fishers of men

Homer Hailey in Let's Go Fishing for Men wrote:

The thoughtful Christian will admit that in these days the church is not leading the number of people to Christ that it should…Is there a cause for this failure? Can we find a [solution]? Surely there must be both…The failure is due to a lack of effort after any method. The solution must be found by a restudy of Bible methods of reaching people with the gospel and in the application of those methods to our present day evangelism. Every member of the church must become a ‘workman approved of God,’ prepared in heart and training to lead others to the knowledge of the truth…

There is no more urgent need in the church today than for Christians who can and will talk to people about their soul’s need and about the Christ of the gospel who satisfies that need. Little of the burning passion for men’s souls as seen in Jesus and the early Christians is to be found among Christians today. In building the church, work is too often motivated by the competitive spirit of [vanity] which desires to see a work we are doing succeed because of a selfish interest rather than from an intense desire for men to be saved because they are lost…

The invitation of Jesus was, ‘Come…and learn of me.’ The charge that followed was, ‘Go and teach.’ Upon every one who has learned, the Lord has placed the responsibility of telling others what he has learned. When to the apostles He said, ‘Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you,’ the command to ‘go’ was passed on to those who should obey the gospel. From that moment it has been the responsibility of the baptized disciple to follow that command. The vast majority of Christians have never dreamed that the command is personal.

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