Speaking of yesterday’s blog about the PA announcer for the Denver Nuggets, I found a workplace where there are very few believers – cargo ships. Each has a relatively small crew, around 20 men, and it would be a very difficult living and working environment. Into that breach step Seafarer Ministries, organizations that have been around since the early 1800s, ministering to crew members in ports around the world. Here’s the beginning of a report by Christianity Today:

Gary Roosma can attest to the challenges of organizing a worship service onboard a cargo ship. It’s a complicated process, reaching out to the rotating cast of captains aboard the ships in the Port of Vancouver, for a congregation of sailors who may or may not even want to gather. But experience has taught him it’s a worthwhile effort. He remembers one officer who accosted him with a question. “Where were you yesterday?” the man said. “We needed you yesterday.” When Roosma asked why, the sailor explained there was a horrible storm at sea and the captain had sent him to do something on the deck as the waves crashed around them. As he held onto a rail, a massive wave hit the ship and carried the man overboard, out to the open sea. “I knew I was dead,” the seafarer told Roosma. “All I could think of was ‘Lord, please watch over my family.’ And then I prayed, ‘It would be really nice if you would save me too.’” At the instant he prayed, the man recalled, a rope brushed across his chest, and he grasped it and held on with every ounce of his strength. He dislocated his arm, but his life was spared. “We need a service onboard this ship,” the man said, and Roosma, a chaplain at the Port of Vancouver with the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) Ministry to Seafarers agreed to lead them in prayer and worship that day.

What a strategic ministry! Bless the CRC’s Ministry to Seafarers and others like them.

But as I read the report, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if there were disciple-makers among the crews of the ships? The Navigators’ ministry exploded during World War 2 when hundreds of Navigator-trained sailors were on warships for years with tens of thousands of others (who couldn’t get away!). Unfortunately, the challenge with cargo ships is that the crews are much smaller. But the principle is there:

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9.35 – 38, ESV)

I’m 76. I don’t even like ships. But I can pray that there will be more disciple-makers among the crews of merchant marine ships.