Healthy, Growing Churches (5)

When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” Luke 5.4

Commentary on Luke, Homily 12
Cyril of Alexandria (375-444)
“He told Simon and his companions to sail off a little from the land and to let down the net for a draught. But they replied that they had been toiling the whole night and had caught nothing. However, in the name of Christ, they let down the net, and immediately it was full of fish. By a visible sign and by a miraculous type and representation, they were fully convinced that their labor would be rewarded, and the zeal displayed in spreading out the net of the gospel teaching would be fruitful. Within this net they should most certainly catch the shoals of the heathen.”

Churches today prefer to have unbelievers “lunch in” with them, rather than “launch out” among them in the deep, uncertain waters of the unbelieving world. We feel comfortable on our turf. If we can just get our neighbors to come to church, for whatever reason, or by whatever means, someone there will tell them the Gospel. The fishermen are at the church, not out where the fish swim and move and have their being. This is not a healthy church which relies on such a paradigm for fulfilling its mission and calling. Every church has a mission field where it is called to cultivate the soil with good works, and sow the fields with good words of hope and salvation. Every member in a church also has a mission field, as part of that larger mission field. Jesus commands us to launch out into the deep and let down nets of doctrine (Patrick), baited with love and truth, so that those who will be saved, shall be saved. Your church will never be healthy so long as it prefers to lunch in rather than to launch out.

Is yours a lunch in our launch out church? Explain.

T. M. Moore

The Work of Shepherds
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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Quotations from Church Fathers are from the Ancient Christian Commentary Series, published by InterVarsity Press.