FCA Outdoors host event with Jimmy Houston

Published 9:12 am Tuesday, July 29, 2025

THOMASVILLE – The South Georgia Fellowship for Christian Athletes Outdoors held their outdoors extravaganza on Thursday night at the Deep South Fairgrounds.

The event featured several outdoor vendors who held special sales for the event, along with a live auction selling several items with proceeds going to the organization.

Dinner was provided by Maryland Fried Chicken of Cairo.

The main attraction of the event was guest speaker Jimmy Houston. 

Houston, known as “America’s favorite fisherman” has been on TV since 1980 and for 21 years held the number one outdoors show for ESPN before moving to NBC sports and now CBS sports. 

He talked about how athletics teaches kids several life lessons but enjoying the outdoors teaches morals.  

“You learn a lot from athletics, there’s no doubt about that,” Houston said. “It teaches a lot of life values, but you do not learn about the moral and ethical values you would being out in the woods.”

In 1983, while competing at a B.A.S.S tournament; Houston, alongside other fellow anglers, started a Bible study.

“I had a few friends that were in a Bible study group who played professional baseball….” Houston recalled. “And I thought, if they can do that we should be doing that in fishing.”

A devout Christian, Houston felt that God put it on his heart to start a Bible study group.

“In fishing, a national tournament takes about 10 days. So most of us missed a couple of Sundays at Church, so God told me to start this Bible study group.”

After the first meeting, a friend of Houston’s came to him with an idea.

“We had 13 people show up during the first tournament we did it at,” Houston said. “My friend Charlie Campbell said, “Jimmy, we need to call this up, we have all these patches and sponsors that we put on our stuff,” we need to put something on our shirt that shows we are Christians out here fishing at these tournaments.”

Gathering some fellow anglers together, Houston tried to come up with a name for this group, and when they could not brainstorm a name, Houston turned to Homer Circle, a good friend of his.

“I called my buddy Homer Circle and told him we need a name and he was good with words, and he said, “Why don’t you call it the Fellowship of Christian Anglers Society?”

To this day the Fellowship of Christian Anglers Society or “FOCAS” continues to operate and thrive, holding Bible studies as well as tournaments for their members. 

Houston closed his speech by talking about the importance of what FCA Outdoors is doing and how easy it is to teach kids about God by using the outdoors.

“It’s easy to get kids to go out and enjoy the outdoors,” Houston said. “But when you do that, you also at the same time can explain to them about God’s creation.”