In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The miracle of the great catch of fish recorded for us in Luke chapter 5 is all about the work of the Church and the Office of the Ministry. Jesus uses the illustration of fishing to explain to us what our mission is as the people of God and how He wants us to go about doing it. The overarching point of the text is that everything depends upon God’s Word. So, what I want to do in today’s sermon is threefold. First, I want to briefly reflect on some of the challenges that we are facing in the Church today. Next, I want to respond to some of the popular ways that other people have tried to address those challenges in the past. And finally, I want to walk through how this text teaches us to deal with our problems in the Church in a God-pleasing way.

The most obvious challenge that we face in the Church today is really the same kind of challenge that Saint Peter faced when he spent the whole night fishing and didn’t catch anything at all. It’s no secret that for the last several decades now, Church attendance has been in a sharp decline with no visible end in sight. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about the Lutherans, the Catholics, or the Baptists, everyone is losing members all across the board. Some statistics estimate that from 1970 to 2010, so in the span of just 40 years, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod had a membership drop of almost half a million people. To put that in perspective, there are only around two million members of the LCMS in total. And none of that, of course, accounts for the fact that often times people remain on the rolls at a given church even if they haven’t stepped foot inside the building for years. When we look back at pictures of old Confirmation classes and compare those to the ones from today, it’s hard not to notice the difference. 

Now, obviously it is not a bad thing to want your Church to be filled and to be sad when it isn’t. We Christians should always want as many people to be saved as possible. But we also need to be careful that in the midst of our good intentions, we don’t lose sight of way in which growth in the Church actually happens. Part of the reason why it is so important for us to be honest about the problems that we face in the Church today is because whenever we encounter problems of any kind, there will always be those around us who offer up solutions to them, and not all of those solutions are necessarily good. In fact, some of those solutions are not solutions at all, but part of the problem itself, and just end making things even worse than they were to begin with.

One such “solution” to the problem of declining Church attendance that was very popular in the recent past, the remnants of which are still around today, was the so-called “Church Growth Movement.” The Church Growth Movement was a philosophy that developed in the latter half of the twentieth century in response to shrinking churches. Proponents of this movement recognized that more and more people had stopped coming to Church. So, in an attempt to deal with this problem, they applied marketing strategies used in the business world in order to try and make the Church to grow. Often times, those strategies were veiled in religious sounding language and then pawned off as spiritual principles. For example, one of the main principles of the Church Growth Movement was something called the “felt-needs” principle. Basically, the “felt-needs” principle suggested that whatever non-church going people said that they were looking for in a church, whatever they felt that they needed, the Church was supposed to give it to them if they wanted to succeed and grow. 

Not only did the self-proclaimed experts of the Church Growth Movement say that Christianity would never survive and thrive if the felt-needs principle was not met, but they also said that things like doctrine and liturgy would only get in the way of that happening. Since many people often complain about how boring traditional church services are to them, the Church Growth advocates said that church services needed to fundamentally change. Instead of teaching the mysteries of the Faith and delivering solid Biblical teaching through time-tested hymns and centuries old orders of worship, these religious entrepreneurs emphasized things like entertaining messages about daily living and achieving your own personal goals. They advocated for music that resembled the culture’s music instead of that of the historic Church. And they stressed an overall informal and casual atmosphere in the service. The focus in many churches became more about what the worshiper felt, instead of what God had to say in the Bible. If a person felt good when they left Church, that service was said to be successful. And if they didn’t feel good, or if they didn’t feel anything at all, then it was said to be a failure.

The felt needs principle of the Church Growth Movement has been around now for more fifty years. Clearly, as the numbers themselves even show, it has come up empty in its promises to grow the Church. But even if it had led to greater Church attendance, which isn’t the same thing as real Church growth, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. It wouldn’t have mattered because the Church Growth Movement was wrong. We are not called to conform ourselves or the Church’s teaching and practice to our own felt needs. We are called to conform our entire lives to the Word of God. It doesn’t matter how many people are sitting in the pews on Sunday morning.  That is not necessary an indicator that what we are doing is right. Only eight people went into the Ark before God flooded the earth and destroyed it in the days of Noah. There were only a few thousand faithful people left in all of Israel during the time of Elijah who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Does that mean that those men were failures? Does that mean that they weren’t doing the right thing? Of course, not! Because true growth in the Church is not an achievement of our own making. It is gift that comes from God. It is a gift that the Holy Spirit gives when He works faith in the hearts of people through His Word. Remember what Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter three, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Being faithful is always more important than the numbers.

Just think about what we heard in our Gospel lesson for today from Luke chapter 5. No doubt, Simon Peter knew a lot about fishing. Peter had been a professional fisherman for his entire life. He had a very good idea where the fish were supposed to be and what you had to do to catch them. His experience and His reason told him that the best time for fishing with a net was not in the middle of the day, and it certainly wasn’t in deep water. But nevertheless, when Jesus told Peter to let down the nets once more, after a whole night of catching nothing, Peter replied by saying, “At your word, I will let down the net.” Instead of doing what he thought would work, Peter did what God said. Instead of listening to his heart, or submitting himself to his own ideas and opinions, Peter submitted himself to God’s Word. And we need to do the same thing today. We are called as God’s children always to believe and act according to the Words of Jesus.  It is at His Word, and His Word alone, that we take our orders. We submit ourselves to what our Lord tells us, even if it stands in contradiction to our experience, our reason, or our feelings. No matter what Jesus says, even if doesn’t appear to be working, we are called to listen to it, and to receive it in faith.

God speaks to us not through the felt needs of our own sinful hearts, but through the infallible and inerrant Words of the Bible. The Bible tells us that the way that you make disciples is by baptizing and teaching. It tells us to preach the Word in season and out of season, meaning whether people like it or not. It tells pastors to hold fast to the doctrine of the Scriptures for in doing so they will save both themselves and their hearers. The Bible tells us do those things and not worry about anything else, because it is only through those things that the net of salvation is let down into the water of this world and sinful fish are drawn up and saved. That is how God catches sinners and declares them saints. That is how the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. That is how God gives growth in His Kingdom. He doesn’t do it through gimmicks, tricks, and marketing strategies. He does it through the pure preaching and teaching of His Word.

The proponents of the Church Growth Movement promote the problem and call it the cure. The problem is not with things like doctrine and liturgy. The problem is that people are ignorant of Christian doctrine and they don’t realize what is happening in the liturgy. And because they don’t know the basics of the Christian faith and have never even tried to understand what is going on in the historic church service, they don’t know what they need, and they don’t seek it out. 

God’s Word teaches us that our felt needs are not necessarily the same thing as our real needs. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 15 that is it out of our heart that comes all kinds of sinful desires. We read in Jeremiah chapter 17 that the heart is deceitful above all things. And just look again at what happened to Saint Peter in our Gospel lesson. When Saint Peter realized that he was in the presence of the living God, he was terrified and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Peter knew that he was a sinner and that he deserved punishment for his sins. Peter could feel his sins in his conscience. And when Peter thought that he was going to die, Peter was afraid of what his sins might mean for him. So, in response, Peter did what he felt was best and told Jesus to go away from him.

But that, of course, is where Saint Peter’s felt needs did not match up with his real needs. Yes, part of what Peter felt was right. His sins were real and it is unsafe for sinners to be in the presence of a sinless God. But Peter’s response to his sins was not right. What Peter needed in that moment was not for Jesus to go away from him, but for Jesus to stay with Him. It was not for Jesus to forget about him, and leave him alone. It was for Jesus to stay with Him and save Him. And that is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus did not abandon Peter to deal with his sins by himself. Jesus did not forsake Peter to sink in the boat and drown along with his guilt and shame. Instead, Jesus said to him, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” Jesus told Peter not to be afraid, because there wasn’t anything for him to be afraid of anymore at all. Since Jesus had come to die for Saint Peter’s sins, his sins could no longer condemn him.

What we feel or don’t feel at a given time does not change the Church’s Mission. No matter what is going on in our life, what we need the most is the exact same thing that Saint Peter needed. We need to hear God’s Word of Law and Gospel. We need to be shown our sins, and then be absolved of them for when we repent. We need to confess our wretchedness to the Lord and then receive from Him His cleansing forgiveness. We need to stay with Jesus in the boat of His Church so that He can save us from ourselves. We need the humble gifts of God’s Word and Sacraments over and over and over again. That is our greatest need. And so, that is what the Church is called to do. 

The Church does not adopt the standards of the world to market what she has. She preaches Christ crucified. She preaches a Law that condemns everyone and a Gospel that excludes no one. She names sins by name and tells people to turn away from them. And then, when they do, She assures them that there is forgiveness to be found in Jesus. Everything that we do in Church, from the sermons that our pastors preach, to the songs that we sing, to the way in which we move and act, all of those things need to point us to Christ and away from ourselves.

Sometimes it feels as if what we are doing in Church is not working. Sometimes it feels as if we have been laboring all night and the catch is small and insignificant. But when that happens, Christ our Lord speaks His Word to us again. He says to us what He once said to Saint Peter, “Let down your nets for a catch.” Do not stop preaching and teaching God’s Word. Do not stop insisting on pure doctrine and rightly applying the Law and Gospel. Do not stop doing devotions with your kids and making them memorize the Catechism. Do not stop singing good hymns that actually teach the Faith and don’t ever get bored with following the Liturgy. Keep on letting let down the nets of God’s Word and they will not come back empty. For that is something that God promises us in His Word too. Remember the picture of heaven that we get from Revelation chapter 7, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” Even if the catch doesn’t seem that big to us now, on the Last Day we won’t even be able to count it.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, at the end of our reading today our text tells us that when the disciples brought their boats back to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus. What this means is not that all of us must take a vow of poverty in order to be Christians as some other churches falsely claim. But rather, it is yet another reminder that our Lord Jesus Christ and His Word must always come first. God’s Word is more precious than all of stuff that we have. God’s Word forgives us of our sins and makes us spiritually wealthy, even if we are physically poor. Through faith in God’s Word, we possess all the treasures of heaven. And through His Word, Jesus will sustain His Church until the end of time. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.