Someone suggested that they needed a philosophy of fishing, so they carefully defined and redefined fishing, and the purpose of fishing. They developed fishing strategies and tactics. Then they realized that they had been going at it backwards. They had approached fishing from the point of view of the fisherman, and not from the point of view of the fish. How do fish view the world? How does the fisherman appear to the fish? What do fish eat, and when? These are all good things to know. So they began research studies, and attended conferences on fishing. Some traveled to faraway places to study different kinds of fish with different habits. Some got doctorates in fishology. But no one had yet gone fishing.

So a committee was formed to send out fishermen. As prospective fishing places outnumbered fishermen, the committee needed to determine priorities. A priority list of fishing places was posted on bulletin boards in all of the fellowship halls. But still, no one was fishing. A survey was launched to find out why. Most did not answer the survey, but from those who did, it was discovered that some felt called to study fish, a few to furnish fishing equipment, and several to go around encouraging the fishermen. What with meetings, conferences and seminars they just simply didn’t have time to fish.

Now, Jake was a newcomer to the Fisherman’s Fellowship. After one stirring meeting of the Fellowship, he went fishing and caught a large fish. At the next meeting, he told his story and was honored for his catch. He was told that he had a special “gift of fishing.” He was then scheduled to speak at all the Fellowship chapters and tell how he did it.

With all of the speaking invitations and his election to the board of directors of the Fishermen’s Fellowship, Jake no longer had time to go fishing. But soon he began to feel restless and empty. He longed to feel the tug on the line once again. So he canceled the speaking, he resigned from the board, and said to a friend, “Let’s go fishing.” They did, just the two of them, and they caught fish.

The members of the Fishermen’s Fellowship were many, the fish were plentiful, but the fishers were few!

- Anonymous

The relation of the individual believer to the new man. The new man is like a garment made to cover the individual believer. He must clothe himself with the image of God, that is, with Christ and the Church. In baptism a man puts on Christ, and that means the same as being incorporated into the body, into the one man, in whom is neither Greek nor Jew, neither bond nor free. No one can become a new man except by entering the Church, and becoming a member of the Body of Christ. It is impossible to become a new man as a solitary individual. The new man means more than the individual believer after he has been justified and sanctified. It means the Church, the Body of Christ, in fact it means Christ himself.

Through his Spirit, the crucified and risen Lord exists as the Church, as the new man.

This paragraph exposes to me a pervasive individualism in the way I have approached Scripture. What does it say about me if I take a reference to the Body of Christ, which is a group of believers, and apply it primarily to me as an individual believer?

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

But is it so astonishing? How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life? The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this: that the first demand his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. – Dorothy Sayers