Next Monday I celebrate the 18th anniversary of my ordination as a priest. What a treat to find that the gospel for next Sunday is the one I chose for that blessed service. It tells the story of how Jesus baited, hooked and reeled in a fisherman, and made him a leader in God's’ mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness.
Yet in my ministry thus far I have not encountered what Jesus did that day: so many people crowding in to hear the Word of God, they nearly pushed him into a lake:
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.
Has hunger for God’s word abated? To some extent, yes – prosperity and security can certainly dull the yearning for transcendent truth; anxiety and an ongoing pandemic can present major distractions. And many people have only vaguely heard of Jesus. Yet there are churches with 25,000 people a weekend crowding in to hear about life in God. People are still hungry. How might we better feed them?
For one thing, churches can stop squabbling. I had a vision in prayer once of a crowd of agitated, ravenous people, facing upward, mouths open, like baby birds in a nest. And nearby stood a group of bakers, angrily arguing about who had the best bread recipe. It was clear to me that this represented the church of our time. Conflict is not appealing.
And we need to get out more, to where people are, not expecting them to find us in the few hours on a Sunday morning we’re gathered in our church buildings. I know of a church in England that formed “mission-shaped communities,” groups of parishioners sent out to build relationships and host casual worship and prayer services among people to whom they felt called – young mothers, ex-cons, skate-boarders, bankers. The church implemented this strategy when a much-needed expansion of their sanctuary forced them out for eight months. . During that time, so many people joined these mission-shaped communities, and the church, that when the congregation got back into the expanded sanctuary, they were again short on space!
Might we try some version of that? How about outdoor “pop-up” spiritual events during this season of contagion? Or online study or prayer groups people could drop into.
An even more basic strategy is for those of us who have been “caught” in Jesus’ nets is to speak our love and joy and gratitude easily and often among those we know. Christian faith has never spread through lectures about theological concepts. It spreads by people talking about their experiences of God.
What’s your story? And to whom will you tell it? If we all speak more of our spiritual lives with people outside the church, we might start to see just how many people around us are hungry for the Word of God.
Has hunger for God’s word abated? To some extent, yes – prosperity and security can certainly dull the yearning for transcendent truth; anxiety and an ongoing pandemic can present major distractions. And many people have only vaguely heard of Jesus. Yet there are churches with 25,000 people a weekend crowding in to hear about life in God. People are still hungry. How might we better feed them?
For one thing, churches can stop squabbling. I had a vision in prayer once of a crowd of agitated, ravenous people, facing upward, mouths open, like baby birds in a nest. And nearby stood a group of bakers, angrily arguing about who had the best bread recipe. It was clear to me that this represented the church of our time. Conflict is not appealing.
And we need to get out more, to where people are, not expecting them to find us in the few hours on a Sunday morning we’re gathered in our church buildings. I know of a church in England that formed “mission-shaped communities,” groups of parishioners sent out to build relationships and host casual worship and prayer services among people to whom they felt called – young mothers, ex-cons, skate-boarders, bankers. The church implemented this strategy when a much-needed expansion of their sanctuary forced them out for eight months. . During that time, so many people joined these mission-shaped communities, and the church, that when the congregation got back into the expanded sanctuary, they were again short on space!
Might we try some version of that? How about outdoor “pop-up” spiritual events during this season of contagion? Or online study or prayer groups people could drop into.
An even more basic strategy is for those of us who have been “caught” in Jesus’ nets is to speak our love and joy and gratitude easily and often among those we know. Christian faith has never spread through lectures about theological concepts. It spreads by people talking about their experiences of God.
What’s your story? And to whom will you tell it? If we all speak more of our spiritual lives with people outside the church, we might start to see just how many people around us are hungry for the Word of God.
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