Seeking Fishers of Men

The nonprofit had been founded as a therapeutic riding center, using horses to help people with disabilities. I came desiring to use horses to help share the love of Christ through a mentoring program for troubled youth. The nonprofit’s board was agreeable enough. If I could raise enough for my own salary—and help keep their program afloat—I could have my little Christian mentoring program. And so, there was the task of identifying suitable volunteers. It seemed simple enough to me. The job description, in my mind, was simply that they must love God, love kids, and love horses—in that order. The task was not as simple as I would have thought.

Surely we would find some suitable candidates from the long list of more than one hundred volunteers at the riding center. Several volunteers I knew were Christians, and so many other volunteers with such amazing hearts to help people—surely they were Christians as well. However, as I began to strike up conversations with people about using horses to share the love and hope of Christ, it wasn’t long into the search that some disheartening truths became evident.

First of all, many had their priorities absolutely reversed. They clearly loved the horses more than the kids, or God! And sadly, many of the Christians I approached confessed that they had “no idea how they would share their faith” (their words, not mine). This was disconcerting enough, but the following observation was even more alarming. Many of our best volunteers, I found out, were people who had actually left the church! Many were young people who wanted to change the world but were disillusioned by the lack of compassion and outreach from the churches they had attended. And another sad truth . . . the only ones who approached me with a desire to volunteer in a program to help troubled youth weren’t Christians at all.

These observations came at a time when God was working on my heart in many ways. I had begun to realize that there was a great need for a hurting world to hear the gospel—and only the church, those of us who have received God’s free gift of eternal life, could bring the gospel to these hurting people. I was faced with the hard truth that, while I had been busy in my church enjoying the blessings of having God and godly people in my life, my comfort had slipped into complacency. How had I been making a difference in the world? Who had I shared the good news with? What were we doing as the church?

The image God used to help me see that many churches were ineffective in this endeavor was a torn fishing net, where fish in the net had been slipping out. And now he was revealing these "fish" to me. Beyond the volunteers at the therapeutic riding center, I worked with a recent divorcée who had struggled in her marriage. The church they had attended was oblivious, never offering help or counsel—she ended up leaving the marriage and the church. Another childhood church friend informed me that he was now agnostic. My own son admitted to the struggles he was having with a church that seemed too inward-looking.

In this season I learned of the latest research statistics that showed a startling "rise of the nones." When asked about their denominational affiliation, more and more people were marking "none." The fish were indeed slipping out of the net. It was a mass exodus. The Answers in Genesis conference I attended helped me realize how many people were hungry for more truth, equipping, and boldness to stand up to challenges to the faith—hungry for more answers, to be sure. I was now beginning to realize how many people were also hungry for more action, compassion, outreach—more Jesus.

We must begin to mend our nets . . . to rebuild the church. Yes, we must address the questions our culture faces and be ready with an answer for the hope that we have. But we must also rise from our pews to be the hands and feet of Christ. When our actions throughout the week match the sermons we hear on Sundays, our children will see—the world will see—that this is one amazing, life-changing, life-giving God. The joy of fishing is the thrill of the catch, so let’s get our nets out. Once we experience that thrill, we can’t wait to get our nets back out.

I pray that Christians would be the first to sign up to help the lost and the hurting. That they would relish the opportunity to share the love and hope of Christ! That they would not only know how to share their faith but that they simply couldn’t contain their faith! That their desire to share the good news would burn deep within them, and they would become "fishers of men." May our nets be strong and full to overflowing with a bountiful catch!

“Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful,

but the laborers are few.’”

Matthew 9:37 NIV

“And he said to them, ‘Follow me,

and I will make you fishers of men.’”

Matthew 4:19 NIV