Seventy-two percent of American Protestants believe you can meet God just as well on a fishing trip as in church. For Roman Catholics the percentage is even higher—83 percent. And 81 percent of people of other religious persuasions feel the same way.
Surprisingly, two thirds of even those who are church members responded affirmatively to the question "Do you think a person can be a good Christian or Jew if he or she doesn't attend church or synagogue?" These statistics come from research published by the Princeton Religion Research Center in the February 1989 edition of Emerging Trends.
This individualistic approach to religion is nothing new. In fact, the percent age of affirmative answers in 1988 was slightly lower than in similar surveys conducted in 1957 and 1978.
There's a story at the end of John's Gospel that seems, at first glance, to lend credence to the idea that Christianity can be an individualistic religion. But there is more to the story than meets the eye.
The fishing trip
It happened during the tumultuous weeks immediately after the Resurrection. It happened after all 11 of the faithful disciples had actually seen Jesus in the flesh. It happened to men who knew that the Crucified had become the risen Saviour. It happened to Peter, who had seen the empty tomb. It happened to Thomas, who had placed his hand in his Master's riven side.
In other words, it happened to the men who had been closest to Jesus, whose lives had been most intimately interwoven with His, whose lives you would expect to be most changed by the events of Calvary and the tomb whose stone was rolled away. It happened to men at the very core of Christianity.
After they had seen and talked with the risen Jesus, they didn't know quite what to make of it. They seemed not to know what to do about it. They were ready to go back to business as usual.
"I'm going fishing," Peter announced one day. And with that he headed back to the shore of Galilee to reclaim the boat he had abandoned when he had met Jesus. Half of the original disciple corps went with him.
It was on that fishing trip that Peter met Jesus in a deeper, more personal way than he had in all the preceding years of discipleship. Now his pride had been quashed—extinguished in a moment of self-preserving equivocation. Now his ambitions for earthly honor had evaporated. Now he was ready to enter into an earnest heart-to-heart relationship with Jesus, based not on how great Peter was, but on how great God's grace is.
It was beside Galilee that Peter had his most significant private interview with Jesus and received his great lifework: feeding the flock that would be attracted to the Good Shepherd.
But it was not there, alone with the Saviour, that he received the empowerment to carry forward the mission he accepted.
Peter needed to go back to church to receive that.
Once again Peter, James, John, Thomas, and Nathanael left their boat and nets and climbed the steep road to Jerusalem. There they witnessed the ascension of their Lord. And there they met together, prayed, confessed sins, and sought the empowerment Jesus had promised. And there, with 120 of them together, the Spirit came and provided the power for proclamation.
Alone with the Lord
Jesus was known for His habit of going out alone to seek His Father in prayer. And He instructs us to go into our room and shut the door when we want to pray. We need our times alone with God.
But notice that Jesus' promise to be in the midst of His disciples was given with the stipulation that two or three would be gathered together in His name (Matt. 18:20). Even His promise to be "with you always" (Matt. 28:20, RSV) was spoken to a group (the you is plural), not to an individual.
I don't mean to imply that Jesus does not walk with each individual. I simply want to emphasize that as Christians we need each other. Because there is strength in numbers. Because it is easy for one individual, seeking God all alone, to begin to hear the voice of God in his or her own musings. And because God wants us to be individual members of a united body.
Read the book of Acts carefully. How many conversion stories involve an individual coming to a saving relationship with Jesus all alone? How many involve groups receiving the Holy Spirit together?
America's individualistic attitude toward religion is a by-product of our culture, but it is also a by-product of our preaching. The strong emphasis on individual conversion and accepting Christ as a "personal Saviour" has led people to treat religion like a "personal pan pizza"—as a carryout item packaged indiposable paperboard—something to be partaken of just to fulfill an inner emptiness, but which has no impact on anyone around us.
Christianity is intended to be something far greater—a full-course feast to be relished, savored, and shared with friends. —Kenneth R. Wade.
