WHAT IS A TREASURE TREE?
Understanding identity properly is crucial to human flourishing and wholeness. We have to know who Jesus is and we have to know who we are. Treasure Tree is a combination of two metaphors in Scripture that help explain this idea.
Matthew 13:44 compares finding the Kingdom of God to discovering buried treasure and calls us to joyfully give up our lives to gain the riches of a relationship with Jesus.
Psalm 1 teaches that living a blessed life is being like a tree planted by streams of water, rooted in the word of God and ready for the heat from the pressure of the world.
To put it simply, Jesus is the treasure, and we are the tree.
WHY IS TREASURE TREE HERE?
At the most basic level, Jesus. Does that sound too Sunday School-ish? I’m sorry…but the right answers aren’t always the most shocking! When we say that we are here because of Jesus, we really mean it.
Every single person that is apart of the Treasure Tree Collective is here because Jesus is the most important thing in the world to them. It’s kinda in our name, right?
We come with willing hearts and hands to produce content and resources that:
Bring Jesus to you and you to Jesus.
Support the Church locally and globally.
Contribute to the flourishing of families and communities.
Celebrate God’s work in His world.
Encourage the weary and restless.
We do not aim to replace the work of the local Church, but instead support, enhance, and grow it. Everything that we make and do is designed to help believers love Jesus more and engage more with the community that God has put around them.
OUR DNA
We share the same mission and values as the Church: love God and others (the Great Commandment) and share the Good News of Jesus with the world (the Great Commission).
Our DNA is a more specific list of traits and truths that the Treasure Tree Collective comes together around, emphasizes, or prioritizes. You could think of these more as organizing principles, the ideas that are central to our particular passion for ministry. It is not an exhaustive theological list, nor does it prohibit us from partnering with others. It is merely a core group of ideas that are meaningful and influential to us.
The Treasure Tree Co. Story (So Far)
I had the privilege to grow up in a Godly home with a deeply Christian heritage. I felt called to vocational ministry in high school, attended a great school for Biblical training, and did my best to follow that path.
But at the same time, I was wrestling inside of myself with a hidden darkness. Sin had ravaged my heart and entangled me with promises to satisfy me. And no amount of parenting, discipline, or time at church or school could cure me.
My struggle with sin was not environmental. It wasn’t what was around me that was causing me to stumble in the dark. No, it was inside me at my very core, the inheritance of Adam that had fractured my nature. My identity was broken, my heart was sick, and I was discovering that no amount of covering up on the outside could make me clean on the inside.
The past decade of my life has been a journey to undo a lot of the lies and false realities that I had curated about the world in my mind and heart. And as I have done that, I have consistently returned to these two pictures, of a treasure and a tree, to refocus my eyes on Jesus and reframe the world.
After spending years serving in a variety of roles in the local church, my heart has been consistently drawn back to sharing this story in hopes of serving many others in the Church who struggle with the battle inside of them to follow Jesus or follow themselves.
But I have never wanted to share that story alone. Because no one ever really does anything alone. That is why we formed the Treasure Tree Collective, to bring together a group of people who love Jesus wholeheartedly and want to give Him everything they have in partnering together to serve the Church. We believe that we are far better together than anything we could do on our own.
It is our hope through Treasure Tree to tell a better story through everything we do, of a King that is more valuable than anything else, and of an abundant life that is rooted in an unshakable Kingdom. Although our history is short, we are praying for many years of faithful and fruitful service to the Church.
Thanks for tagging along!