Kethuvim

I had an idea today.  When talking about the poor, Christians often use the old adage, "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime."  I find this adage sensible enough, but I started wondering today if this saying applies to more than just the poor, and more than just financial matters.  To put it another way, I wonder how often the Church is guilty of giving its people fish, all the while missing the fact that they're, at best, enabling their congregants to cease pursuing true discipleship and, at worst, spiritually crippling them.  

I started thinking about this after a conversation I had this morning about the future of my student ministry.  I'm currently trying to figure out how youth ministry (not just mine, but youth ministry in general) needs to change, and what that's going to look like in my community. I was talking this morning about rejecting the old forms of youth ministry that center around entertainment and just getting students in the door, and how I want that to change.  It then popped into my head that youth ministry has been guilty of giving students fish, and forgetting to teach them how.  

It then occurred to me that this isn't simply a youth ministry issue, but an issue for the entire Church to address.  Jesus himself unwittingly (or maybe wittingly) started the whole fishing metaphor when he told his first followers, "Come, I'll make you fishers of men."  The Church has often interpreted that passage in such a way that the emphasis is on the number of fish you can cram into the boat (and when there are too many fish for the boat, build a bigger boat), but I don't think that's what Jesus was driving at.  If you look at his life with his followers, he was constantly teaching them to "fish for men."  He was showing them how to interact lovingly with a world that needed love.  He taught them through example that the best way to fish for men was to give your life up for them.  In other words, he taught them to fish, then handed them a pole (or net) and said, "Your turn."  

The Church gives people fish in many ways.  The Church's current focus (I realize there are exceptions) is on giving people a "worship experience."  You may disagree with this, but look at the amount of time and money that goes into Sunday morning worship services and it's hard to argue.  Our entire Sunday morning worship time should be spent equipping people to go out and fish.  When our focus is on an experience, then we're just throwing fish at people.  I read an interview with Rob Bell where he was talking about a friend of his that stated this, "Everything about our worship service should say, 'Welcome to our church, now get the hell out of here.'" It's a good point, and I think the same thing holds true for youth ministries.  Welcome, now leave and go fish.

When preachers and teachers just spout out points and subpoints and then tell everyone how to behave and what to believe, they're throwing out fish.  A teaching should lead to a lot of questions.  After a good many of Jesus' teachings, his disciples were left scratching their heads and asking what the heck he was talking about.  The point of teaching isn't just spouting out information in the hopes that people suck it in, it's engaging people's minds and inviting them into a conversation.  That's how people learn to fish.  To summarize for any preacher or teachers reading this, leave them with questions.  Far from leaving, you'll probably notice that people are returning for more.  

So what are your thoughts?  What are some other ways that the Church lobs fish at people? Am I off base?