I started attending the Foothills Church in 1994 with my Wife Pam and our two young Daughters. Pam and I had been serving the Lord since 1984, so I had thought that I was fully committed in my relationship with the Lord.
My Father, Wife and I started our business together in 1987 and I had been working Monday’s through Saturday’s and Sundays before church since we opened the doors. I had been a dedicated Husband and Father providing for my Family and had thought that I had earned some down time, so the Lord couldn’t possibly object to me missing a Sunday now and then to go blow off some steam and pursue my passion of hunting and shooting. If you can call “now and then”, missing more Sundays then I was attending during the Waterfowl, Upland Game Bird and Big Game seasons? The only guilt i was feeling, was the fact that Pam was attending church with our two little girls without me, but it obviously didn’t bother me enough to be a good example to my two impressionable little girls. Proverbs 22:16 “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it”
Our Pastor, who is a good friend as well as being a Good Pastor, made mention of my poor attendance one Sunday. He approached me after service and made a few concrete statements that rocked my spiritual world. He ask me to consider my Wife and Daughters and the fact that they were attending services without me, that I was to be an example to my Daughters as well a partner in my faith to Pam. He also mentioned how that, when I do attend services and I sit in the front row as we did, and I worship with my hands raised high, that I am an example to other men, and that I have a responsibility to them. Mathew 5:16 “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven”
Well, you might have thought that I would have been convicted in my spirit by those truthful words from my Pastor, my friend. Instead, I made excuses about how hard I worked and how much I deserved to be excused from such responsibilities and how he didn’t understand my situation. In other words, I made every excuse to justify my actions or lack there of. I left church that day very angry with Pastor and specifically with God. I drove home by myself after church that day, because I had come to church straight from work that morning and Pam and the girls came together in Pam’s car. So I was all alone on my drive home, and I was having a major hissy fit over what was said to me. I dared to begin talking back to the Lord, and began to list all the sacrifices i had been making and how deserving I was to receive an exemption, because of the time I needed to myself to go hunt. The drive home is about ten minutes, but that wasn’t enough time for me to give the Lord a mouthful, so I continued to drive until i was flat out of things to say and the energy to say them. Just then, when I had been silent for a few minutes and realized that I should be getting home, the Holy Spirit spoke to me as clear as day, maybe not in an audible voice, but there was no doubt in my heart and my mind that it was God. He said, “You give Me Sundays, and I’ll give you all the hunting you can imagine” And although I knew with all my heart this statement was from the Lord God, I had trouble wrapping my head around it. I was self employed, If I committed to Sundays, then when could I possibly have time to hunt? Saturdays were the busiest day of the week and we couldn’t afford the overtime to pay a Manager to fill in for me, our business would have to have an immediate increase in sales to be able to justify paying the overtime. On top of that, I would have to find a manager that was willing to work six days and that I could trust to handle my responsibilities on the weekends. The Lord knows, that what I do could not possibly be done by anyone else, Yea Right! Can you say control freak? I approached my second in command and asked him if he would be interested, it was as if the Lord had already prepped him for the question, he was all for it!! I began to practice my faith then and there and wrote my first labor schedule with my first Saturday off.
I began hunting on Saturdays and attending services I was usually missing on Sundays, this was working out just fine, and the increase in business that God new that we needed was more than covering the overtime. The Lord was solid on his promise. Saturdays were not only a better day to hunt, but I could now ask friends from church to come along. When it was in-between seasons I was getting groups of guys together to go to the range to shoot rifles or hit the trap range or sporting clay course. It was great avenue for fellowship and when friends from church brought their friends that weren’t in a church, the Foothills became an option for them. After a year of this type of fellowship going on between men in the church and it bringing other men and their families to the Foothills, Pastor then suggested putting together an organized event, and that’s how Hunters for Christ got started. Romans 8:28″And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
We’ve been holding organized shooting events and preserve hunts now for the past 17 years. Along with all the fellowship that goes on at these events, guys and families go on all types of wild game hunts together in many different states, and hit the trap and sporting clay courses as well as the rifles and pistol ranges together. Through it all the “Good News” has been spread and shared and many have been lead to the Lord through the fellowship that is the result of these events. I am so thankful that I attend a church where I have a Pastor and a friend that had the courage and that loved me enough to challenge my faith. James 1:3 “Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
Written by,
ProStaff, and HFC Founder, Gian Rossini