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Hank was an expert fly-fisherman. At least most of the people
who knew him thought so. It seemed he had to know all about fly-
fishing. A river of enthusiasm seemed to run through him every
time he talked about it. When you first met Hank you quickly
learned that he was a widely-known expert at fly-tying. What
started out as a hobby had become much more than that. He sold
prize-winning flies and demonstrated his work at shows all around
the country. He still worked in a dental lab -- that's how he made
his living, but his true pleasure in life was fly-tying. He must
be a pretty good fly-fisherman, everyone thought.
How surprised people were to learn he had only tried it once
or twice. Hank had a passion for only a part of fly-fishing, and
it wasn't the part that had to do with actually doing it. There's
a difference. You can enjoy talking about something and even
believe in it and still not do it. "You mean you know all about
how to make those lures," people would ask, "but you don't
actually use them?" "Nope," he said, "I knew I wasn't going to
have fun at that, but this part is fun and this part I can do."
Hank enjoyed bait-fishing: bass mostly, from a boat; in a lake.
And he liked fishing for walleye and northern pike, too. But fly-
fishing wasn't for him. Just tying the flies and with a
championship skill. Never mind how a bait-

fisherman could be into fly-tying! Life is full of these enigmas
you might as well accept. There's a difference between believing
and doing.
Perhaps you have known some expert teacher who wasn't all that
good at doing what they were good at teaching. It happens among
coaches a good bit of time. Someone with only modest talent or
fame in a sport truly finds their niche as a highly successful
coach. Their team thrives.
It must have been different when our Lord invited some
fishermen to join him in the endeavor of "fishing" for the
spiritual lives and loyalty of people. What he was about was not
a program of teaching principles, either of morality or spiritual
integrity. He was in the ministry of teaching people. Christ's
commitment was not to conjure up belief in a new system of
religious regulations, but to inspire a whole new approach toward
life based upon passion in action: passion for people. He was not
fishing for a way to save a certain set of beliefs or information
about God. His was a life of saving souls for God. He was not out
to build a new organization or institutional structure any more
than he was out to destroy all the old ones. He was more
interested in building the community of faith among people and
faith in their relationships with one another.
How easy it would be to see the purposes of what we are about
as a series of techniques for righteous prayer, knowledge,
worship or behavior. It is possible that prayer, Christian
education, worship and the social implications of our faith can
become just a set of "how-tos." We might produce champions of the
steps, whom we might call experts at tying flies for our kind of
spiritual fishing; who haven't the slightest notion or interest
in the ultimate purpose or function of what they are about.
Jesus invited men and women to join him in the endeavor that
empowered and energized his own life. Part of the wisdom of his
selection of simple people was the likelihood that they would
have a practical, down-to-earth approach to all of what he was
about to teach them. The simple folks aspect of

Jesus' selection of the apostles is not just quaint. It is
integral to the principles of ministry in daily life for anyone
who would lay down their nets and follow him. Their purpose would
be to follow him and "fish"; not just learn about it, talk about
it or even teach about it.
Any particular aspect of the life of faith must always have
the character of "doing what you believe." Belief in God is not
just intellectual affirmation of a set of facts about God but a
true and living relationship with God. In just that way the
endeavors of God's people always need the over-riding goal of
faith active toward mission.
Take any of the important elements of our spirituality such as
prayer and Christian education. Prayer is a fundamental example.
From the classic to the contemporary models of prayer life we
have all the examples we need. Prayer is not a set of the right
words spoken by the right people. To pray is not to implore the
right things from God in the right way. It is the formation of
the entire spiritual life from within. It produces through
conscious and sometimes even "quasi-conscious" meditation (often
utter silence), a depth awareness of God's love and our entrance
into the presence of divine grace. But the purpose is not just
the meeting of the needs of the individual or group at prayer.
Its focus is neither their need for things (the usual focus of
intercession), or their personal and private need for God. The
focus of my prayer is toward our God, whom even as Jesus taught,
we implore to give us our daily bread. Developing my total
spiritual awareness of God's love and grace toward me in prayer,
I am prayerful of the love and grace of God for others -- all
others. The fulfillment of my personal "fishing trip" in prayer
is my fishing trip with you, for you.
Another important endeavor is the ministry of Christian
education. Studies which describe the biblical illiteracy of our
culture brings us up short. They force us to face the fact that
vast numbers of people who identify themselves as being among the
faithful have an unbalanced, incomplete, and even shallow
understanding of the faith. Denominations that have

followed the educational trends of several decades must suddenly
face the painful reality that they now have a generation of
participants who "don't know their Bible." Like the art of
storytelling has been lost to the television, the art of visiting
was lost to the trend toward privacy. Even village neighbors now
exhibit an apartment-dweller syndrome.
From both these trends Christian education and evangelism will
be a long time recovering. Some of us grew loathe to teach using
memorization. We listened carefully to the expert "fly-tiers" who
hadn't a notion of the true nature of our "fishing expedition"
and our passion for those for whom we fish. At the same time we
received little support from parents to do otherwise. Now we face
the dilemma of proclaiming the vitality of the story and how
crucial it is for our lives among people who have no knowledge,
much less memory of the original stories of our faith. In case
you hadn't noticed, for many of us the similar bandwagon toward
alternative music will soon leave us with no familiarity with the
music and hymnody of the historic faith. When we wake up from
both these trends, the alternative will not be pretty. We should
have known sooner that we would one day require canned music as
fewer young people took piano lessons. And what of that
historically significant step toward the music of the spheres,
pipe organs? The king of instruments it may have been. But
learning to play it usually started with piano students who could
make the switch. The results seem inevitable for the foreseeable
future. Pipe organs and the higher education to produce their
best performers are already an endangered species.
The result of these trends will have an increasingly
frustrating effect upon the preaching ministry. Many of us began
our pulpit careers in a more classical style which could assume
with a bit more confidence that the listeners knew the original
story. That gave you the time in the preaching event, as well as
the listener's energy, to do some other creative things with the
story. Now you can assume nothing of the kind and need to spend
some of your precious few minutes telling the original story to
people for whom it is entirely new territory.

Having said all of this, the purpose of our endeavors is the
vitality of the gospel message in the lives of people. Our
educational purpose is not the replication of information but the
replication of the life of Christ in the world. We are not
teaching information so much as people. We teach them not what is
to be known about the Christ but to know the Christ. Our goal is
the integration of the person of Christ in their own personality,
to generate their own ministry of being Christ for others. I
teach you about fishing for people in order that we be about the
exciting ministry of fishing for people.
Similarly, worship is not meant to be either a performance or
an entertainment. What we do in corporate worship is not a show
with spiritual overtones. Using whatever forms of artistry, music
and inspiration available, worship is meant to empower our work
in the world. For a few moments on the Lord's Day we transcend
our daily lives in order to get the courage to minister in our
daily lives. And I'll go fishing with just about any reasonable
means available for engaging people in the lively liturgy which
God intends our lives to become. What engages me in the emotional
commitment of worship may be very different from what engages
you. The music that inspires me during these moments may be very
different from that which inspires you. But together our purpose
in here is to praise God and empower each other, to go from this
place more passionate about the people we'd like to have here
with us. Our worship life in here is about the faith of the
people "out there." Clearly, in most of our churches the nets are
not full to the point of overflowing.
In a related way, we are not saved by grace through social
action but by grace through faith. The purposes of Christian
compassion need always to remind us that the needs of others are
integral to our own spiritual need to be God's people -- servants
-- in the world. Where churches seek to serve-us at the expense of
service, a maintenance and survival mentality will set in. Where
churches set out to serve people with true compassion, Christ's
passion for people will be apparent. The "fishing expedition"
will be recognized for the integrity of

Christ's very own love for people. Faith in God gives us the
inner energy we need for outward action in the world. A Christian
has one hand in the hand of God, who lifts us with that hand;
joins us along the way, and holds us up as we falter. The other
hand we have firmly in the hand of our neighbor -- all our
neighbors. To let go of either hand we cease to be a Christian.
None of us are fishing in this boat by ourselves. Nor, as we
reach over the side to those who are somehow sinking, are we
reaching alone.
Hank taught everyone who knew him some important things about
fishing. But not about fly-fishing. He didn't know much about
that really. All he knew about it was how to make those famous
lures and give classes on how to do it, all over the country.
Hank taught people a great deal about real fishing. Hank was the
chairman of his congregation's evangelism committee. The exciting
thing about Hank's leadership of evangelism was that his
committee didn't just talk about it or make suggestions to every
other committee about what ought to be done for the
congregation's outreach. That committee lead evangelism outreach
in a dynamic way. In some ways Hank knew less about evangelism in
a technical sense than he knew about fly-fishing. What Hank did
know about evangelism is what makes the difference. He knew how
to do it. Hank believed in the great "fishing expedition" that
had caught him up in the life of Christ in the world. Hank
believed in the mission of the church. That's the kind of fishing
Hank knew most about. He believed in it deeply. How could you
tell? Hank just did it!