Tips for your Fishing Trip
I love fishing. If I can’t fish, which represents 99.9% of my life, I sometimes enjoy catching a short clip of random fishing adventures on Youtube or Facebook to partially sate that desire. I especially enjoy seeing the exotic, lesser-known locales, where I’m not even sure what type of fish will be landing in the boat. I’m also intrigued by some of the longer form content so typical of the cable nature channels, where a western sportsman will go to the fishing village of one of these exotic places and have a local fisherman take him out on his humble fishing boat. The Westerner pulls a few fish out of the river with his overly-complicated, expensive gear while the locals give him a few slaps on the back and tell him what a good job he did. The man leaves all smiles and returns home with tales he will tell for the rest of his life. It makes for good entertainment, but it’s a poor model for ministry.
It’s cool to go down to the river and catch a fish with the local fisherman, but let’s be honest, we’re not really doing the fisherman any big favors. He’s been fishing here for a long time and he knows how best to catch the fish. Taking us down to the river and guiding our fishing efforts actually makes for a much less productive day for him. Instead of investing his time and energies into his vocation, he’s sacrificing his productivity to give us an experience. So why should he do it?
As Summer 2023 rolls in, many churches, youth groups, and teams will traverse the globe to participate in short-term mission trips. Let me state at the outset that these trips are vital to the life of Great Commission obedient churches and believers, as well as the partners they serve internationally. I first discerned my own call to vocational missionary service on just such a trip. There are loads of excellent resources for making these trips as productive and meaningful as possible. If you or your church will be embarking on a mission trip this Summer, allow me to refer you to Launch Point, ABWE’s short-term focussed ministry. On their dedicated website, you’ll find lots of helpful resources.
In the meantime, I’d like to give you some perspectives that you might not find in the resources or spoken aloud by your ministry partners. Hopefully, it can make your trip even more effective for your team, and those you serve.
https://www.launchpointmissions.org/
Focus on the fisherman. You can catch some fish, but the fisherman can do that too. If we’re really going to make an impact that matters in the long view, our efforts should focus less on catching fish on our trips, and more on the fisherman. How can we better equip and encourage the fisherman in his work? Are there resources and training we have access to that we can share with our fisherman friend to help him improve? We can stand shoulder to shoulder and double a fisherman’s catch on the best of days. However, if we can leverage our resources to increase his skills so that he catches more fish day by day, we’ve made an exponential impact. Consider how your trip can multiply ministry by focussing on the fisherman. As I look back over our own 14 years of ministry in the Czech Republic, I have fond memories of the fruit we harvested. Nevertheless, I think the most important things we did were those which equipped and encouraged our fellow laborers. They are still working in those fields today, while we are not.
Replace the nets. The ministry partners you engage with have sacrificed untold time and energy to make your trip a success. They’ve pulled strings, exhausted their contacts, made countless logistical and hospitality arrangements, set aside their own priorities and productivity for a significant period of time, and many of them may have had to take time off from their second vocations for the sake of this missions trip. To varying degrees, your ministry partner has incurred considerable costs. It’s not always appropriate to hand over cash reimbursements and there’s no uniform rule on this for every situation. But if you’re not going to be making a noteable financial gift, you should be considering what you can do. Buy the fisherman some new nets, have his boat repaired, replace his unreliable motor, commit to paying the rent on his fish stall for the next year. Do something generous to bless him or his ministry. It may be a good idea to plan this in advance with input from your partner. It’s rather discourteous to hold your generosity until the end. It makes us feel good to surprise someone, but it isn’t always nice for our partners. Will they recover the cost of their week off of work, and be able to pay their electric bill this month? We want to know what to expect on our trip, and so do they.
Relieve the pressure. Imagine your supervisor announcing they intend to spend an entire week shadowing you at work. It’s a prospect most of us wouldn’t enjoy, especially if we work in an arena where the results of our work can fluctuate and be unpredictable week by week, like sales…or fishing. If you’re making a trip to an established ministry partner who receives regular support from you or your church, imagine the pressure they might be experiencing to make your trip a success. There are a myriad of unspoken expectations and potential repercussions if things don’t go the way the supervisor wants or expects. You might end up on the first wave of job cuts when budget decisions are made, resources end up more restricted, you could lose a sense of approval or approval itself. Factor in cross-cultural stresses and consider the strain we might be putting on our ministry partners, even if we didn’t intend to. Taking the initiative to relieve some of this pressure can be a huge blessing to your ministry partners. Frontload the encouragement. It’s important to communicate your expectations for your trip clearly as well as what your intentions are, but some preemptive affirmation can go a long way. You might communicate something like, “We know how hard you work, and we know that this trip is not necessarily representative of the work you do day in and day out in your ministry. We just want to come and get to know you and the people you work with so we can know how best to support and encourage and pray for you. We want our people to see and experience some of the difficulties and blessings of your ministry so we know how to love you better as we continue to support you.” It won’t take all the pressure off, but it will cut away a significant layer of stress on the front end, and ultimately make your trip more successful, especially if you continue encouraging reassurances throughout your time together. It can mean the difference between leaving your ministry partner in a state of utter exhaustion or uplifting encouragement when you fly away.
The way we prepare for both long-term and short-term missions is similar. We ask ourselves ultimate questions and plan accordingly. Namely, What are we going to leave behind? I’m sure we want to leave our partners energized and looking up.
