Fishing

Barefoot in the wilderness
in search of understanding

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Tom at Bigbulkyanglican has a nice story about fishing that illustrates nicely the fishing picture that is commonly used to illustrate how we should “do” evangelism but that comes across as very authoritarian and discouraging. Instead of a “good” fisherman reeling in fish after fish,

most fish don’t come up to bait and take one big bite and get caught, they visit repeatedly and nibble until such time as the bait is small and irresistible and only then does the fisher’man’ (and perhaps not the one that originally set the bait) get his/her catch … [similarly] only a small minority of people come to faith in a sudden single bite of the bait – most nibble at the edges of the Christian faith – and only make a leap of commitment after many contacts.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 10:26am on 15 April 2005
Category: Faith, Musing

which is hugely encouraging for those of us who doubt if we’ve ever really helped anyone to come to faith…I loved that story…perfect for woolly liberal catholics like me :-)