Sunday, June 1, 2008

How To Hunt Prairie Chickens


Everything I need to know about ministry I learned while hunting prairie chickens. Okay, that is a stretch but…I did learn a significant lesson.
We are not called to change society; we are called to convert individuals. Changing society is a worthy endeavor, just not worthy enough.
I spent my early ministry years in Kansas. Rural Kansas. I pastored a church in Reece, a tiny town of forty-seven residents so far from civilization that the locals would chase coyotes across the prairie on motorcycles for entertainment. I am not making this up. Wanting to connect with the natives I went on numerous hunting excursions. One of these adventures was hunting prairie chickens.
Come to find out, prairie chickens fly. That made the objective, shooting them, much more difficult than I had considered. Given a loaded shotgun, I was told to shoot a prairie chicken as it flew over. The moment came. A flock of birds flew over. I pointed and blasted away until the gun was empty. The smoke cleared. If I hit one, he handled it well because the entire flock kept flapping their wings as if nothing happened.
I was amazed. Several hundred of these fat birds flew over the field again. I blasted away with a shotgun. (Shotguns scatter pellets, theoretically making it easy to hit stuff.) Not only did no birds come crashing to the ground, not one bird even got flustered. That made me mad. I tried again with the same results. I blasted away into the flock thinking at least ten to fifteen birds would drop from the sky. Nothing. My hunting partners then told me the problem.

“Roger, you can’t shoot the whole flock,” they said. “Pick out one bird and shoot that one.” When they fired their shotguns into the air a prairie chicken always fell. When I shot, the flock kept going in the same direction. Targeting one worked better than blasting away at the whole flock.

Ministry is the same. I have been doing this long enough to say that you are not going to save the world or even change the world. The target is too big and in the end you won’t change anything or anybody. But you can have a significant impact in the world when you reach people one at a time. And the only way to do that is through the gospel’s message of God’s free gift of life through faith in Jesus.

The power of the gospel is for the “whosoever,” the individual, not society. Changing social structures can help people improve economically but will do nothing to bring life to a dead human heart. Jesus didn’t come to raise the minimum wage or even make society behave. He came to put His life inside of us, one person at a time.

For me, the parable of the lost sheep settles this (Luke 15:1-7). The shepherd left ninety-nine sheep and took off looking for one lost sheep. Jesus said that bringing one lost sheep home takes priority over caring for the rest of the flock. Bringing one person into the family of God is more important than raising the quality of life for the rest.

You can share the gospel to a group or one-on-one, but people respond as individuals, one at a time. Societies rarely change for the better, individuals can and do.

And that is how you hunt prairie chickens

1 comment:

Dani said...

wow you hit the nail on the head,it is so very true........hope you have better luck with the chickens:)

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