Here is an edited version of a mail that we got from our friend in the Philippines about his fishing experience few days ago. I thought of sharing it here.
We bought a kilo of fresh bangus fish [our national fish] yesterday. It was caught directly from the nearby pond where
I live with my wife and our 3 year old daughter. The guy who caught the fish got them all within half an hour. So I thought of taking my whole family today to fish in that very pond and enjoy the day. After one whole hour of throwing the fishing hooks, we were able to catch not even one small fish. We changed our places three times around the pond and waited 20 minutes furthermore and yes, we saw some fish splash here and there but caught none.
My daughter was so much looking forward to fish today and I too so badly wanted my daughter to enjoy watching her parents catch fish for her. I felt strange about not catching any, I then asked, “Hmmm…Lord, is there something you want to tell me about this?”
Here are some thoughts that came to mind:
Since fishing symbolizes ‘reaching out’ to others as ‘fishers of men’, I thought about it but in a different way. Many times putting some bait to the hook is meaningless. “They just consume my food! This is useless!” I said. “They have been eating my food for their benefit and yet I could not have even one of them.” Lots of Christianity that is happening in our church meetings today are just like that – consumer Christianity. People go to church with an attitude of ‘Bless me and my family,’ looking for things or persons to please or to be pleased by the pastor’s sermon, eats them, feels the juicy taste of the word, goes home – can’t remember what they’ve heard, therefore can’t put into practice for the rest of the week, hardly act as responsible Christians and go back in again next Sunday. This is an irresponsible attitude for a Christian’s life.
You want others to feed you ‘week-after-week,’ yet you do not know how to feed yourself from ‘day-to-day.’ No wonder, they jump from one church to another if they don’t like the church menu, like in a restaurant – as long as they pay for the food that they eat [tithe] the manager is happy. The underlying principle is, they can just change to any church they want without changing their lives. The N.T. believers know nothing of this kind of practices, even Jesus warned such person to be treated as a ‘heathen and a tax collector’ who has to undergo a process.
One of my friends lives since 1985 a selfless life that has an impact in 150 nations. See, www.housechurch.com This friend’s household-of- faith, says Dr. David Lim is ‘five steps ahead of house church’ as we view it. What I mean with ‘as we view it’ is that having endless meetings in houses where there are no fathers, mothers, and brothers and sisters, like any healthy family would have. We have many Christian neighbors in our house churches instead of family of God in Christ Jesus.
My point is, in ‘Consumer Christianity’ whether it is in a house church or not, we actually ‘disfellowship’ with our brothers and sisters if we are unable to be there for one another, serve one another. When someone wants to live his/her life in isolation from the brethren, consuming the richness of Christ and the hospitality of the brethren for his own benefit, like the fish that consumes the bait but doesn’t serve others with its life, we disfellowship.
What to do: Our life was never meant to isolate ourselves from the brethren. It was meant for ‘one-anothering,’ ‘life-together,’ doing things together, learning and encouraging one another. Serving, helping, like individual members of ONE family. I like what my friend says, “you don’t sponsor a family, you help a family!”
By the way, after another hour of throwing our fishing hooks into the water, we at last caught, one, two, three small fish. We 
went back to where we positioned first and there we caught bigger fish. We had more fun catching the big ones. We had to stop fishing because our budget is good enough for just a kilo, which is about $3. It would have been fun to stay and fish longer because almost every other 2 or 3 minutes either my fishing hook or my wife’s caught one, and they were even bigger. We went home and cooked them for dinner.
Anyway, what a wonderful day today.
Molong
