WELCOME to Digby Baptist’s Anniversary Service for 2021. Our guest preacher today is Dr. Rhonda Britton, President of our Baptist family, the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada. Welcome, one and all to our online service. We plan to have our service online only on June 27 again, and then meet in person Sunday, July 4th. When we meet on the 4th, we plan to transfer and receive into membership June Haight: this is your notice of meeting for that Sunday morning.
Also on July 4th, let us take up a love offering for Pastors Roy and Lori Berteaux, who lost their Clementsport home to fire a couple weeks ago. Take a look at our bulletin, with more information for prayers, events, and services.
John 4:23-24 ~ Maggie Beveridge: Jesus declared: “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
PRAYER: Almighty and everlasting God, Spirit of truth and love, we praise You! Your image is planted in us all, and we rejoice in fellowship with You now. O Master, can we have true worship when we are still so separate? While we are in our own rooms? While we are so easily distracted? Yes! You are Spirit, and You reach each of us where we are. In Christ we are made one by His gracious life and death and resurrection. So we join in worship today, sharing this service as best we can, on our Church anniversary.
So we thank and praise You for our congregation begun 183 years ago. Heavenly Father, be our loving Parent still, and guide our fellowship with care and wisdom. All this we pray, as we begin our special time today. AMEN.
The Lord’s Prayer, led by Myra Edwards:
Here is a contemporary song that we have heard here before, thanks to Joyce Marshall.
PHOTO Memories for an Anniversary Sunday…
SOLO: ‘Blessings‘ – sung by Sharon Marshall (2020)
SERMON: “Go Deeper” – Rev. Dr. Rhonda Britton, President of the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada, Moderator of the African United Baptist Association, Pastor of New Horizons Baptist Church, Halifax. I (Jeff White) first met her on a trip for Pastors to Bolivia, with CBM, in 2010, and have always appreciated her sense of joy and of justice.
PRAYERS – Rev. Jeff White
On this Fathers Day, this Digby Baptist Anniversary Sunday, let these suggestions guide your praying now:
Psalm 134 tells us: ‘Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and bless the LORD.’ You likely are not raising your hands. And none of us are in the sanctuary at the corner of Mount St. and Montague Row. Consider what ways you do bless the LORD. How you give thanks. What Your ways of praying to the Master are.
There are many people in trouble, of all sorts, who need help, and enter our prayers. Take a moment for each person you think of, and each situation, and ask the Spirit to help you see how to pray for this person, what to ask.
Now, rest in the presence of the Spirit of Jesus, giving thanks for the local Church. Think back to your very first memories of being at Digby Baptist Church, at whatever age you were. Give thanks for the grace and goodness God has given you in the fellowship through the years.
Pray now for the guidance of our Church, as we continue in this challenging year. And gratefully dedicate Your offerings to the Church, in the name of Jesus.
The news from our community, and around the world, is often alarming. As you pray about various situations, now, remember how great is our God. Consider how able to help God is; and how many people are deployed everywhere, and serving to make a difference, both close by and across the globe.
At last pray for yourself – what you might need, what forgiveness you seek, what joys you celebrate with Jesus. And pray also for one person you would have seen in the pews, if you had been together with others there today.
In the name of Jesus. AMEN.
HYMN # 523 Trust and Obey
BENEDICTION – God grant to the living, grace; to the departed, rest; to the Church, the Queen, Canada, and all people everywhere, peace and concord; and to us all, God’s servants, life everlasting. And grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be with us all. AMEN.
(Luke 5:1-11) J G White ~ 11 am, Sun, Jan 24, 2021, UBC Digby
https://vimeo.com/504100398
Why Church? Why the Christian Church?
To save and be saved.
Certainly we of the Baptist brand have put it this way for our four hundred years of history. And when the two largest groups of Baptist Churches in the Maritimes united 115 years ago, we put things such as these in our doctrinal statement, in our Basis of Union:
Faith — Faith is a conviction of the intellect that God will perform all that He has promised and an implicit trust of the heart in Christ as a personal savior…
A Gospel Church — We believe that a church of Christ is a congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel… In the more general sense, the word church is used to designate all whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
We are a fellowship of faith; we are a gospel church.
What attraction do we have for people? Most find no need of the form of salvation we are offering, if they understand us. They must be finding it elsewhere, or some are deciding they don’t need what we claim to have.
We who are here celebrate the better life and joy we have been given, and we seek to cultivate it. At our centre is the sense of being saved, and the mission to help others into this same salvation.
The many styles of Christian faith can be put in a handful of categories. Studying the Bible and sharing the faith are what our Evangelical tradition is all about. Other believers are more about the Social Justice Tradition – living a compassionate Life, caring, alongside God, for everyone and everything. Or some are in the Contemplative Tradition – a prayer-filled life. Another stream is the Holiness Tradition – seeking to live a virtuous life of obedience and purity and right. Yet another is the Charismatic Tradition – living a Spirit-empowered life characterized by the gifts and the fruit of the Holy Spirit of God. And another branch of Christianity can be called the Incarnational Tradition – living a sacramental life that ties the sacred and the secular together under God.
People of the evangelical stream hold salvation at the heart of things. This is certainly our ethos; even if we don’t always act like we are saved and trying to get others saved, this is the flavour of our traditions, in music, preaching, Bible study, and so on.
So, what is it we are talking about? What is it to be saved? This must be clear to us, for the sake of being clear to those outside.
I would simply call it a good connection with God. Not a broken connection, a weak connection, a partial connection. A good connection, a right relationship. How that happens to a person takes many forms. For some it happens dramatically, for others it is a gradual awakening.
Years ago I interviewed the great Atlantic Baptist pastor and church planter, Freeman Fenerty. He said, I liken conversion experience to two kinds. One where a stick of dynamite drives a man from one path to another, and the other like a flower blossoming, and mine was like that.
So Jesus uses many human servants, or teammates, to help Him make the connection with people, and set them upon a new path. Today we heard a scripture story about Jesus, a scene on the seashore among fishermen. After an awe-inspiring catch of fish, Jesus calls upon one fisher, Simon Peter, to follow him. He will be fishing for people. ‘Catching people alive’ (Africa Bible Commentary).
The scene here is simply of people meeting God by meeting Jesus. Peter, we see, feels totally unworthy and tells Jesus to go away. But Christ says to Peter he’s just the one he wants, come and follow and I will get you catching people, like your net caught fish. And that is indeed what happens.
When we ever dare talk with people about what our basic Christian message is, we can say it is about meeting up with God. It is about making the connection. A true witness to something is a person who simply tells what they saw, what they know, and not a bunch of other stuff.
One of the amazing evangelicals I have been reading lately is Watchman Nee, one of the greatest Christian leaders of the 20th century. His ministry was in his native China, and he spent the last twenty years of his life in prison there. Nee wrote:
What is salvation? Many think that to be saved we must first believe that the Lord Jesus died for us, but it is a strange fact that nowhere in the New Testament does it say precisely that. …We are to believe first of all in Him; not specifically in what He has done. (p. 325)
The first condition of salvation is not knowledge, but meeting Christ. (p. 326)
We come now to the single requirement demanded from us. Quite often people preach the Gospel to a person by using a number of “points,” only to find that the next day the person will say, “I have forgotten the third point. What was it?” Salvation is not a question of points! Salvation is not even a question of understanding or of will. It is, [as we have seen,] a question of meeting God–of people coming into first-hand contact with Christ the Savior. So what, you ask me, is the minimum requirement in a person to make that contact possible?
The basic condition of a sinner’s salvation is not belief or repentance, but just honesty of heart towards God. God requires nothing of us except that we come into that attitude. (P. 327)
If we were to take time, some day, to go around our circle and talk, we would find many different experiences of God. How we each met Christ in our lives is unique. Some events may be similar between some of us. How we explain it, how we tell what Jesus means to us, is also personal, but is secondary. The first thing is the actual meeting – that connecting with the Divine One that has happened to us.
Of course, many people keep seeking this, when they do not think they have quite found it yet. And out there, outside of the churches, many people are seeking God, seeking what is truly Real. We know that most people around here are not in churches. So God will be found by them outside of church. We know that. That is where they are looking.
Jesus took Peter and the others and wandered all about. Sometimes into Jewish Synagogues, yes, or to a wedding, or a funeral. But most of the time out along the roads and in the villages. This is again where people will meet up with Christ, even though He is here simply in Spirit.
To be saved, to be connected, is of interest to many people, I’d say. Looking, and wanting, and needing and wondering are important things for people around us.
People keep ‘working out their salvation with fear and trembling,’ as scripture puts it. Making a connection with the Holy is not just a momentary event – it happens over and over, and we seek it again and again. When we, a Christian congregation, are a spiritual resource centre for local people, we are ready to take people as they are, at their moment, and help them with their very next step.
E. Stanley Jones was an incredible missionary to India, and a writer, in the first half of the 20th century. He wrote:
Conversion is a gift and an achievement. It is the act of a moment and the work of a lifetime. You cannot attain salvation by disciplines–it is the gift of God. But you cannot retain it without disciplines. (p. 281)
To have salvation at the heart of our life as a church family, we will have a lot of good things to offer one another. Ways of praying. Ways of drawing close to God, and one another. Ways of learning and of obeying good paths. Ways of developing people, nurturing them. Church consultant, Reggie McNeil, says we are in the people development business! When we get to our Annual Meeting on Wednesday, notice, in every report and each decision, how someone is being nurtured. See God’s work.
We are a fellowship of people being saved because 1. we have met up with Christ, and 2. we keep on drawing near to God. Through all this, the Spirit transforms us. So a third thing is this: as a group we also can be revived. Just and we give credit to our Master for reconciling us, and for healing our souls more and more, so we give God credit for renewing us as a group, in this day and age.
So it has always been. The great 19th century Baptist preacher in England, Charles H. Spurgeon, preached this about revival, back then:
“O!” says one person, “if we had another minister. O! if we had another kind of worship. O! if we had a different sort of preaching.” You do not need new ways or new people, you need life in what you have. If you want to move a train, you don’t need a new engine, or even ten engines– you need to light a fire and get the steam up in the engine you now have!
It is not a new person or a new plan, but the life of God in them that the Church needs. Let us ask God for it! (p. 320)
So today, when we feel we need it, we ask for it. ‘Give new life to us!’ A big part of the life we are given, is the capability to help ‘catch people alive.’ Be ‘fishers of men and women.’ Like the fish in the net, caught from Simon Peter’s boat… he and his companions did not do it by their plan or skill. They were the experts, they were the fishermen, yet it was Jesus who spoke to them, and they slowly obeyed, and the catch was awe-inspiring.
It was just a sign, it pointed to the real mission. ‘Come with me, you’ll catch human souls now.’
Catching people alive today is a new challenge for us. The ones we are fishing for don’t want to be caught, eh? Do not forget who the Chief Fisherman is among us. No, not me, not Pastor Don. No, not Andy Stanley, or Francis Chan or the late Billy Graham. We have the same Captain that Simon Peter, John and Andrew had. We have Jesus. At His command we assist Him to save others.
At His command they are caught alive.
At His command we are saved.
PRAYER Let us pray.
Master and Maker of creation, You make us and remake us. You bless and rebuild the world. You welcome us into the saving work of Jesus. Do it again, we pray! Save us, and save others. May you catch people alive, in our shallow waters.
And in this week of prayer for Christian unity, we bless the other congregations who are our neighbours. May their people, their pastors, their buildings, their budgets, their work and worship done in Your name all be greater this year. Be our Team Captain, for the sake of our corner of the world. Lead us and inspire us, Christ, in this age.
Welcome to this post for worship on Sunday, November 15, at Digby Baptist Church. Text of the sermon is here, and video of Children’s Time, the Sermon, Holy Communion, and other elements. Other info about this Sunday can be found in the Bulletin (on the Bulletins page). 🙂
(Isaiah 6:1-8 Luke 5:1-10) – J G White – 11 am, Sunday, Nov 15, 2020 – UBC Digby
God is ____. What are the main single words we can use to fill that blank. God is… what?
God is Spirit. God is good. God is Creator. God is One and God is Three. God is love. God is holy.
Holy, Holy, Holy, sings the hymn. Decades ago, many a Baptist Church started every Sunday morning service singing this. It goes all the way back to Isaiah’s vision in chapter six of his prophetic book.
Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts (armies);the whole earth is full of his glory. (6:3)
Our God is a holy God; so said the Hebrews, so say the Christians, through all history. What are we saying? When the spiritual beings, called seraphim, sang ‘Holy, holy, holy,’ that was the ancient Hebrew way to say very holy. Repeat an adjective and it is emphasized. God is not just holy. God is holy, holy, holy! Completely holy. Wholly holy.
What is holiness? What does the word ‘holy’ mean? Some of you, tell your answer, and I will repeat it for all to hear.
We gain a sense of holiness from the scripture stories. From the Holy Bible. There’s that word again. Something special about this Book, and our God, and the Holy Gospel we have to proclaim. So, we are talking about getting in touch with holiness. Holy is: magnificent and amazing, bright, good, beautiful, special and ‘set apart’ – like nothing else, awe inspiring and fear inspiring, pure, in contrast with impure things
So, God is holy. Far better and far different from us, and all other things. Completely different, or ‘wholly other,’ as the theologians say. This is key to our traditional teaching about God in Judaism and Christianity. God is holy, completely special and good and separate from us. And we are not holy.
So, we believe in this world, that seems so wrecked and broken a lot of the time, there actually is holiness, pure goodness, above and beyond us. There truly is a God. But this Holy One is like matter to our antimatter; we can’t dare meet up with pure God – we would instantly be destroyed.
Such was the experience of the prophet Isaiah, in Judah, in the 8th century BCE. He has this vision of God, with spiritual beings singing of God’s holiness; and Isaiah is ready to be annihilated, destroyed, vaporized. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (6:5)
This happens regularly in the Bible stories. Notice Peter with Jesus today, facing his sinfulness before this man of miracles. They all have this concept that a mere human cannot dare meet up with God directly; it could mean almost instead death. Yet, amazingly, people like Isaiah survive the holy encounter.
I keep thinking back to an old hymn in the old hymn books that an old pastor once quoted to me. He called it a true ‘gospel hymn,’ because it explained, in poetry, how we could possibly get right with the supreme Holiness of God. Look at the imagery of this song, it is all about the holiness that we cannot touch.
Eternal Light! Eternal Light! How pure the soul must be When, placed within Thy searching sight, It shrinks not, but with calm delight Can live and look on Thee.
The spirits that surround Thy throne May bear the burning bliss; But that is surely theirs alone, Since they have never, never known A fallen world like this.
Oh, how shall I, whose native sphere Is dark, whose mind is dim, Before th’ Ineffable appear, And on my naked spirit bear The uncreated beam?
There is a way for man to rise To That, sublime Abode; An Offering and a Sacrifice, A Holy Spirit’s energies, An Advocate with God:
These, these prepare us for the sight Of holiness above; The sons of ignorance and night May dwell in the eternal Light, Through the eternal Love.
Do we actually think of God as holy, this holy? As holy, holy, holy? So holy we can’t touch, or even come into God’s view? I think there is a lot of personal experience, and hope that people have, that says we can touch holiness. Glimpses of holiness break through all the time. Victorian Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning is famous for this quotation:
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
I have a book of prayers for Church services with the simple title: ‘Touch Holiness.’
What has your experience of the holy been? When have you seen or been touched by holiness?
The scriptures tell us that supreme holiness can be touched. We can be welcomed into it. Isaiah himself was welcomed in, with that vision which included a hot, burning coal taken out of the fire in front of God. The hot coal placed upon his lips cleansed him. Now those lips can speak, speak on behalf of Holy God, to an unholy people.
And our story of Jesus, which is just under the surface in the old hymn I quoted. There is a way for man to rise To that, sublime abode; An Offering and a Sacrifice…
We learn to seek a path to be holy, here and now:
Keep the sabbath holy. (Exodus 20:8)
Take time to be holy.
You shall be holy as I am holy. (1 Pet 1:16)
Refiner’s fire, my heart’s one desireis to be holy, set apart for You, my Master…
But is this ever our one desire? Is holiness ever that important to us? I won’t ask for a show of hands for who has aspired, above all else, to live a holy life. What difference does holiness make to our day-to-day lives? How about… what you wear? Your fashion?
Sarah Peel is a stylist and educator in Toronto. She teaches young people about fashion, and founded a couple of organizations that help people learn about fashion, human rights and sustainability. When she works with youth, Sara finds they are very interested in learning about clothing choices. She writes:
Youth are constantly plugged in to social media and pop culture, which influence their clothing choices. At the same time, school teachers help youth to engage with current issues: poverty, equity, climate change and the need to live more sustainably. These challenges are deeply important to today’s youth. And when students realize their collective consumer choices can influence the fashion industry – for the better – they are eager to get on board. [Mosaic, 2019]
Holy choices about what we wear can make a difference in this world. Holy shopping is a reality!
Holiness is our destiny, with God. We glimpse it here. We get connected. We even shine. ‘I am the light of the world,’ Jesus said, yet also, ‘you are the light of the world.’ Even when we shop, or cook and eat, or build a house, or start an exercise routine, or watch movies and shows, or create artwork: the holiness, the sacredness can shine.
This whole thing is a way of talking about getting life right. Getting right with God. With others. With the earth. With ourselves. How do you respond when holiness touches you?
We shall not be ‘wholly holy’ in this life – though some Christians do teach this is possible. The brilliant mathematician and scientist, Blaise Pascal, became a devout Christian in his short life. Pascal wrote: “Our greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in us some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness.” (Pensées)
The Divine touch of holiness in our lives can be incredible. And how we need it! It is the life of God, meeting us, even living in us. ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory,’ as Paul wrote. (Col 1:27) And, to take it further, the Holy Spirit communes with our human spirits, telling us we belong with God. (Rom 8:16)
This is the good news we proclaim.
Sometimes we proclaim it simply by the holiness that shines through us.
We are motivated by the possibility of beautiful holiness shining in those we see all around us.
(2 Kings 5:1-14; Luke 5:12-16) – J G White 11 am, Sunday, July 7, 2019 – UBC Digby
Healing: we look for it in so many ways. Healing bodies. Healing hearts and relationships. Healing the sin sick soul. Most of they prayers of you, Church, that I hear out loud, are for the physical healing of people. This is one of our gifts: prayer for healing.
The storytelling of the healing of Naaman, a foreign army commander, or of an unnamed man with leprosy in the time of Jesus, is brief. But some of the details make us wonder. This past week, I have been wondering about the helpers, on the sidelines. The unnamed women and men, back then, who helped the healing happen.
Do you ever get to be a helper, and guide someone on their healing journey? You are not the healer, but you are a helper? Of course you are.
There are various servants, unnamed people on the sidelines, who play very important roles in the biblical healing stories. God gets credit for the healings, but many humans give assistance.
So who is the first helper is the story of Naaman? An Israelite servant girl.
Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” 2 K 5:2-3
She was speaking of Elisha. And so, Naaman goes to Elisha, a prophet of the Hebrew God, for healing.
You and I have times when we get to be humble servants, on the sidelines, pointing the way to the Healer, the Great Physician. Or, pointing out what human to go to, who has the gift of healing.
It is a matter of trust. Trust in the healing power that is available to us. I think of a story I heard again the other day. There was a drought in the land. A church held a prayer meeting, to pray for the rain that was needed. The pastor greeted the people. But he was disappointed. “We are here to pray to the Lord for rain,” he said, “but where are you umbrellas?!”
I think of a pastor friend of mine. In one of her tiny, rural churches a prayer ministry developed. They prayed in earnest, on Sundays, for people who wanted healing. Their prayers were effective! Word spread about the praying and the healing that was happening. They got more and more requests for people for prayer. And so they prayed more.
The pastor was so unassuming and humble about this. Perhaps this was a key to their success. She gave the credit to the Lord. She didn’t promote or advertize their small church’s prayer ministry. They simply prayed, and praised God. God used them to bless.
Who is the next helper in the healing of Naaman? One of Elisha’s co-workers, a messenger.
Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” 2 K 5:10
The Army Commander is not happy when the Prophet of Israel does not even come out to meet him, but just sends a messenger, with the instructions for healing.
I seem to remember going to the dentist, as a kid, and it was my dentist who spent all the time with me. Just him, cleaning and flouriding and checking every tooth. Now, I go to the dentist, and most of my time in the chair is with an assistant, a dental hygienist.
At the end, Dr. So-and-so comes in for the final look, and reports on what the team sees.
So much healing work is like this. Even Elisha simply sent out a servant to tell the patient what to do. Perhaps our God likes this team approach best. God’s miracle-workers are not to be superstars, putting on a show and getting attention. Healing work is humble work. And some of the team players are folks like us. We have a message of hope to give someone. Or some good advice. Or some news about a treatment to take. So we give it.
Now, the next servants of healing for Naaman? The Army Commander’s own servants, who wisely advise their proud, stubborn master.
But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” 2 K 5:13
Whether it be in spiritual care or healthcare, there is always good news and bad news to share. For some, the cure seems worse than the disease. And there can be humbling, even embarrassing treatment to take to find a cure. Spiritual health can depend upon submission, confession of sins, admitting one’s need. Any team of healers often needs humble and deeply caring people, to encourage someone to take the help they need to take.
One of my best friends had a career as a Lab Tech, in the tiny hospital in her small rural town. She took people’s blood, she read their blood pressure, she x-rayed them, the usual things. She is a deeply compassionate person – it is one of her spiritual gifts. Many a person, troubled by their health, or by all life’s circumstances, would be with her at the Lab, and pour out all their troubles to her listening ears, while she poked and prodded them. She spoke with me, from time to time, of those she called the ‘hard luck people,’ those with more than their share of troubles. She was, essentially, a pastor to them, in the Hospital Lab. She helped them, in the midst of their bad news, with a loving heart.
That is what our ministry is to be, with those who need healing of body, or mind, or soul. Patient with each other, and so good to one another.
Do not underestimate your own role in bringing healing to people. You do not need the spiritual gift of healing to help them. You do not all need the gift of prayer – though you all must do some praying. You do not need to be skilled and trained. You do not need to do it alone.
We are a team, with Jesus, the Great Physician. We are servants of healing.
( Luke 5:1-11) – J G White 11 am, Sun, Feb 10, 2019 – UBC Digby
Let’s just take a few minutes for this fishing story. Kind of a big fish story – a big catch of fish, anyway. I wonder what looking back will do for us.
The fishing industry two thousand years ago in the Middle East was surely something altogether different from our fishing today on the Bay of Fundy. But the basics we can understand. Peter, Andrew, James and John had been out fishing from their boats and got next to nothing. Jesus says, ‘Try again;’ and they do. They can barely deal with the heap of fish they catch!
Jesus invites these fishermen to join Him: follow and be apprenticed to Him. Christ tells them they will be fishing for people now. He speaks of things they know well. They leave everything behind and follow.
We also looked back at Rose Fortune today. We can imagine what keeping the peace and protecting people’s property involved almost two hundred years ago, on the busy waterfront of Annapolis Royal. Yet the fishing and shipping business is altogether different now on the ports of the Annapolis Basin.
So surely, in our day, fishing with Jesus for men and women is not the same as it was two thousand years ago. Or even two hundred years ago, about the time the Baptists started to get established in our area.
Or just sixty years ago, when Christian Churches were in their hayday here in Nova Scotia. Many of you were in the giant Sunday Schools then. For instance, our main evangelism will no longer be through children’s Sunday schools.
For adults, one of our main methods has been to ‘invite them to church.’ Not necessarily an effective way today. I wonder if one new fishing method is to develop small groups that include Christians and non. Get people together to study and learn, or work on a project together. Before we invite them to come and see how friendly we supposedly are, or hear our great music, our our wonderful Pastor. 😉
Recruiting people into the Way of Jesus today is a challenging venture, as is always has been. Our fishing methods will be somewhat different from our past ways. There are plenty of fish in our seas now, plenty of people not with Christ. And I think it is much like having new breeds of fish to catch, so new tools and methods must be used to accomplish the same gospel work.
There can be a new fishery develop. New fishers of women and men are needed. We all must keep retraining and retooling for the work.
And remember, friends, God is still a God of abundance. The abundant catch of fish recorded here in Luke 5 is but one of so many Jesus stories that inspires us. Sacred history may repeat itself in this way: our success with Jesus may again come after long nights of what seems like fruitless effort. And what we end up doing will not be what we expected to be doing when we signed up with Christ!
Maybe some of you are like me. Slow to learn, slow to transform and change my ways. Attached to my old ways of counting successes, and cautious about trying new things. Yet, praise God!, Jesus still calls us. Calls us slowpokes to follow. Throw the net out again, maybe over the other side of the boat. And then, drop the net altogether, and go a new way.
