Church Growth? "Come and See..."

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Is there anyone who does not want the church to increase? Think about that…

Today we celebrate the feast of the holy Apostle Andrew the First-called. He is given the title, “the First-called” because it he, with another of the disciples of St. John the Baptizer, were shown the Lord by the Forerunner. We do not know the other disciple’s name; nor would we know Andrew’s, except that he responded not only to the instruction of the Lord to follow Him, but also by going to find his brother, Simon, and telling him to come and see for himself that the man Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one of God, for Whom they and all the faithful in Israel had been awaiting His coming. When Simon saw the Lord, he was given the name, “Cephas,” which we know as “Peter”; both terms deriving from the words for “rock” in Aramaic and in Greek. Thus, it is also fair to say that St. Andrew was also the first evangelist; although surely St. John the Baptizer might also be given this honor.

When the faithful were forced to flee from Jerusalem because of the persecutions of the Church growing there, the holy apostle Andrew went to the region of Byzantium, and then along the Danube and the Black Sea and even to Kiev before returning to Greece, having established churches, consecrated bishops and ordained priest along the way during his journey. In the Greek city of Patras, he preached the Gospel; among his converts were the wife and brother of the Roman governor, who was furious, and ordered the arrest and torture of the apostle. He was executed by crucifixion; and as he was on the Cross, the faithful came to him, and he taught them, then prayed, was covered with a bright light for some thirty minutes, and then yielded his spirit into the hands of God. He departed this life for the next in the sixty-second year of our Lord.

In the reading from the holy Gospel according to St. John the Theologian, in which we heard about the holy apostle Andrew, we hear as well about the apostles Philip and Nathaniel, and there is a common theme at play. The Lord finds Philip, and say to him, “Follow me.” Philip, in turn, goes to his friend Nathaniel, and says that they have found the One they had been waiting for, of Whom Moses and the prophets had foretold. Nathaniel is skeptical at first; “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” But he responds to Philip’s invitation, “Come and see”; and, when he meets Jesus, he, too, becomes a disciple.

What does any of this have to do with us? I’m sure that most, if not all, of you would answer the question I asked at the beginning in the affirmative: Yes, we want the church to grow. Well, growing the church is a lot like growing a garden. It’s not enough to go to the place where you want the garden, and sprinkling some seeds on the ground, and hoping for the best. If you want your garden to grow, it’s going to take some work: preparing the ground, planting the seeds, watering, pulling the weeds, and so on. The same thing is true for growing the church: it takes work. More than anything else, we need to work at living in the Orthodox way of life, so that what we say agrees with what we do; and we need to be willing to admit our mistakes, when we fail to live as did the fathers and the saints. But there’s a lesson for us in the Gospel about what we need to do, and it’s not terribly complicated. In order to have the church grow, we have to do what the holy apostles Andrew and Philip did: we have to invite people; we have to say, “Come and see.”

In part, this requires us to heed the teaching of the holy apostle Peter, who wrote that we must be prepared at all times and in every season to give an account of the hope that is within us. What hope is that? It is the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, a life on which death has no claim and no hold – the life given to us in our baptism. Our hope is in the love of God in Jesus Christ, by which our sins are forgiven and our souls are saved. If we consider what God has done, and is doing, for us, and if we receive the love God intends for each and every one of us, then we should find ourselves able to say to those we know who are broken and hurting, and to those who are searching, and to those who are in darkness, “Come and see.” Brothers and sisters, if we live with the desire to reveal Christ in us, the hope of glory, if we live loving everyone around us as Christ, and if we will say to them, “Come and see,” the church will grow, God will be glorified, and souls will be saved. May God, through the prayers of the holy apostle Andrew, give us the grace to join in his labors, and to say to as many as we can, “Come and see.”