It’s a unique concept in fishing: take a boat out in the water and wait for the fish to jump in. It beats spending the morning cutting bait, I suppose.

I think this is the strategy that many churches use. They know that Jesus said he would make us fishers of men, but they prefer to catch people who are like the flying carp in the Amazon.

Fish that just jump in the boat unbidden are phenomenally uncommon; so are people who show up at church without having been reached in some way.

If you want to fill the seats of your church with changed lives, you need to cast your net into the city you serve. Cast it deep and cast it deep wide. Cast it one side of the boat and then the other, until it comes up full. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” (Mark 1:17) The lost aren’t coming to us. We need to go to them. — SM

[In researching this, I found an edited version of the same video that I saw on TV. It's about two and half minutes long,  but you get the point after about a minute.]