COMMERCIAL FISHING

I had a vivid dream while we were in Mongolia.� In the dream I was handing a book to a small group of people.

“It’s about how to be a commercial fisherman,” I told them.� “The most important principle is that you fish where Jesus tells you.”

I woke up pondering the dream.� Most of my dreams are of the post pizza (or in the case of Mongolia, mutton and salted yak milk tea) variety, but this one grabbed my attention.� I realized that the four disciples who made their living from fishing, (Peter, Andrew, James and John) would have understood Jesus’ invitation, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men,” in the context of commercial fishing. They would naturally have assumed fishing nets catching large numbers of fish.� This was not a dream about making money from fishing, but about how to see large numbers of people brought into the Kingdom.

As I investigated the different Scriptures on fishing in the Gospels, I began to get a hint that fishermen on the Sea of Galilee in the days when Jesus walked its shores had more than one way to catch fish:

* Jesus calls four commercial fishermen to be his disciples.� At the time, Simon (Peter) and Andrew are fishing from the shore and James and John are repairing their nets. “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men,” he instructs them.� (Matthew 4:18-22 and Mark 1:16-19)

* The disciples have caught nothing all night.� After borrowing his boat, Jesus tells Simon to go out where it is deeper and let down the nets again.� The nets are so full that they begin to tear.� Simon calls his partners, James and John, to help, and the two boats are filled with so many fish they begin to sink. (Luke 5:1-11)

* After Jesus’ resurrection, seven of the disciples go fishing but catch nothing all night. Jesus calls to them from the shore and tells them to throw out their nets again on the right-hand side of the boat. The net is so full they cannot get the fish into the boat and have to drag it in the hundred yards to shore.� When they count the fish, there are 153 large ones.� (John 21:3-11)

* Jesus tells Peter to use a hook and line (literally, a fish-hook) to catch a fish that has the money for the temple tax in its mouth.� (Matthew 17:27)

As I studied these passages, it was apparent that not all fishing was created equal.� Sometimes the disciples fished from boats; other times from the shore.� Sometimes they let down their nets; at other times they threw them out.� Sometimes they fished in deep water; other times in the shallows.

Could it be that a commercial fisherman in the days of Jesus would use different techniques depending on the circumstances and the kind of fish he wanted to catch?

Shortly after this we traveled to India.� A married couple we work with teaches church planting throughout the state of Andhra Pradesh, including in some fishing villages on the coast. These fishermen work in primitive conditions without any sophisticated equipment.� It is probably very similar to fishing on the Sea of Galilee two thousand years ago.

“Do the people in the villages have differing techniques to catch fish?”� I asked our friends, as we sat drinking a soda in their tiny apartment.

“They have different kinds of nets depending on the circumstances and the fish they are trying to catch,” they told me.� “They use a funnel net when they don’t have boats.� It’s a bit like an enormous butterfly net.� They also have a drag net that is maybe 800 to 900 yards long.� They use this when they have more than one boat.� The boats will create a large circle with the net and then pull it in.� There are several different kinds of nets that are used.� Ones with a finer mesh will catch small fish, and coarser nets are used to catch bigger fish.”

Back home in the States I had access to the Internet once again.� Looking up the Greek word for “net,” I discovered that although a generic word for net is most commonly used in the Gospels, other Greek words were also translated as “net,” specifically one describing a “purse string net” and another a “drag net.”

What can we learn from these examples?� Are they relevant to us in the post-modern West?� How can we become “fishers of men?”� Are there different types of “net” we can use?

What draws people into the Kingdom in other nations may not be so appropriate in a nation like America.� Here our consumerist methods of marketing the gospel have left many inoculated against the real thing; we have to be even more careful to be led by the Spirit in reaching out to others.� Although the principles will be the same, patterns of evangelism that work with people on the street may not be so effective with business executives.

There is one further passage that sheds some light on the commercial fishing paradigm.� It comes in Matthew 13 where Jesus tells a parable.�� He says, “The Kingdom of heaven is like a fishing net (literally a dragnet or seine – a type of net used to catch large numbers of fish) let down into the water…”

The question I am contemplating these days is, “How do we ‘let the kingdom of heaven down’ down into the community around us in such a way that we reach many people? Can we become skilled commercial fishermen who have learned what kind of net will work in any given situation?� Can Jesus again tell us where to let down our nets and what nets to use?”

Any ideas?

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