When I was about 8, the latest craze amongst me and my friends was fishing. And one day I came home from school to find that my mum had bought me a small 5 foot fishing rod from Woolworths. I can see it now. It was white fibreglass and came with a green reel. The next day I went with my friend Rob to the old canal running through the village to fish. Rob was an expert fisherman - he’d had his rod for about 2 weeks. And he told me what to do.
Unfortunately what he didn’t tell me to do was to check around you to look for obstacles. So I cast my line and it promptly caught in an overhanging tree! It must have taken us about half an hour to get it untangled by which time we had to be home.
Not the best start to a new hobby. And to be honest it didn’t get any better – especially as I didn’t like maggots!
I was put off fishing from an early age. But what I understand now is that fishing is not as easy as it looks. And if trying to fish for some probably non-existent fish in a South Wales canal isn’t easy then it is nothing like the challenge Jesus sets us when he says to us
"Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,"
Matthew 4:19
We can hear those words of Jesus and think “Fishing’s not for me.” We hear those words and can think fishing is for other people. We’re not called to go fishing. But actually we’re all called to go fishing. It mightn’t be our favourite thing to do but Jesus calls us all to tell the Good News. Jesus calls us all to be fishers of people. “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of people”
So why is there a reluctance to go fishing? Perhaps because we tried it once and didn’t like it? Or perhaps because we tried it and weren’t very good at it? Or perhaps because we just don’t know where to start.
Samuel G. Candler, in his book “Follow Me and I Will Make You Go Fishing” writes:
“Fishing takes practice, preparation, discipline. One must learn how to best throw the net, how to make the mouth of the net come open too. I can throw the actual cast net a long way, but I can't always make the net come open so that it will actually form a circle around the fish. One must learn how to cast the line on a rod. Again, some folks can cast a long way, but their accuracy is awful. There may be fish on the right, but they know only how to cast the line to the left. There may be fish on the left, but they keep casting to the right. Casting, like discipleship, is an acquired habit. It rewards practice.”
Going back to my illustration. As a kid I thought all fishing needed was getting a rod and that was it. Well it wasn’t. I didn’t know how to cast. I didn’t know how to put a float on the line. I knew nothing about hooks or bait. Had I been shown, had someone explained to me what to do, had I been prepared, had I kept at it, then the results would have been different.
Remember, Jesus said to the disciples “I will make you fishers of men” And what he meant was that he would “make them into fishers of men”. He would teach them what to do. He would show them what to do. He would turn them into evangelists.
If we are to go fishing for people, if we are to tell people about Jesus Christ, we need some preparation. And the preparation needed depends on the scale of fishing you intend to do. Obviously if you’re going fishing on an industrial scale – for example the successful Messy Church project that’s happening here in Swindon’s Old Town or being a witness of Christ’s love as a Street Pastor – then more preparation is needed.
But if you’re just going to go fishing locally as it were, perhaps by deciding to talk to a friend or neighbour about Jesus, then your preparation is simple. Your preparation is praying for guidance and praying for the right words to say. Praying that Jesus will make you a fisher of men.
So preparation is vital.
Of course another reason for my failure as a fisherman was that at the time I was convinced that fishing in the canal was the wrong environment. If I had a better place to fish then I’d be a better fisherman.
Again Samuel G. Candler, in his book “Follow Me and I Will Make You Go Fishing”
“Fishing, like the gospel, is always practiced in context. It does no good to sit at one lake and wish I was on some other lake. It does no good to stand at the ocean and wish the weather were different. On that day, in that place, I fish in context according to what the conditions are.
So it is with the proclamation and the living out of the Christian gospel. It does little good wishing that we were somewhere else, in a different time or in a different country perhaps. Our context is this time and this place.”
In other words God has placed us where he wants us and we are to fish there. If you are in a work place God has placed you there to fish there. God wants you to fish at the golf club. Or at the Rotary club.
If we are going to be fishers of men, we must go to where the people are. And they are all around us.
One of the greatest obstacles to fishing for people is what has been referred to as the "Field of Dreams" concept that is lodged in the minds of so many of our church members.
In the 1989 film “Field of Dreams” Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella – played by Kevin Costner - hears a voice in his corn field tell him, "If you build it, he will come." He interprets this message as an instruction to build a baseball field on his farm. He does this and upon it appear the ghosts of Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other seven Chicago White Sox players banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series. When the voices continue, Ray seeks out a reclusive author to help him understand the meaning of the messages and the purpose for his field
"If you build it, they will come".
Now that may work for baseball fields in Iowa, but that is not how Jesus told us to grow His Kingdom. While the open invitation to everyone is "Come and see", He specifically tells us his followers to "Go and tell!" The Field of Dreams concept is a big factor in why so many of our churches are dead or dying. We are waiting for people to come, whereas, we are to go fishing. We must take the Gospel to where the people are.
Catholic priest Vincent Donovan wrote an excellent book a few years ago called “Christianity Rediscovered” about his experiences as a missionary in Kenya. He learned that the traditional approach to mission had been to build a church, a school and a hospital on a vacant piece of land and wait for people to come. But he says:
"Evangelization is a process of bringing the gospel to people where they are, not where you would like them to be… When the gospel reaches a people where they are, their response to the gospel is the church in a new place..."
In taking the Gospel to the people, we must understand their mind set. Why do they do what they do? What is important to them? How can we bring the message of abundant life to people who already think they have a pretty good life?
Outdated methods may have to be changed to make the Gospel Message relevant to the various cultures around us. The message never changes, but the methods of sharing that message must be adapted to the type of "fish" we are attempting to catch. So many of us are wrapped up in our familiar comfortable "church culture", that we never realise that the vast majority of our neighbours are foreign to that culture. We must engage them where THEY are.
Most Monday mornings I attend a prayer meeting with some other church leaders from around the Stratton and Moredon area. We pray for Swindon. Recently we invited North Swindon MP Justin Tomlinson to come and talk to us which he did.
One of the ministers asked Justin Tomlinson about the Same Sex marriage legislation and the minister made the point that he thought this was another sign of Britain no longer being a Christian country. Justin Tomlinson disagreed with that and then he said “I think it still is a Christian country but the churches need to wake up to better ways of engaging with people around them. Churches can’t continue to rely on the traditional methods”
I think we were all taken aback. How dare this MP tell us our jobs? But I feel he had a very valid point. If we are to go fishing we have to fish for the times we are in using the up to date methods and equipment.
Having prepared, got the right equipment and gone to the place where we’re supposed to fish, there comes a time when we just have to summon up the courage to go fishing.
James L. Collier, in his book “Go Fish!” says:
Have you been fishing lately? Have you caught any people for Jesus?
If you are a typical Presbyterian (or Methodist or Lutheran or mainline Christian of any sort) the answer probably is a shrug of the shoulders and a bewildered look. "He can't be serious, can he?"
He goes on to say
"A few years ago there were some statistics floating around in church circles. If you take a middle aged church member who has attended church regularly most of his/her life, by the age of fifty they would have listened to 1760 sermons, sung 5280 hymns, placed money in the offering plate about 1500 times and never introduced another person to Jesus Christ. True - most of us, if asked, can't remember ever talking to a non-believer about our faith. We just don't do that sort of thing. We haven't done much fishing."
To my mind, one of the oddest programmes on television – and that’s saying something – is a programme called “Extreme fishing” hosted by the actor Robson Green. I’ve never watched it but as I understand it he is filmed fishing in different places around the world. Why would anyone want to watch someone else fish? If you’re into fishing wouldn’t you just want to fish?
Of course the reality is that for many people fishing is a kind of spectator sport. It’s fun to watch a TV celebrity on a boat off the coast of somewhere exotic but when faced with going to fish at Coate Water or wherever it doesn’t seem as interesting. It is far safer and more comfortable to sit back and watch rather than go fishing.
And so it is for many Christians. But Jesus doesn’t want us to watch. Jesus wants us to come and follow him and make us into fishers of people.
19 And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him.
