CONGREGATION + COMMUNITY NEWS
PEOPLES PRESS
Joyfully Defiant for the Sake of a Just World
A congregation of the United Church of Christ,
the Alliance of Baptists & the American Baptist Churches
“Come with me. I’ll make a new kind of fisherman out of you. I’ll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch and bass.”
Mark 1:16-18, (The Message Translation)
Becoming Fish People
Beloveds,
Several months ago, I had an amazing afternoon coffee date with a near and dear colleague. During our back-and-forth banter, we began discussing our sermon preparations. She told me a story about this scriptural passage. When she was a child, she thought that Jesus meant that he was going to turn Simon and Andrew into fish and not fishers of men. The conversations that flowed from this discussion still sits with my soul today.
What if her interpretation of this scripture was not just some childhood fantasy but a revelation of the Spirit? Often, evangelical groups use this text as their scriptural foundation for their evangelizing and converting ministries. The motto I have heard in some spaces of “…saving souls hook, line, and sinker” gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Now, fish were the main staple of food for the early community in which Simon and Andrew lived. Therefore, I wonder: What if Jesus was calling Simon and Andrew to become fishermen of this new followers of Jesus movement not with flashy lures and nets, but by becoming healing sustenance in this beloved community being cultivated? This spiritual sustenance mediates unconditional love and declares that the least come first, the weary and marginalized find seats at the head of the table. I think my colleague’s lens on this scripture flips what we all know as the church upside down.
I ponder what church and faith communities would look like if we all became fish-people.
Every denomination is asking the same question: How do we get more people in the pews? I don’t think anyone really has the right answer, but I do think it begins by looking at this scripture through my colleague’s lens. Instead of becoming consumer fisher-people, deploying flashy lures to sell Jesus to the masses, we become fish and offer community as a healing space to provide sustenance for this deeply, beautifully broken world.
So, my question is, how is this spirit calling you to become a fish-person?
Wild Blessings,
Rev. Matthew Hogue-Smith, Senior Minister
thank you!
Pastor Dave & Pastor Susan, would like to thank the members and friends of Peoples Church for all the expressions of appreciation and gratitude that were made as his interim ministry came to an end. It is often assumed that clergy are "self-sustaining" as they go about their work, but the well can run dry without some positive strokes along the way. You have launched your Interim back into his various projects and ministries with a full well! Again ,thank you!!!
Pastors Dave & Susan Sickelka
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Adult Forum, meets at 9:30 am on Sundays. We’re currently reading The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Khalidi. Join us either in person at church or just click HERE to join us virtually.
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