Awakening, Harvest, and Broken Nets (Part 1)
I believe the best days for the church are still ahead of us. Not only is the church going to become the pure and spotless bride that Scripture predicts, but the harvest of souls that the church will see in the coming years will be greater than any hour of history*.
So I’m the last guy who wants to persuade Christians to stop praying for revival and for lost souls to come to Christ. I believe we need to pray more, not less, and boldly ask the Lord for an awakening both here in the West and around the globe.
But I think we should stop and think about what we are asking for Jesus for when we pray. Awakening in the church and a harvest of souls is not a bad thing. But the reality of the situation is I don’t think we’re ready for the kind of awakening we’re praying and dreaming about, let alone the one He desires to give. This question gets to the heart of the matter:
What will we do once it arrives?
And I mean that seriously. Most of the church currently is seeing little true conversion happening. So we’re not used to discipling brand new believers who’ve never known Christ. We have a tough time with the one or two a year that typically come in. But what happens when the number of new believers in your church is equal to the number of established believers in your church? Or what happens if the number of new believers in your church is double that of the size of your current congregation so that “mature” believers are outnumbered two to one?
This isn’t just an issue of capacity (meaning do we have enough room in the building?), but how do we teach them to follow Jesus? How do we deal with casting out demons and dealing with their issues they bring to the body? How do the believers in the church deal with the strain that so many new believers places on the body?
Perhaps a story from the life of Jesus can help illustrate this. In Luke 5, some of the disciples were out fishing and Jesus used their boat to preach to a crowd that had gathered. Unfortunately, the catch of fish the night had not been that great. They had caught nothing. Jesus instructed Peter to cast his nets on the other side of the boat. Peter was in disbelief and even told Jesus that it wouldn’t work, but reluctantly followed Jesus’ command.
When the disciples cast their nets onto the other side of the boat, the catch of fish was so incredibly large that their nets began to tear. Peter gets appropriately freaked out and even asks Jesus to leave! This was a supernatural sign to Peter. But Jesus tells Peter “Don’t be afraid Peter. From now on you’ll be a fisher of men.” This last prediction of Jesus tells me this was more than just a sign to show Peter who Jesus was, but a sign to show Peter the kind of ministry he was to have.
I believe we are entering into days where the harvest of unbelievers will be great. But the nets (the church, at least in general, in the West), is not prepared for those days. We, like Peter, expect to catch something, but not nearly as much as Jesus will bring, and so we bring nets that can’t handle the catch. And it puts us in danger of losing the harvest.
Are you praying for revival for the church and awakening among the lost? Good! But we as the church need to prepare in faith for the days ahead. What will happen when it truly comes? Are we ready? Or does how we disciple, meet, and do mission need to change so our nets don’t break on that day? I believe it does.
We’ll talk more about that over the next couple of days…
Photo Credit: An Old Fishing Net by Sam Cox
*I believe this both from a biblical prophecy standpoint and from a sheer demographics standpoint. More people will be alive on the planet in this century than than any other.
I Want You…To Plant A House Church
Maybe I haven’t said it before. Forgive me for not being more up front.
A major reason that I write is I believe God is calling many, many more people to the front lines of the harvest. It starts by leading unbelievers to Jesus, discipling them, training them to reach others, and in the process organic churches are formed.
Think of all the people that don’t know Christ. I know in the West we think everyone is a believer, but they’re not. Not even close. And the more relationships you build outside of the church, the more you realize there are more broken people far from God than you could count. But many of these people want Christ, they just have a misunderstanding of who He is. The harvest is gigantic.
The church as it exists cannot handle the harvest that could come in if the lost truly did come to Christ. Imagine a church of two hundred that meets in your city or town. Now imagine that church growing by another two hundred new converts. It would be chaos! The nets that we currently have aren’t strong enough to hold the catch.
But imagine a church of ten or fifteen disciples who have their hearts fixed on Christ and are growing as disciples. That church can add ten or fifteen new converts and become two or three house churches quickly without much difficulty. And as those new converts grow, they have the ability to start a house church just like the one they are part of now.
But the workers are few. I’ll tell you even though the harvest is great, the number of people actually following Jesus into the harvest, working among the lost, and discipling new converts is small. And if the harvest is truly great, we don’t have enough laborers.
So, don’t be surprised, if every once and awhile I look around at my followers on the blog and say, “Why haven’t you started a house church yet?”
There might be some good answers. But there might be some good excuses, too.
Existing House Churches Should Be Fragile, Too…
Every church plant is fragile. But truth be told, every house church I’ve ever been a part of was fragile, regardless of whether it was brand new or not. And it was good that it was fragile.
This flies in the face of our Western pragmatism. We feel like we should be able to start something of significance and twenty, thirty, or fifty years later come back and find something that looks very familiar to what we started.
But everything that is truly alive is fragile: From the smallest seedling to the newborn baby to a mature elephant. Massive as they are, an unseen virus or hidden cancer can end the life of each of these living things. There is a fragility baked into life that makes it both alive and risky.
Because the church is a living thing, the same thing is true of her. If she ever grows to the place where she cannot die, we do not have a living breathing bride of Christ, but some kind of zombie bride that’s not fit for Jesus. Again, there’s a risk in life, but it’s worth the cost.
I can’t take you back to the first house church I ever started. It doesn’t exist. It didn’t fall apart because of moral failure or lack of money. It grew into several churches that are alive and growing. The people that made it up are still walking with Christ, but they are starting churches and making disciples in different contexts.
In order for new life to emerge, often things must die. So as a follower of Jesus, I have to embrace the idea that not just the churches we start among the lost, but the house churches we are part of right now are fragile. Eventually, what is living will die and give way to the seed of something new that God will plant and cause to flourish somewhere else.
I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.
-Jesus, John 12:24
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 