Fishing for Leaders

February 9, 2025, First Lutheran Church of Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

Luke 5:1-11

It’s a biblical Twilight Zone scene.

Imagine, if you will, a crew of exhausted fishermen, struggling to stay awake after a futile night with no fish for their nets.

But a man on the shore bids them take the boat out again and drop their nets one more time.

The men think the man is taunting them after they had spent the night demonstrating the utter dearth of fish in the lake. 

But they are too tired to argue so they set out once again to try their luck.

Suddenly, their nets are stretched to the breaking point by a blitz of fish, and the boats become so heavy they begin to sink.

We’ve heard this story so often that we no longer get excited about it. But Simon, up to his neck in fish, is stunned by the power of Jesus. Deeply aware of his unworthiness, he sinks to his knees, crying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” (Lk 5:8b)

I wonder if Jesus smiled or simply shook his head. “Do not be afraid,” he says to Simon. “From now on you will be catching people.”

What are we to make of this dramatic moment? Can you hear the eerie music of Twilight Zone in the background?

Maybe it’s the huge number of fish that does it, but over two millennia many have concluded that we are to be catchers of as many people as possible. 

To be faithful to God’s call, our churches must be growing churches. By this standard, Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, with 45,000 in attendance every Sunday, must be what Jesus is talking about. And the most faithful fishers of our time are Rick Warren, Creflo Dollar, Kenneth Copeland, and T.D. Jakes.

I do not dispute the excitement of sitting in a huge congregation with other Christians. In 1967 Billy Graham went to London for a two-week “crusade” in Earl’s Court. I was a 21-year-old Air Force chaplain’s assistant stationed in England that year, and scores of Americans on base were eager to see Billy. The chaplain directed me to organize nightly round-trip bus excursions between the base and Earl’s Court. As a result, I got to hear Billy Graham many times. I learned by heart the words “How Great Thou Art.”

Billy had a different sermon each night and I was thrilled by the pageantry. A huge choir made up of local church choirs sang hymns with rising crescendos. When Billy issued his invitation to accept Jesus, hundreds rose from their seats from all over the hall and walked forward to the make-shift altar. And when the collection was taken up, the sound of sterling coins being tossed into hundreds of baskets rumbled like thunder.

It was an experience I will never forget.

But it wasn’t exactly church. 

There was no feeling of being joined in the pews by dear friends and close family in a home church.

There was no possibility that your personal joys would be celebrated by many who know you and love you. 

There was no possibility that the pastor or friends or loved ones would surround you with love and tears in times of sorrow or tragedy.

There was no possibility that the pastor would take time to sit down with you to discuss your doubts, your fears, your questions about God.

There was no possibility that the pastor and other member would help one another become aware of the needs in the community; who has lost everything in a fire and needs clothing and furniture; who has just entered a hospice for palliative care; who has just lost a job; who is old and lonely and unable to leave their homes; who is being taunted and abused because of their race or religion or age or mental health or sexual orientation; who is hiding behind locked doors in their homes for fear of being arrested by immigration police.

You’re not going to learn anything like that in a Joel Osteen service.

An authentic congregational experience is when we are bound together in love and compassion for one another, when we share each other’s burdens, when we seek peace with one another when we disagree, when we have each other’s backs.

All of this is possible when each of us – pastor or layperson – seek to become ministers and leaders in a congregation, in a synod, and in the Church of Christ.

When Jesus told Simon that he will be a fisher of people, an essential portion of the people who are being fished are people who hear their calling to be leaders of the church.

In this year of turmoil and uncertainty and transition, we are all looking for leaders who will take us safely through the dangers, toils, and snares of our lives. We pray our new bishop will be this leader. We pray our new permanent pastor will be this leader. We pray this type of leader will heal the divisions and hates that have torn our nation apart.

But who are these leaders we are waiting for? And where will we find them? 

Professor Abraham Smith of Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, recalls a pertinent question raised by Professor Marvin McMickle: “Where have all the prophets gone?”

McMickle “saw preachers who had become parochial promoters of culture wars, passive, acquiescent backers of political parties, performers of vacuous praise and worship demonstrations, and proclaimers of a perverted social gospel of prosperity.”

In the public sphere, Professor Smith writes, “God knows we need some true leaders today—not the narcissistic occupants of offices who seek to line their own pockets with the public’s wealth, not the intemperate officeholders who use their positions to embark on revenge tours, and not the uninformed politicians who take little stock in facts and often issue baseless ex cathedra pronouncements. So, where have all the true leaders gone or why do we not see true leaders emerging today?”

One great leader I was privileged to work for was the late Bob Edgar, a United Methodist cleric, a five-term Congressman from Pennsylvania, president of Claremont School of Theology, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, and Executive Director of Common Cause.

Bob thought it was a big problem that most of us were waiting in hope for the leaders we need. If I heard him say it once, I heard him say a hundred times:

“We Are the Leaders We Have Been Waiting For.”

Dr. Smith, a professor of New Testament, encourages we potential leaders to re-examine Luke 5:1-11 – the “Great Catch” episode – to see a deeper meaning. Jesus is not necessarily calling on us to fish for followers. He is calling on us to be leaders.

For Dr. Smith, a professor of New Testament, Luke’s story of “the great catch” is not necessarily Jesus’ invitation to we leaders to fish for followers.

The “great catch” episode in Luke is “not the massive haul of fish that Simon and his fishing partners brought to Lake Gennesaret’s shore but instead Jesus’ own ‘great catch’ or his ability to gather and grow leaders.”

“When Simon said, ‘I am a sinner,’ Jesus did not cast his sight elsewhere. Jesus was not looking for perfect people—just committed ones.

“Potential leaders must not be stymied by sins—by present foibles. Self-recognition of our own wounds is the formative idea in Dutch priest Henri Nouwen’s famous book, The Wounded Healer. Self-recognition also lies at the heart of the refrain ‘It’s me, It’s me, It’s me, O Lord’ in the Black spiritual, “Standing in the Need of Prayer.” Potential leaders do not have to be perfect—just committed.”

“We Are the Leaders We Have Been Waiting For.”