Christadelphian parents across the world are in an uproar after hearing reports that the familiar parable of the sower will be updated to feature modern farming machinery in next year's lesson book.A petition has been circulating calling for a boycott against the new lesson book, with plans already under way to issue reprints of the old lesson book in opposition. There are rumours of a price war and aggressive marketing campaigns from both sides. The issue is dividing families and may even be enough to split the brotherhood down the middle if current trends continue.
Several of the more liberal ecclesias have embraced the new lesson book, claiming that modern farming methods deliver much greater yields, and that Jesus would surely have used these if he was giving us the parable today.
But there has been considerable backlash from some prominent brethren who claim the new story changes the meaning of the parable and introduces wrong doctrine. At the core of the controversy is the question of who was responsible for preparing the soil prior to planting the seed. If the sower had used modern farming methods, the problem of birds, stones and thorns could have been virtually eliminated, which raises some uncomfortable theological questions.
An early draft of the new lesson had also included a lawsuit over the unlicensed use of genetically-modified seed, but this was later moved to the parable of the wheat and the tares instead.
As we go to press, a new controversy has just opened up after a Christadelphian discovered that the mustard seed isn't actually the smallest of all the seeds.