“Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”
—Luke 5:5
No one comes into the kingdom through human effort. Along with this, no one can bring anyone into the kingdom through human effort.
I kindly wonder what this deep truth of salvation means for all the human strategies we use to get people into the church.
I must admit that I’m always a bit baffled by the endless strategies that churches used to get people into the pews.
“Is the sanctuary cool enough?”
“Is the sanctuary hot enough?”
“Are the walls the right color?”
“Are we playing the right kind of music?”
“Is the bulletin what it should be?”
“Do we need to improve the media production?”
“Are the services the right times?”
“Perhaps a Saturday night service?”
“Do we have enough programs?”
“What about children’s ministries?”
“Are the chairs comfortable?”
“Are our greeters smiling?”
The list goes on without end.
I want to point out right away that strategies are good and they are important. However, we must live in the tension between the reality that strategies are good and important, but ultimately, God brings his people into his place of worship.
Jesus has a lot to say about this. Things like:
“No one can come to me unless the Father who me me draws him” (John 6:44).
More to the point that this is this story:
On one occasion while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret [Galilee], and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people form the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large humber of fish, and their nets were breaking. (Luke 5:1–6)
What’s most astonishing in this story is that Jesus is demonstrating that he is Lord of the sea and everything in it. Jesus’ divinity is the only way to explain this miracle.
Second to this is the fact that these are professional fisherman! They know better than anyone what they were doing. This is what they did everyday! If there was one thing that these boys knew it was how to catch fish.
After they finally bring in their nets, Jesus says this to them, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”
What is the significance of this? What does Jesus mean when he says that they will be “catching men”? Jesus is using fishing as a metaphor for bringing people into the Kingdom of God.
We can put to use all the strategies there are to bring people into the church. In the end, it is Jesus’ work, not ours. We need to give him all our strategies and let him redeem it with the power of his word. We must keep what is central, central, and that is the transforming work of the power of the Holy Spirit manifest only because of God’s grace in the world made possible through the cross.
We must remember that the church, its identity, and its methods for engaging society, must not be defined by its culture in a vain attempt for relevance (click to tweet this!). All to often the church has taken on a corporate model selling a product to consumers. The church is to be different. The church is to be set apart. Yes, God is holy, but his ways are holy as well.
We reminded of this reality during this Christmas season.
Who would have thought that the power of God to re-create the cosmos and transform the world would come in the gentile, innocent, quiet, and weak form of an infant child?
Let’s be willing not only to break the mold, but redefine the mold by God’s command. It is after all our strivings to catch our own fish that Jesus comes along smiling and says, “Hey there, drop those nets again. Let me show you what I can do.”
The third and final dimension that I love in this story is that “the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God.” This is all that’s needed. It’s the word of God alone that can save.
