“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Jesus, Matthew 4:19
My favorite person in the world as a child was my grandmother. We called her “Ma.” And I was convinced that the axis of the universe ran through her front porch in rural, southern Oklahoma. In fact – I still believe that to be true.
We spent big parts of our summers with Ma. She lived in the country on her little ten acre place. We thought it was paradise.
Ma had a daily routine that she followed – and every day that we stayed with her, we followed the same routine. Every day she got up early. Every day she fixed three hot meals. Every meal she fixed gravy (from scratch)! Every day she walked to the mail box. Every day she worked in her garden. Every day she went to visit one of her senior citizen shut ins that she cared for. And every day she went fishing.
Don’t miss that – every day she went fishing!
My grandmother was the best fisherman I have ever known. She could catch fish when no one else caught fish. She talked to the fish. She sang to the fish. She prayed for the fish. She thought like a fish. Watching her fish was like watching an artist at work. She was made to fish.
Ma had a brilliant strategy. She had outlived three husbands. She spent many years living alone. And she used it to her advantage. She had a small pond behind her house. Every day she would head out to one of her neighbors bigger ponds or creek beds. She had made a deal with her neighbors that she would bring them homemade preserves if they would let her fish their ponds. And every neighbor loved her homemade preserves!
So after breakfast and morning chores were done, Ma would load us up with fishing poles in hand and haul us to whichever pond was the goal for the day. We would fish. We would catch fish. We would keep them on stringers until we were done. We would put them in buckets with water and take them home. And Ma would dump them in her pond to keep them until she was ready to eat them. Then we would catch them a second time and have them for supper.
It was this simple: you could not hang out with Ma without fishing. Because fishing was what she was all about. Fishing was part of her daily routine.
There were many things that drew the first disciples to Jesus. Some came out of curiosity. Some came in times of crisis. Some came looking for healing. Others came for his Words of life. Just like today, people come to Christ for many reasons.
But you could not follow Jesus long with learning to fish – because he went fishing every day. He went fishing for men!
Bill Wilks describes Jesus the fisherman this way:
“Jesus was a fisher of men. After pulling an all-nighter in prayer, He went down by the Sea of Galilee to fish for Peter and Andrew. A little farther down shore He fished for James and John. He went to the tax office to fish for Matthew. One by one He went to them and He fished for them. He caught twelve in all who became His disciples. Perhaps we are not told about the ones that got away.”
Jesus tells us this in Matthew 4:19: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” To follow is to fish. Any Christ follower who is not fishing for men is, by Jesus’ definition, not a true Christ follower.
This is a truth that can bring great clarity to our purpose and mission. It can also bring great condemnation, for many of us would have to say “I don’t know how to fish for men” or “I am not very good at fishing for men.” Mark 1:17 quotes Jesus as saying it this way: “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”
It is a process to learn to fish! Learning to fish takes time. It is a journey.
This is where the contemporary church often fails us. In an attempt to draw the unchurched, we teach life improvement lessons. We do sermon series on “How to Improve Your …” – just fill in the blank. Is there anything wrong with such sermons? Of course not. But the danger is that we sometimes present following Christ as a self-improvement adventure. Jesus did not come to make us better. He came to make us new!
The same applies to fishing. Jesus is not content with simply making a better you. His goal is not just to make you better at what you already do well. He wants to make you new. That includes giving you a new purpose – that you are sent, that you are on mission. And that includes giving you new training – so that you can learn how to fish for men.
Hence our churches must become training centers. We must become missionary schools.
Before any denomination or missions agency or church sends a missionary to a country overseas, we teach them skills specific to that country. They must learn language, culture, customs. They must learn to exegete their new setting.
The same is true in the community in which you now live. If every Christ follower is called to be on the Jesus mission, then we are called to be missionaries. We must learn to exegete the culture in which we live. We must learn to be in the community with our mission in mind. And that requires that the local church teach us how to be missionaries.
While I learned to fish with my grandmother in southern Oklahoma, my fishing journey did not end there. As a child, she taught me to fish with a cane pole using earthworms as bait. We caught crappy and perch. That was fishing in Oklahoma.
I moved to central Mississippi as a young adult. My son was three, and I decided it was time to teach him to fish. We took two cane poles and a shovel and headed for the pond in our neighborhood. Once there, I did what had worked in southern Oklahoma. I grabbed a shovel and began digging in the dirt for worms. But something strange happened. Every time I pulled a shovel of dirt from the ground, it began to fill with water.
An old timer walking by asked what we were doing. I told him I was digging for worms so we could fish. He laughed and said “You won’t find any worms here – the soil is too wet. And besides – the fish in this pond don’t eat worms. They eat bread.” And with a wink he walked away.
I was convinced he was making a joke, but I was not finding worms, so we headed back to the house. When we got there, my three year old son went to the kitchen and came out with a half loaf of bread. He looked at me with childlike faith and said “Daddy, the old man said we could catch fish with bread.” I did not have the heart to tell him it would not work. So we walked back to the pond, put small bits of rolled up bread on the hook, and were about to sit down – when the first fish took the bait and pulled the cork under the water. We caught thirty bluegill in thirty minutes. My son was hooked on fishing. That was fishing in Mississippi.
Years later we moved to South Florida. A friend heard I liked to fish, and invited me to go fishing with him in the Everglades. I said yes and we made our plan. I showed up at his house early that next Saturday morning with my cane pole and worms and bread. He laughed out loud and told me I could leave those things in my car. He said he had a fishing rod for me (something I had never used). I thanked him and asked what we were going to use for bait. He answered “Purple plastic worms.” I looked at him and said “Fish aren’t going to bite purple plastic worms.” He laughed and said “You’ll see.” We caught a dozen bass that afternoon on purple plastic worms. And that was fishing in South Florida.
Learning to fish takes time. It takes knowing your fish. It takes knowing your pond. It takes reading your environment. Jesus wants to teach us how to fish for men. The hook is the gospel – the good news. The bait depends on where you are fishing and what kind of fish you are after.
You could not spend time with my grandmother without fishing. You cannot spend time with Jesus without fishing for men. He is all about fishing. To follow is to fish.