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Another week passes after the
events of Easter day. Simon Peter says, “I’m goin’ fishin’.”
And the other disciples join in, “We will, too.”
Well, what else were they
supposed to do??
Jesus had risen, and he had
appeared to them twice by now, but they had no idea what was
going to happen. Jesus just seemed to show up every now and
then, usually unannounced. They had no clear direction from
him yet as to what they should do next. “Let’s just wait and
see if he is going to drop in today...”
This was not vacation, day-off
kind of fishing. This was their trade, their livelihood,
their daily work before Jesus had called them on the
mission. So now what else were they supposed to do?
It’s
back to work. Back to fishing.
Little did they realize this
would be the parable of a lifetime, a parable of their
calling, their future, their mission, a parable of our
calling and our mission. Here, at the end of the story,
Jesus takes them right back to the beginning of the story
when he met them in the first place…by the sea, when he
called them from the nets and invited them, “Follow me and I
will make you fishers of men.” Now, once again, “We’re going
fishing.”
1. FISHING WAS THEIR
BUSINESS…AND FISHING IS OUR BUSINESS.
Their calling and our calling is
still the same: to be about the business of casting the net,
fishing for people, drawing others into this fellowship of
Jesus Christ, reaching others with the good news of the
empty cross and the empty tomb.
James Collins’ books on
leadership have become classics: Good to Great and
Built to Last. In Built to Last, his primary
theme is “Preserve the core/Stimulate progress.” He says the
core ideology, the reason a company exists, must be balanced
with a willingness to change and grow in order to fulfill
the mission.
If an organization is to meet
the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to
change everything about itself except its basic beliefs...
The only sacred cow in an organization should be its basic
philosophy of doing business.
(J. Collins, Built to Last,
page 81)
Central to our mission, our business, is the business of
fishing.
The Book of Discipline
says that the mission of the United Methodist Church is “to
make disciples of Jesus Christ.” Pure and simple. It goes on
to say:
The people of God, who are the
church made visible in the world, must convince the world of
the reality of the Gospel or leave it unconvinced. There can
be no evasion or delegation of this responsibility; the
church is either faithful as a witnessing and serving
community, or it loses its vitality and its impact on an
unbelieving world. (2004 Book of Discipline,
Paragraph 125)
Our business as United
Methodists…it’s fishing. As a local church, we say our
mission is “to gather, nurture and equip disciples of
Jesus Christ for ministry and mission in the world.”
I hope that anytime anybody walks up to any member of
this church and asks, “Hey, what’s your business?”, you
could answer, “to gather, nurture and equip disciples for
Jesus Christ.”
That’s our
core. That’s our business.
Years ago, preacher friend Stan
Bailey sent this story around in his church newsletter. It’s
a story about a visitor to a heavy-duty grease factory. He
says the visitors were ushered into a large room and a tour
host introduced them to the company history and the number
of employees at work producing the best machine lubricants
in the world. They toured the noisy factory, with lots of
machinery and wheels whirling, mixing, packaging—incredible
activity.
As the tour ended, one of the
visitors said, “I didn’t see a shipping department.” The
guide responded, “Well, we don’t have a shipping department
because it takes all the grease we make to lubricate our
equipment and keep the wheels turning.”
Brother
Stan concluded:
Friends, our United Methodist
Church is the best lubricated grease factory in all of
history. What’s missing is the shipping department. The
church does not exist for itself; it exists to bring others
to a commitment to Jesus Christ.
(Rev. Stanley Bailey, First UMC,
Mt. Clemens, Nov. 1978)
Our business is not just to
grease the wheels, our business is fishing…to “gather,
nurture and equip disciples for ministry and mission.”
Collins says, “Preserve the core”—be clear about the
business. And the second part of Collins’ equation is
“Stimulate progress”—or to say it in a more
biblically-oriented way:
2. THE BUSINESS IS
FISHING...BUT SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO TRY THE OTHER SIDE OF
THE BOAT.
To quote
Collins again:
Companies get into trouble by
confusing core ideology with specific, non-core practices. A
visionary company carefully preserves its core ideology, yet
all the specific manifestations must be open for change. It
is absolutely essential to not confuse core ideology with
culture, strategy, tactics, operations, policies or other
non-core practices. In fact, the only thing a
company should not change over time is its core
ideology. (J. Collins, Built to Last, page 81)
The disciples knew they were in
the fishing business, and they knew how to fish. So they
returned to the same old boats, to the same old nets, using
the same old techniques, fishing the same old lake, and
getting the same old results. Then along came Jesus, saying:
“Say, boys, how ‘bout this. Why don’t you try casting your
nets out of the right side of the boat?”
Now John doesn’t record it, but
I am sure there was a big silence right there. Then the
disciples responded:
The right side of the boat?
You’ve got to be kidding. Never did it that way before. Oh
my, no! We’ve always fished out of the left side of the
boat…never the right! This is the way we have always fished
around here. This is what fishing is all about. You
change this and oh my, that’s a slippery slope. Why, soon
you will have people fishing out of the back of the boat and
the front of the boat, and who knows what will happen. Next
thing you know, we will even have women fishing on the
boats, then we will have to put on clothes. And, well, it
could start a whole downward slide until the whole of
civilization goes down the tube.
No, no, no. The only right way
to fish is out of the left side of the boat. I mean, we’ve
got rules here. General Conference adopted it. It’s in the
United Methodist Book of Discipline, 2004 and so we
have to fish out of the left side of the boat. Right side of
the boat? Never. Never. Never...
John doesn’t record that
conversation, but I’ve been around the church long enough, I
just know it happened.
In John Wesley’s day, the only
place for an Anglican preacher to preach was in the pulpit
inside the parish church. I mean, that was what preaching
was all about, that’s how it was done. That was
preaching. But George Whitfield noticed that the common
working people weren’t there to hear it. They spent their
lives in the coal fields, far from the parish church. Early
morning till late at night...covered with coal dust, never
able to get to the 11:00 a.m. service, no clean shirts,
always in muddy, sooty boots. So he started going out to the
mines at starting time, 5:00 a.m., preaching to them on
their way to work. He called it “field preaching.”
John Wesley, high church
Anglican that he was, thought it was dreadful. “Vile” was
his word for it. Whitfield prodded him to try it. Finally,
Wesley did. And, lo and behold, it worked! People listened.
Some even got converted. Wesley writes in his journal, “I am
determined to be more vile.” He preached on the street
corners, in the markets, even standing on his father’s
tombstone, and thousands came to hear the Word who had never
heard it before.
Because he was willing to cast his net on the other side of
the boat.
“Cast your nets on the other
side,” says Jesus. “And now,” the Gospel writer reports,
“they were not able to haul them in, for the quantity of
fish!”
I love the story of traveling
Methodist evangelist C.C. McCabe. In 1881 he was on a train
headed out to the Western territory, Oregon and Washington,
to plant new churches when he picked up a newspaper which
gave a report of a conference in Chicago where agnostic
philosopher Robert G. Ingersol declared, “The churches are
dying out all over the earth; they are struck to death.”
C.C. McCabe got off the train at
the next station and sent back a telegram to Robert Ingersol:
Dear Robert:
All hail the power of Jesus’
name. The Methodists are building more than one church every
day of the year, and we propose to make it two.
Signed,
C.C. McCabe
A newspaper picked up the story
and it spread across the country. The Methodists loved it.
McCabe was eventually elected a bishop, but he is mostly
remembered for the song which was sung at the Methodist camp
meetings and revival services along the frontier:
The infidels, a motley band, in
counsel met and said:
The churches are dying across the land, and soon they will
be dead.”
When suddenly a message came and caught them with dismay:
“All hail the power of Jesus’ name, we’re building two a
day.
We’re building two a day, dear Bob, we’re building two a
day;
All hail the power of Jesus’ name,
We’re building two a day.”
Nearly 100 years later in the
Methodist Church of Algoma, Wisconsin, a man came forward
and asked to be baptized. His name was Robert G. Ingersol
III. A few months later the same pastor baptized Robert G.
Ingersol IV, grandson and great grandson of Robert G.
Ingersol. (Randolph Nugent, “And Have They Come to Know
Christ?”, April 3, 2000, www.gbgm-umc.org/mission/
news2000)
I am not just pining for the
past, the days of Methodist glory and evangelistic fervor.
But take a look at our history and take a look at us now.
More likely today we are closing two a day rather than
opening them. But look—it’s amazing what can happen when we
preserve the core and stimulate progress; when we are
willing to cast our nets on the other side of the boat to do
the business of fishing for Jesus Christ.
So
the disciples haul in the nets…and they are filled.
Filled to overflowing. So many
fish they were not able to haul them in. (My guess is that
most churches wouldn’t be prepared, either, if they hauled
in a great catch.) So many, in fact, that they weren’t
prepared for it. It was a wonder the nets could contain
them….153 in all.
I dare say that far too much ink
has been spilt and time spent on the spiritual meaning of
the number 153 by the same people who want to argue about
the numbers in Revelation or age of the earth and the number
of days in creation or how many angels can dance on the head
of a pin. Here John is recording a simple statement of fact:
the size of the catch. Carl Price asked, “Did you ever know
a fisherman who couldn’t tell you how many fish he caught?”
It is to say that counting matters. Counting members.
Counting attendance. Keeping track. But get it straight—our
business is not accounting, it’s fishing.
And
the bottom line is, how many people we are reaching for
Jesus Christ?
The great story-telling preacher
Fred Craddock tells the story of Frank, a man he met in
Washita Creek, Oklahoma...a little town with a population of
450 and four churches: Methodist, Baptist, Nazarene, and
Craddock pastored the Christian Church. Each had their share
of the population, but the most regular congregation met at
the local café where the pickups parked and the men
discussed wheat bugs, weather and wind. At 77 years old,
Frank was the patron saint of the group. Men in the café
would say, “Ol’ Frank’ll never go to church.”
Craddock says when he met him,
Frank gave him his standard line: “I work hard, I take care
of my family, and I mind my own business. Far as I am
concerned, everything else is fluff.”
That’s why everyone in the café
as well as in church was bumfuzzled when Frank presented
himself for baptism one Sunday. There were lots of rumors at
the café and in the town about why he did it. Seventy-seven
years old, and he had always minded his own business. Some
folks thought he was dying. Some heard he had heart
problems. Some thought he must be scared to meet his maker.
But Craddock says Frank told him why he did it:
You know how I always said I
work hard, take care of my family, and mind my own business?
Said it all the time... Only thing was, back then, I didn’t
know what my business was. Now I know. (Fred Craddock,
Craddock Stories, page 69)
We know what our business is.
Our business is fishing. Sometimes you just have to be
willing to fish out of the other side of the boat.
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