained by memory, not by life. And not even memory of a heavenly encounter—but of an earthly experience. They are living off the residue of a past moment, a form of godliness without power (2 Timothy 3:5). The motions remain, but the breath is gone. They remember the fruit, but have lost the Vine. They reproduce the outcomes, but not the intimacy that once produced them. And in this subtle deception, many continue moving while slowly dying—busy but barren, active but unanchored. We fill their stomachs, but leave their spirits disoriented. We feed their hunger, but silence their homesickness. And over time, they forget where the fruit came from. They consume what was sacred without being changed by it.

This is the danger we must guard against. We’ve created a strange and dysfunctional divide: on one side, we have churches that emphasize spiritual formation but operate from a scarcity mindset, often lacking the capacity or willingness to meet physical needs. On the other side, we have food banks overwhelmed with bodies but under-equipped to nourish souls. One offers theology without bread; the other offers bread without theology. And yet, the conversation always circles back to the same noble concern: "But it's so important that no one misses a meal." And we agree. It is. Hunger is real. The reality that someone could go to bed hungry tonight is not something we take lightly. But here's the deeper ache—we've become so fixated on making sure no one misses a meal that we’ve overlooked the deeper famine. The famine of identity. Of belonging. Of transformation. We feed the stomach, but not the soul. We have built entire systems to prevent physical starvation, while leaving spiritual malnourishment untouched.

Neither approach, in isolation, fully embodies the Kingdom. Both, in different ways, have participated in the same extraction—fruit without process, nourishment without relationship, generosity without presence.

In a world obsessed with outcomes, quick wins, and visible metrics, we must recover the holy tension of formation. We must slow down, return to the soil, and refuse to separate the process from the promise. Because in the Kingdom, the process is the promise—it’s how we become.

The spirit behind the separation is subtle but pervasive. It wears many faces—efficiency, compassion, even justice—but its root is fear. And fear doesn’t just whisper doubt; it manufactures urgency. It drives people to act quickly, to scramble, to fix without waiting, to move without discerning. Fear is the undertone of our culture, and anxiety is its anthem. We’ve baptized urgency as virtue, but much of it is fear dressed in strategy. Fear that there won’t be enough. Fear that process takes too long. Fear that if we wait for transformation, we’ll miss our chance to help. But in truth, speed without Spirit is still disobedience. Control masquerading as stewardship is still control. And when we prioritize convenience or metrics over maturity, we feed the same spirit that tempted Jesus in the wilderness: to take shortcuts with sacred things.

So we must ask ourselves: Are we building systems that make people full—or systems that make them whole?

Our Call: Keep Fruit and Formation Together

We are not here to extract. We are not here to offer outcomes divorced from obedience. We are here to cultivate. We are here to preserve the process. To honor it. To make space for it. To let the garden be what it’s always been—a witness to the slow, sacred work of God.

Every tomato should speak of obedience. Every sprout should remind us of surrender. Every ripe harvest should be a testimony of abiding in Him. The garden is not just where fruit grows—it’s where hearts are formed. And if we bypass the heart, we may feed bodies, but we will lose the soul of the work.

This is The Garden Project’s line in the sand. We are so sure of what we’re called to do. We cannot, and will not, separate fruit from formation. There may be other gardens, other systems, other models that gladly host and perpetuate this separation—serving up outcomes while neglecting the process that sanctifies. But we are being called into deeper waters. Deeper formation. Deeper transformation. We believe the world doesn’t just need more food—it needs people who’ve walked with God in the soil long enough to bear fruit that actually lasts.

We will not offer what hasn’t first passed through the fire of formation. Because in the Kingdom, fruit is not a product—it is the revealed evidence of a life fully rooted in the Vine.

So may we slow down. May we return to the soil. May we not fear the pruning, the waiting, or the hidden seasons. And may we be people of the Vine, who bear fruit that flows from formation, not from fear (Galatians 5:22–23; John 15:4).