Throw aside your nets and follow me.

My hubby wrote this at the end of October following the passing of our church's minister. ~TK  

Matthew 4:18-22

   I’m not much of an outdoorsy type. Don’t like to hunt, don’t like sleeping on the ground, don’t like using the bathroom in a port-a-potty or in a hole in the ground. But you want to know what really grosses me out? What really turns my stomach?  Fishing. I can’t stand it.  Those squishy wriggly worms, that’s the first thing. Sure, I love’m in my sunflower garden, I encourage the kids to hold them and I teach them all the good things they are for.  I teach them to respect the life of even these slimy creatures that God has made.  But I can’t stand to handle these things. 

          Then to fish, you have to stab these poor defenseless things with a barbed hook. Which you then throw into the water to suffer the fate of either drowning or being eaten by a underwater sea creature that comes out of no where and swallows it whole.  

          "Well, why don’t you use fake bait?"  Well, now, you have to dig that hook out of the fish you just caught.  A slippery squirmy fish, gasping for breath, with a hook in its mouth that you now have to go in after and pull out without damaging the fish too much.   And you think the violence on t.v. is bad….

          A few years ago, I was at a park with my kids.  One of those summer days that were too good to stay inside.  Well, this park had a small pond, and there were some fish in it; every once in a while they would come to the edge and the kids would get excited and watch them for Whole minutes!  Which is an eternity for little kids, or just enough time for me to sit down and get comfortable. At which point they would be done with it and get up and move on to the next thing…. 

Well, as we were walking around the pond looking for fish swimming on the edge, I looked across the pond and saw a young teenager tossing a net in the pond, letting it settle and then pulling it back out of the water; repeating at a pretty good rhythm. As we got closer I asked him if he caught anything. He says “every once in a while”. And tosses the net out again.  And as I’m standing there, he catches this fish. It’s about a foot, maybe less; and it’s struggling.  It’s flopping and it’s flipping and gasping for air and the boy’s trying to get it free and the fish is fighting to get away from the giant that just yanked it from it’s safe wet home. Struggling to get away from the one person who can save it. 

          Jesus called us to be fishers of men.  The first disciples were actually fishermen. The symbolism is lost on no one. They threw aside their literal nets and set off to learn from Jesus how to pull up lives and souls from the depths.  They gave up everything, they were open to anything that Jesus told them. For three years Jesus helped them develop the net they would use to save the world. For three years Jesus taught them how to throw the net into the oceans of peoples’ hearts.  For three years, they learned and grew and experienced and witnessed and for three years they had the most intense discipleship any one on this planet will ever have. 

 

And then the teacher was gone. He warned them.  He told them, “I’ll be gone soon.” 

Matthew 26:24,29

Left without a teacher, they became the teachers. And they cast their new nets wide. They reached out.  I imagine they tried crazy things that only young people that have no idea what they are doing would do. They pursued people in a way that the people needed to hear.  They networked. 

          “hey frank needs a job, lets see who we have in our community that needs help and connect the two.” 

          “Hey, that organization needs sponsers, and we need somewhere to connect with the community”

          There’s a young woman/man in a homeless shelter, lets see what we can do to help her out and bring her in to this family. 

          There are festivals and parades and fairs.  There are newspapers, there are ways of getting the word out there in local areas that this little church at the end of the road is here, close, and welcoming. 

There are times for a church to take a breath. Look at everything it’s doing and evaluate.  

 I’ve only been here a short time, but what I am sensing is that instead of being the fisherman we have become, as a whole, the fish that boy caught in his net.  We are full of energy. We are also struggling. It’s been six or seven years since this split that I have heard about, but wasn’t there to witness. From what I hear this church hasn’t grown much since. That’s almost a decade.  If this were a company we would have been eaten alive by our competitors.  If the disciples had this kind of decade at the start, we probably wouldn’t be here.  

Have we become so ensnared by the spinning of our wheels that we have failed to look around, realize we are not growing as a church anymore?  Have our “ministries” become “nets”. 

Don’t tune me out.  He just got here, he’s young, what does he know… 

The ministries we do are good ministries.  But the primary goal is to spread the word of God.  The only way for us to do that is to find ways to grow this church so that we can be here to spread the word of God, while remaining true to that word. 

Yes. We do good works caring for the widows the orphans the least of these, The shoe boxes, the Wednesday night meals, vbs…  But we are forgetting that those that seem like they have it all together need us too. Families need us, adults need us, parents need us, children need us, friends need us.  

I think we are mindful the great commission.

Go out and make disciples of all the world.

But it needs done in our town too. 

Because the reality of it is:

We need them too.   

This is the reality we are facing right now.

I need everyone in pews in their twenty's or younger to stand.

(wait)

Now stay standing.

I need everyone in their 30’s to stand as well.

(wait)

Stay standing.

Everyone in their forties.

(wait)

Everyone who is not a member, could you please sit down.

(wait)

Look around. This is the future of your church. 

Reality:

In twenty to forty years, this will be the congregation if we continue to struggle in the nets like fish instead of throwing the nets like fisherman.

We have good leaders. Knowledgeable leaders, Wise leaders that have done well as good and faithful servants to God, the church and us. But they will not be here forever.  What then?

Who will be here to lead?  Who will be here to follow?  Who will be here to teach? Who will be here to learn. Who will we greet in Heaven? how many will we be privileged to walk next to on the path that ends with Jesus saying “well done, good and faithful servant”?