Simply Church: A House Church Perspective

What have we done?

Over the past few days I have been responding to an article by Jon Zens.  It details the interaction between an Indian named Red Jacket and Missionary Cram.  The dialog between the two demonstrates very clearly where we so often go wrong in missions, especially cross-cultural missions.  (Jon's website is at www.searchingtogether.org) Here is an excerpt from my response to the article:

I have a photo from an Asian nation in my possession:  it shows a rag-tag group of people squatting on a deserted riverbank beside a fast flowing river.   I know their situation—they are non-literate, impoverished village people.  They have already paid a price in terms of persecution and exclusion from society.  In the picture, a man is standing before them, dressed in a suit and tie, obviously preaching to them from a large, black Bible.

Recently we were in Mongolia.  In 1991, following seventy years under Russian rule, there were five Christians in that nation.  There are now an estimated fifty thousand—along with denominations, organizations, and many of the trappings of Western Christianity.

What have we in the West done?  We have exported our customs as well as the Gospel. We have given to other nations the Good News of the Kingdom of Jesus, and we have also given them our problems, and our ungodly attitudes.  We have insisted on them leaving their own culture in order to join us in our Western expression of church life rather than giving them the freedom to create a Kingdom lifestyle that fits within their own culture and way of life.

Commercial fishing (part 2)

 

As I investigated the Scriptures on the subject of commercial fishing in the Gospels, several things became apparent.  There are several passages that talk about fishing:

• Matthew 4:18-22 and Mark 1:16-19  Jesus calls the four disciples who are fishermen and tells them he will make them fishers of men.
• Luke 5:1-11  Jesus tells the disciples who had fished all night but caught nothing to put down their nets again into the deep and they catch two boatloads of fish
• John 21:3-11  After Jesus' resurrection, seven of the disciples go fishing.  Again Jesus tells them where to cast their nets and they catch 153 large fish
• Matthew 17: 24-27  Peter uses a rod and line to catch a fish that has money for the temple tax in its mouth.

There is obviously more than one way the disciples are fishing.  In the Luke example, they were in a boat and let down their nets.  In the John example, they throw out their nets.  In the Matthew and Mark examples they were fishing from the shore.  Further investigation reveals that although in English the word net is used in every example, in the Greek, different words are used signifying different types of nets.  For example, in the Matthew and Mark examples a specific purse net is described.

Commercial fisherman (which is what the disciples were) would have understood that you use different kinds of nets depending on the circumstances and the kind of fish you want to catch.

So in terms of the harvest where we are fishers of men, there may be different ways that we approach  "catching fish."  What may work in other nations may not be best here in the West

There is one more passage.  This comes in Matthew 13 where Jesus tells a parable.  The kingdom of heaven is like a fishing net (literally a dragnet or seine which is a type of net used to catch large numbers of fish) let down into the water...

The question I am pondering these days is, "How do we 'let the kingdom of heaven' down into the community around us?  Especially here in the West where people are jaded and inoculated against the Gospel.  What kind of fishing net will catch a multitiude of fish?

Any ideas?

Commercial fishing

Modern day fisherman on the Sea of Galilee

While we were in Mongolia I had a dream.  In the dream I was handing a small group of people a book.  "It's about how to be a commercial fisherman,"  I told them.  The only other thing I remember about the dream was telling them that the important principle was to fish where Jesus told them.

This dream seemed to be more than a post pizza (or in the case of Mongolia, mutton) dream and it started me thinking.  For Peter, Andrew, James and John, who were all commercial fishermen, when Jesus told them, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men," they would have understood this in the context of commercial fishing.  They would not have thought hook and line (ie one fish at a time), they would have assumed fishing nets catching large numbers of fish.

I started investigating the different Scriptures on fishing in the Gospels.  More about that later.

Shortly after this we went to India and one of the people we were with works with fishermen on the coast of India.  So I asked him about how they fish.  (These would be primitive fishermen, probably very little different from fishermen in Jesus' day.) He told me that they have different kinds of nets depending on the circumstances and what they are trying to catch.  They have a funnel net which is the kind of net they use when they don't have boats.  They also have a drag net which is maybe 800 to 900 yards long for when they have more than one boat. There are actually several different kinds of nets that are used.

So what does it mean to be a commercial fisherman in the context of Jesus' comments to his disciples?

More to follow.