The Church That Caught Nothing

How the Harvest is Ripe, the Nets are Empty, but Jesus is Still Calling

Time for a Change

There is a passage of Scripture that both equally excites me and frustrates me… As Jesus is sending off His disciples, He tells them that the “harvest is ripe!” (Matthew 9:37)

There are people all over the world who God is drawing to Himself, people ready to respond to the gospel. They are all around us! But what frustrates me is that there are so few Churches successfully reaching those who don’t know Jesus yet.

• There are Churches whose methods for reaching the lost are simply not working.

• There are believers who have come out of a fear based gospel, and are stuck on how to share Jesus without the fear and condemnation.

• Even in the places where there are some people coming to Christ, they are often reliant upon a professional - not the multiplication of disciple makers.

I love the story of Jesus in John 21 and can’t help but hear Jesus speaking to the Church today…

He’s on the beach, and sees His disciples fishing. They’ve been up all night and haven’t caught a thing. He yells out to them, “Throw your net on the other side!” And for some reason the disciples did - and caught a massive net of fish…

That’s when they realised that it was Jesus speaking to them.

What if the answer to our making disciples (fishing) issue is simply listening to Jesus?

They had caught nothing

Despite their best efforts, the disciples had caught nothing. While that may not alarm a fishermen like me who rarely catches anything - it wasn’t good for a bunch of fishermen. That was their employment and how they put food on the table.

Similarly, Jesus has commanded The Church, His disciples, to make disciples. By definition then, a disciple is someone who makes disciples.

But like the fishermen who had caught nothing, there are millions of believers around the world who have not been trained and mobilbised to make disciples.

It is time to feel a holy discontent for the way things are! If you fall into the camp of not “having caught anything” recently, it is time to listen to Jesus calling out.

Jesus calls out

So Jesus calls out to these fishermen. He tells them to do something that is so simple and basic, that I imagine He may have sounded rude and or silly. How could one side of the boat be any different to the other, especially after an all night fishing expedition? But they did. And the results flowed!

What if Jesus has already spoken about how to make disciples? What if the very way He lived His life was the way to imitate? In Luke 10 and Matthew 10 Jesus trains His disciples for a misisons trip and not surprisingly He teaches them to do exactly what He had been doing:

Pray.
Go.
Find the person of Peace.
Demonstrate and Declare the Gospel.

In the Great Commission in Matthew 28, Jesus even tells us what to teach. “Teach them to obey/observe/hold on to everything I have commanded you.”

Most Churches are not set up to look like this.

Where Jesus’ method was to go to people, the Church is telling people to come.

Where Jesus method was to declare and demonstrate the gospel in the safety of peoples homes, the Church asks people to step out of their comfort zone and come to our program or building.

The modern Church has reversed the roles of the missionary and those who we are trying to reach!

In modern Churches the person who shares the gospel is the preacher. In Jesus’ model it is the role of every disciple.

In modern Churches we win one person at a time. In Jesus’ model we win groups of people at a time.

Where many evangelism resources teach us to warn people about hell, Jesus simply loved the hell out of people!

Jesus is still speaking to us today. He is calling us to throw our net on the other side of the boat. To change the way we are doing Church and discipleship.

We’ve seen the fruit of the current Church system: a declining Church in attendance and influence. A far cry from reaching the ripe harvest Jesus promised!

Therefore, we must be courageous and leave what we are familiar with, and trust that God can work through ordinary every day believers. It’s time to throw the net on the other side of the boat, and mobilise the every day believer to make disciples!

The question is whether we are prepared to listen and throw our nets on the other side.

Once they obeyed they saw it was Jesus

Once the nets were overflowing, the fishermen now saw that it was in fact Jesus on the beach. They knew that only Jesus could make something so miraculous occur.

This reminds me of what happened in China… Christianity was made illegal. The Christian leaders were killed and imprisoned. Their Bibles were burned and banned. Meeting together as Church was outlawed. (Which by the way are all the things we rely upon!) Then over the course of 50 years, millions upon millions of people came to Christ…

Only Jesus could have done that!

I hear stories of the same thing happening all over the world. From Africa, to Asia and even the Middle East. I’ve heard of numerous movements who have had over 1 million people baptised in a ten year period.

Only Jesus could have done that!

So what would happen if you and I committed ourselves to obeying The Great Commission? What if we modelled our lives on the way Jesus lived - which happens to be the same way He trained His disciples to make disciples in Matthew 10/Luke10?

What if we risked it all and threw our nets on the other side of the boat and changed the way we did Church and discipleship?

I believe the results would floor us. Our nets would be full and overflowing and we would look at each other and say,

Only Jesus could have done that!