Nothing stays the same

On holiday I caught up with an old friend, Andra Whyte. He is a great guy and owner of a huge trawler, Forever Grateful, based in Fraserburgh.

He kindly gave me and the family a tour round his boat. Now my family have been fishermen as long as I know about. Brother, dad, grandad have all been fisher men. My dad owned 5 different trawlers so I spent a lot of time in and around boats as I grew up. During school holidays I would often spend a couple of weeks on the boat. What I remember is a tough job and a reasonably tough life on board.

On this new massive boat things are certainly different. All the aspects from the sleeping arrangements, kitchen, deck etc are luxurious compared to what I remember. The wheelhouse seemed to be completely computerised and knowledge of computers would seem to be a requirement for the job of a fisherman now. Things have progressed and boats have moved with the times making sure they have become better and better at catching fish.

Why is it that sometimes in the church that we think the best way to do something is how we did it years ago. Was it so good 10, 20, 40 or even 50 years ago. Were so many more people getting to know Jesus for the first time. We shouldn't ditch everything or change the message the good news of Jesus never changes but surely we have many more methods and ways to share the message today.

Same message more methods. Asking a skipper like Andra to ignore all the advancements and go back to the way things were done would be madness. Lets not do the same with the most crucial fishing adventure in the planet.