Who does not love to watch the Discovery Channel’s “Dangerous Catch?” Men risking life and limb in order to catch fish or crabs or whatever. When you watch the show you kind of figure out why a few clusters of crab legs cost so much!
When I think about how these men are so willing to risk their lives for us to eat crab, it really seems kind of crazy. In fact it makes me rather ashamed that I am not more willing to risk life and limb to be a fisher of men.
When Jesus called the sons of Jonah and the sons of Zebedee to follow Him and become fishers of men He was making quite the play on words. What Jesus was saying to these men was, “Follow me and I will give you a new vocation. I will make something completely new and different out of you.” He did not say come follow Me, I want to teach you how to use your skills as fishermen to gain converts for my new religious movement.
Yet for most of the modern church growth movement it seems that the goal is to apply the most recent marketing and recruiting “fishing” techniques in order to draw the greatest number of people into the organization. It seems that when we hear Jesus say “I will make you to be fishers of men” we think it’s about catching the most fish. The methodology then becomes about how well we can bait our traps and attract the most fish to come into them. Then we have to make sure that we have become so indispensable in their lives that they will keep coming and keep giving so we can build bigger and bigger traps and provide better and better bait.
But if I read the Gospels correctly Jesus did not call these men to use their fishing skills in the kingdom. Jesus called them and us to a whole new objective. To make every new fisher of men to be a person who is leading others to become fishers of men.
A true fisher of men is not looking for how many but how much of a difference he can make in someone else’s life. Someone said, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a life time.”
The goal of Jesus was to turn those salty seamen into broken hearted followers who cried salty tears for those who are a heartbeat from hell. To see them lead others to a place where they were in a deep loving relationship with Jesus, loving and serving those around them and moved by that same compassion to reach others who are a heart beat from hell.
The evidence is that the bass tournament fishermen tactics that we use to grow our churches may in fact be working in direct opposition to the purposes of Jesus. In spite of how many fish our best anglers are catching we are losing the race in every way. The percentage of people who are unchurched and unsaved continues to grow. The difference between the lives of people who are in church and out of church has disappeared. The moral, ethical and spiritual condition of our country and our world continues to disintegrate at an alarming rate.
Maybe it’s time we took a hard look at exactly what Jesus called us to do and made sure we are making a difference in the lives of people and not just trying to find a better bait and build larger traps. Could it be that the difference between fishermen and fishers of men is as great as the difference between Porky Jesus and Portuguese? Ciao`
