As I sit down to write this, I do so with a great deal of joy and satisfaction. Along with these emotions there’s also a bit of fear and trepidation. Let me start off by telling those of you who may not be familiar with FCA what this organization is all about.

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) is an international organization dedicated to mentoring and teaching discipline to athletic coaches in junior high schools, high schools and colleges around the world. There are approximately 1,500 full-time FCA Staff Members in the country. The vision of this ministry is to help influence coaches for Christ so they can share that with the kids they coach. And, this ministry has been very successful at what they do for many decades.

I’ve been on the professional end of the outdoor industry for 40 years now including professional hunting and fishing guiding, serving on a number of national manufacturer pro staffs, working five years on my own outdoors TV series, spending eight years on my own syndicated outdoor radio show, writing for weekly newspaper columns and four monthly periodical columns, writing on several blogs and have had two books published.

About 25 years ago, God led me to share my outdoor expertise and talents for His glory and I started my personal Outdoor Ministry. Since then I’ve spoken at hundreds of churches, men’s groups and at wild-game dinners across the country. This ministry has grown dramatically, lives have been changed, and I have been able to plant outdoors ministries in many of the churches where I have spoken.

About 18 months ago I was introduced to FCA though one of their local outdoor fundraisers. I went to an FCA pheasant hunt in Morgan County and actually got to go afield with former St. Louis Cardinals relief pitcher Todd Worrell, who is on staff with the FCA. I wrote some articles for FCA about this event and others, and have been volunteering with them ever since.

During that time I learned more what FCA was all about including how effective they are at spreading the Gospel around the Midwest, and I was able to attend several “huddle” meetings. The huddle is what the schools call their FCA student groups. But this time of observation and participation with the organization was no accident.

A few months ago, God called me to take my personal outdoor ministry to a higher level. He partnered me with FCA so that I could combine my professional outdoors experiences and my own outdoor ministry with their already very successful infrastructure, and together we have now launched the first ever FCA Outdoor Ministry. I am now the full-time director of that ministry for the region.

With over 5 million people purchasing hunting or fishing licenses in this region in 2016, you can see that my mission field is huge. By adding an outdoor component to FCA, we will then be able to include many of those millions of individuals who may not have been exposed to us before. This very large demographic has not been intentionally excluded by FCA, but has been accidentally overlooked. So, instead of unintentionally excluding many who love the outdoors, we are now going to intentionally include them.

All this being said, I’m tasked with building an FCA Outdoor Ministry home team. I’m now reaching out to you MidWest Outdoors readers, inviting you to join me in this exciting new ministry. You can reach me at mroux@fca.org.