Jay Grave catches a bass on one of his fishing expe- ditions. He calls his bi-vocational fishing-and- pastoral ministry “truly blessed.”
Pastor lives the dream as he fishes for people and bass By Abigail Accettura
Gone fishin’ W
hen Jesus called his disciples to “fish for people,” Jay Grave’s bi-vocational ministry might have been exactly what he had in mind.
“This is the Holy Spirit, who put these things in place,” said Grave, pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Camdenton, Mo. He’s referring to both his work at Our Savior and his job as a professional tournament angler and bass fishing guide.
This partnership of pastoral work and personal passion is called bi-vocational ministry, and although preaching and bass fishing seem like an odd combination, Grave couldn’t be more thrilled.
In a confluence of events Grave claims could only be possible by divine intervention, he left his call in Minne-
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sota and stumbled into his life as part-time pastor of Our Savior after his mother died last year. Grave didn’t enjoy the administrative work involved in serving a large church. “I didn’t get to pastor,” he said. “And when my mother passed away and my dad decided to move to Missouri to fish, I told my wife I was going to move with him.” In a spur-of-the-moment move, Grave took his wife and two daughters to Camdenton to help his father search for a house. During the trip, they visited a small church they had passed earlier. “That’s when things started to get crazy,” he said. When he walked into Our Savior, Grave was met by congregational leaders who happened to be in the build- ing for a meeting. Grave discovered they were searching for a pastor. When the head of the call committee arrived for the meeting, he mentioned that they were looking for a pastor with a family and young children—Grave’s daugh- ters then entered the room. To top it all off, the committee told Grave they
wouldn’t be able to pay him full time. Perfect. He was also planning a fishing guide career. Grave’s family moved to Camdenton last year. In February he was installed at Our Savior and started a bass fishing guide business. “I come from a family of fishermen,” Grave said, “and while I’m paid to teach people how to fish, what I am is a pastoral presence. I hear about people’s lives, and what better way to do that than while connected to God’s creations? It helps us reframe ourselves on God’s earth. Being on the boat creates an opportunity for entry conver- sations to faith.”
The one challenge in Grave’s dream is balancing everything—from being a pastor, to being a fisherman, to being a father. “We try to be so compartmentalized,” he said. “Being aware of the juggling act and talking about it is the only way to manage it. I don’t take people from church fishing, and I try not to preach fishing at church. I have a lot of time to be with my family, and I try to use it as well as I can. But it takes discipline to be able to bal- ance instead of being bad at all of it.”
Outside of being a guide, Grave also fishes in tourna- ments sponsored by major organizations. Competitive fishing brings him a sense of accomplishment as well as a source of income, but it’s in his work as a fishing guide where he finds a creative outlet for his pastoral work. “God took me from a huge church in Minnesota to a 60-person church in Missouri so I can fish. I don’t doubt that a bit,” Grave said.
Accettura was The Lutheran’s summer intern. Download a study guide for this article (free to print/Web members) at
www.thelutheran.org (click on “study guides”).
E. GRAVE PHOTOGRAPHY
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