Not Every Field is the Same

Some of you might see an additional application

(Graphic above created by Kevin Shindoll)

I saw this post from a hunter’s observation. It struck me how this is relevant in the ministry of a local church. My experience: I pastored an established church in a small rural setting in Hazlehurst, MS. I was elected by 11 of 12 voters in 1997. In 2004, I planted a church in Clinton, Ms and have been here for 22 years. About 20 years ago, we restarted a church that had closed down in Port Gibson, Ms. In three different settings, I can attest that every place, every ministry opportunity is different.

A post from FB, The hunters report page.

“This is the part of trophy talk nobody likes to admit. Two hunters can make the same decisions, read the same sign, hunt the wind right, and wait for the right moment. One hunts elite genetics with low pressure. The other hunts average ground with neighbors on every fence line. Only one ends up remembered.

Record books measure inches, not context. They don’t know how much pressure a deer lived under, how small the property was, or how many seasons it took to get one chance. They don’t know if a buck daylighted once in five years or lived its life behind locked gates and managed neighbors.

Genetics matter. Location matters. Access matters. Those things often matter more than skill, patience, or woodsmanship. That doesn’t cheapen big deer. It just means we should be honest about what records actually represent.

A giant from elite ground is still a giant. But pretending that the playing field is level does a disservice to hunters grinding on small parcels, permission ground, and public land, where opportunity is the real trophy.

Records tell us where the best deer grow.
They don’t always tell us who hunted the hardest.

If the lists disappeared tomorrow, how would we measure success then?”