Pastor's Monday: A Novel Way to Build Community (Mark Hass)

“I want to take these fishers of men and teach them to be fishers of fish,” jokes Jason Atkinson, founder of Pastor's Monday.

As a boy, Jason Atkinson would go to church twice a week and go fishing five times a week. Decades later, he is still devoted to his Christian faith, and remains zealously religious about fly fishing.

“The river is where I can always escape,” he says after an evening on the Rogue River, a short drive from his southern Oregon home.

Jason Atkinson.

In the pandemic year of 2020, Atkinson and a Medford pastor, Bobby Baugh, from Table Rock Fellowship, began weekly fly-fishing excursions to counterbalance the COVID blues.

Other pastors heard about the trips and wanted in. Word spread. Soon, Atkinson was getting calls from pastors all over Oregon who wanted to fly fish on an iconic river.

The Rogue River is known for its long lazy stretches mixed with adrenalizing sections of whitewater. It flows from Crater Lake and winds 250 miles into the Pacific. It was one of the original eight rivers named in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968.

As pastors reached out for an invite, Atkinson kept saying yes, and pastors who didn’t know each other found themselves sitting next to each other in a drift boat. There’s a low bar for entry: no requirement to bring equipment, fill out forms, nor pay any fee. Interested pastors just need to show up on Mondays.  

Why Monday? Pastors have Mondays off.

Atkinson’s Monday calendar began filling up months in advance and it became clear something else was happening (and continues to happen) on Pastor’s Monday.

Atkinson shoulders the operation based on the scripture pounded into his head as a kid: “Give and it shall be given unto you.” (Luke 6:38)

“I want to take these fishers of men and teach them to be fishers of fish,” he jokes.

While Atkinson and Baugh quietly maneuver boats and untangle fishing lines, pastors talk to each other about their day-to-day concerns, concerns that are no different from their worshippers—children who struggle, money, spouses who get cancer, etc.

“It can be lonely as a pastor. You hear everyone else’s problems. Nobody hears yours,” Baugh says. “This is therapy for the soul.”

Pastors leave with new perspective, new friends, and new support.

Atkinson tells of one pastor whose congregation was shattered by wildfires, with some families left homeless. He got on the boat anxious and distraught. He got off the boat with housing for three of his church families.

Atkinson, an Oregon State Senator from 2001 to 2013, believes pastors share one of the same problems as public servants.

“They’re always on the job, at Safeway, at Rotary, at coffee shops. They need a break,” he says.

Whether it’s the calm serenity, the challenge of landing an elusive steelhead, or a bald eagle soaring overhead, the Rogue River has long brought people together. Archeologists say indigenous people lived alongside the river 8,500 years ago with salmon as their main food source.

“People make bonds on the river,” Baugh says. “Humanity comes out and people discover how much they have in common.”

If only we could get more Oregonians sitting next to each other casting fly rods.

Atkinson and Baugh recently organized Pastor’s Monday as a legal non-profit to keep track of donations and gear. Last month, a fishing supplier in Washington sent down a bundle of new fly-fishing rods. No one is exactly sure how that happened. But pastors might say there’s no such thing as accidents. 

Relationships spur action. Something usually turns into something else. And when people are floating down a river in a drift boat, there’s one immutable fact: they’re going in the same direction.

Mark Hass is a former Oregon State Senator.