Leadership Journal

(Editor's note: An article in our e-mail newsletter, Leadership Weekly, by pastor Chad Hall, "Six Ways I Quit Church," drew lots of response. Many cheered. Many jeered. Many shook their heads in disbelief. And many wrote to us. Here are some of their many replies. )

Excellent article! How can we be good fishers of people if we don't know what bait they're biting these days? This will really help me in my sermons, as well as in my encouragement of others!

Debbie Sandifer

I'm not believing my eyes. My heart truly goes out to this minister. Somewhere along the line, he's "missed the boat. " … . Sometimes our walk with God is trying, but we're not to give up, only persevere. The whole point in not forsaking the fellowshipping of our brothers and sisters in Christ is to continue in God's love, edifying one another.

JCL

While I appreciate Chad's desire to "think like a fish" I believe his approach to ministry not only gets him off the boat and into the water but to a place where his life may actually begin to "smell like a fish. "

The church is where God has designed that Christians grow up into more Christlikeness. If Chad is in the water rather than on the boat (where fish are supposed to be taken from the water) how is he becoming more like the master caster himself, Jesus Christ? More importantly, who is influencing whom?I would like to know how many "fish" Chad caught when he was in the water. I have been fishing a number of time and one thing I've realized is that once you get out of the boat and into the water, your fishing is over.

Like Chad, I believe the church is irrelevant for the most part to the majority of our society. Churches have to get out of a maintenance and into a ministry mode if we are to impact our world for the kingdom. However, when the boat isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing (i. e. , catching fish) we don't 'abandon ship' and slip overboard into the churning sea.

That's not the way to catch fish.

The issue I believe is to change life on board the boat so that the aim is to catch fish rather than take a cruise. The captain needs to be like the captain in the movie Jaws who is necessary, will sacrifice the boat in order to catch his prize. Likewise, it only takes a few folks on the charter to haul in a couple of fish before most of the others on board reach for their poles and get a line over the side.

Bob Brueggen, Maplewood, Minnesota

This is an excellent article and I commend you for publishing it. The best thing that could happen to a pastor is being in the work place for at least two years, making a living like everyone else and experiencing what living in the real world is really like.

After I graduated from seminary I worked for 6 years as a juvenile probation officer and then went into church ministry full time. The real world experience has provided me with ministry understanding and success with people, rather than idealized theology and unrealistic Biblical teaching and application.

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