Vision Navigator

The picture above is from my recent fishing trip on the White River in Arkansas. My son, Will, is in front — behind him is Dale, our guide.

Let me just say that Dale rocks!! With him as our guide, we caught 49 trout the first day. The next two days we went guideless, and the results were somewhat less impressive… (9 on day two, 21 or so the last day).

This is obviously to be expected. After all, Dale does this for a living. He knows the river, can find the best spots, knows what the fish are biting on any given day, and knows how to keep your poles properly equipped with lures in the water.

That’s why I took advantage of his expertise and picked his brain the first day — making mental notes of the best spots, learning what lures to use and when to use them, and soaking up every tip he would give me.

What I didn’t realize, however, was how valuable it was just to have him navigating the boat. Mind you, this wasn’t lake fishing, or fishing off of the bank. We were constantly moving — drifting downstream without an anchor on a swift current (they wouldn’t let unexperienced folks like us use an anchor, since we were liable to get hung up and sink the boat).

I learned this the hard way. I started out trying to navigate a boat with my son, my friend, and his son, thinking we’d all be able to fish. Then some lines got tangled, taking a couple of poles down, so I got involved trying to untangle/re-rig them. Then I had to help net a fish my friend’s son had caught. Then we started drifting too fast and too close to the bank — so I had my friend take over navigation — then the two remaining good poles got tangled up together. So just an hour or so into the trip, we had no hooks in the water, and I wasn’t even navigating the boat anymore!

Things got better from there, but this experience brought to mind a couple of key lessons I’ve learned:

1. When you try to focus on multiple things at once, you do nothing well
2. Navigators help free you up to fish and equip others to fish more effectively

I think the same thing holds true for those in ministry. It’s hard to focus on ministering (equipping/fishing) in the moment AND to pay attention to the path your ministry is on (navigating) at the same time.

What’s your experience? Have you ever used a guide/navigator in fishing, or in ministry? Got any good fish stories to tell?

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 9:04 am and is filed under church stuff, fishing, focus, ministry treadmill, navigator, stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.