{"id":5869,"date":"2023-04-29T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-29T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5869"},"modified":"2024-05-29T15:12:27","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T21:12:27","slug":"fly-fishing-and-disciple-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5869","title":{"rendered":"Fly-fishing and Disciple-making"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My son Matt has always loved fishing (like his grandfather, not his father!). A few years ago, he arranged (and June paid for) a guided fly-fishing trip for all the Ewell men on the Red River in Arkansas. It was a wonderful time: I&#8217;ve never caught so many fish.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Afterward, I recorded these observations comparing the guide&#8217;s approach to teaching fly-fishing and disciple-making:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The guide&#8217;s purpose was not to catch fish. His purpose was to help me catch fish.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>He provided training. Not a lecture but a demonstration. IDEA: instruction, demonstration, experience, assessment.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>He was not afraid to introduce technical terms: cast, mend, strip, but he also used learning devices, &#8220;Coca-Cola&#8221; for rhythm, for example.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>He expected me to be able to do what he taught, but he also was not upset by mistakes. He was always encouraging. He never put down.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>With respect to evangelism, we decided that we didn&#8217;t &#8220;miss&#8221; a fish, &#8220;the fish didn&#8217;t want to play.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Also with respect to evangelism, we have to go to where the fish are. They don&#8217;t come to us.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>One more observation on evangelism, we have to speak the fish&#8217;s &#8220;language.&#8221; We have to provide bait that looks like food the fish likes. Not what we like.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There were a lot of things about fly fishing that I didn&#8217;t learn:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>How to drive the boat<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How to operate the remote-controlled trolling motor<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Where on the river the fish are, how the water depth affects what we do, etc.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What kind of flies to use<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How to tie flies<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, he said, &#8220;There are a hundred lessons in fly-fishing; this is lesson 1.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More observations:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>We didn&#8217;t talk about fly-fishing; we fly-fished. Teaching\/learning was in the context of doing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The guide fishes by himself some days. He&#8217;s a practitioner, not just a guide. In order to be a good guide, he must also stay in practice.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The disciple-maker helps people be disciples and make disciples themselves. The disciple-maker&#8217;s role is to help others succeed and &#8220;do ministry.&#8221; Not just do all the ministry themselves.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The disciple-maker trains, but he trains in skills, not just technical knowledge. He teaches <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/16Uop8W6OZJaNx8qE_XVKfp-6kZT3vcQw\/view?usp=sharing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>how <\/em>to have time with God<\/a>, <em>how <\/em>to make disciples. He doesn&#8217;t merely tell people what to do, he shows them <em>how <\/em>to do it:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, <strong>teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you<\/strong>; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.&#8221; (Matthew 28.19, 20, NKJV, emphasis mine)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The disciple-maker introduces enough Biblical language for the disciple to get started, but he doesn&#8217;t burden the disciple with a bunch of technical theology, a lot of which is outside the Bible and not necessary for real life. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The disciple-maker develops easy-to-grasp tools to help disciples learn quickly (e.g., the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.navigators.org\/resource\/the-wheel-illustration\/\" target=\"_blank\">wheel<\/a>, the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.navigators.org\/resource\/the-bridge-to-life\/\" target=\"_blank\">bridge<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.navigators.org\/resource\/the-27-series\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Navigators&#8217; 2:7 Series<\/a>, etc.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We could learn a lot from Greg, the fly-fishing guide!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then He said to them, &#8220;Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.&#8221; (Matthew 4.18, 19, NKJV)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My son Matt has always loved fishing (like his grandfather, not his father!). A few years ago, he arranged (and June paid for) a guided fly-fishing trip for all the Ewell men on the Red River in Arkansas. It was a wonderful time: I&#8217;ve never caught so many fish.&nbsp; Afterward, I recorded these observations comparing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5869\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Fly-fishing and Disciple-making<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-1wF","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5869"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7587,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5869\/revisions\/7587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}