Feature Profile: Justin "Fish" Robinson

It’s a Thursday afternoon and I’m sitting in Chick-Fil-A having lunch with Justin “Fish” Robinson and his two sons. It’s the only free afternoon he has all week and they’re whom he chooses to spend it with. Caleb, his youngest at 5, has gone off to play since he has finished eating. 6-year-old Adam, the oldest, remains at the table awaiting his father’s attention.

“Do you know why you had to sit here?” Fish asks.

“Because I made a bad decision.”

“And you understand why you shouldn’t have made that decision?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alright, you can go play now.”

As Adam scampers off to join his brother, Fish turns to me and explains that he tries to convey to his children why they’re being punished so that they truly understand what it is that they’ve done wrong.

“I feel like I got punished as a child just for being a little boy,” he says. “I want my children to know that I’m listening. Does that mean them arguing is going to change daddy’s mind? Not at all. But by listening we build a relationship. I want to set the standard of them being comfortable talking to me now so that they’ll be able to talk to me about bigger issues later in life.”

Fish regularly goes on mission trips to Peru, Togo in West Africa, China and Jordan. He leads a Bible study each Wednesday at a windshield repair shop that has blossomed into a weekly gathering of nearly 100 men and women. He is currently youth and college minister at North Oxford Baptist Church, assisting with the missions and transportation committees there and he also volunteers as chaplain for the Ole Miss football team and the Lafayette Co. and Oxford Law Enforcement Associations, as well as their Fire Departments. Fish fights fire with the Lafayette County Volunteer Fire Department and is a reserve fire fighter for the Oxford Fire Department.

But nothing on Fish’s resume measures up to his devotion as a father.

“The night before we went to Peru we had one final meeting. Fish hurried out of it because he’d been so busy that week preparing for the trip that he hadn’t spent enough time with his family,” said Zach Brent, a senior pharmacy major from Oxford.

“Fish has always been very dedicated to his family,” added senior accounting major Michael Buise, who also attended the Peru trip.

Also of note was Fish’s behavior during the trip. His excitement for sharing the Gospel with the people of the small village of Chirani was only matched by the eagerness that overcame him each night as he waited in line to use the satellite phone to call his wife and children.

“I feel like being a husband and father is super important,” he said. “Regardless of how late I got home the night before, I always make time to wake up in the mornings and have breakfast with my family and sometimes take the boys to school.”

Fish said he balances his obligations to his ministry and the community with time he spends with his family. He coaches all of Adam and Caleb’s sports teams such as baseball, football and soccer, and finds time at least once a week to go watch Caleb at his taekwondo class.

“People say all the time ‘I bet you don’t kill many deer when you take them hunting’ or ‘I bet you don’t catch many fish when you take them fishing,’ but that’s not what it’s all about, at all,” Fish said. “The point isn’t the deer that we kill or the fish that we catch: it’s spending time together.”