Coaching Basketball and Preaching

I've been thinking a lot on how coaching and being a pastor are similar. No I don't stand in front of everyone and start yelling my thoughts, single people out in order to get them to focus, or call a time out in the middle of a service trying to regroup after things start off wrong. That is not what happens when I step up to the pulpit on Sunday. I don't think I would be at a church long if I did those things. The similarities have taken me by surprise though. 

The first thing is that you have to understand who is on your team. You have to understand who the people are that are going to be your all stars, the do it all people. They are the ones others look up to and want to be like. They are the major voices in the field, and can rally the troops when the coach's words are just hot air. But you may only get a couple of these types of players, and so you must work with who you have. There a position and role players. They are adept at key skills, but maybe not so much at a all things you hoped. They still play a key role. In a church we have that person who is great at praying. Oh man can they pray! The person who walks around an you can just see the Holy Spirit coming off of them. We call that sweat in basketball. You can just see how hard they work, and even if they are not the star of the show, they make others better because they are there. We know the people in the church who come in on a Saturday and fold the bulletin, or help with nursery on Sunday, or the one who cooks the best and makes the absolute best double chocolate fudge brownies at the county fair. You know who I am talking about. Then you have the bench. The players who do not always play lots of minutes, but they encourage, they support, and they lift up the rest of the team. They are just as important, because they give life to an otherwise tired out group. They cannot do it all, they may not have the energy to do a lot, but what they do is valuable just the same. Without them, there would not be the little things. All are important parts of a team, but also for a church. No one person can do it all, but together we make an unbeatable team.

After you have figured out who is on your team, you set up a game plan. Now this is the direction that your teams is to go. What do plays do they run, what is our main objective? How are we going to accomplish what we have set out to do? The same questions get asked in the church. We know our opponents, and who we have to strategize against. The enemy coach is the devil, and his team is sin. Sin is the dream team that all other teams want to beat, but never can. Sin is the undisputed champ of the world, and we are strategizing to beat them. Like any popular sports team, Sin influences all things in the world. It is a household name, culture revolves around it, and it destroys lives. The world gets lost in the idolatry of sports, society is so taken with sin that things that the world says is right are actually wrong, sports are more important than church on Sunday, youth group, etc, and sports cause some people to gamble and bet with both their health and money and it destroys lives.

All teams think about that next recruiting class, that next grade, "when they are in high school," and that "quarterback of the future" our favorite team just drafted. Oh man, we will be able to win then. That hope is Jesus Christ for the church. We know that he is our  superstar, and the one that has dethroned the champ before, but what about now, until he comes and completely defeats sin and there is no more?

That is why we have a game plan and we play our hardest. But I have seen in both sports and churches the hope that says, "When we get a good coach/leader, all this will come easy." Ha, if it was only that easy. The coach can do all that they can, but unless the team buys into the system there will not be a following of said leadership. You can have the best game plan in the world, frankly you could have the other teams playbook, but unless your team does what you say and lives through the drive to do what has been asked of them, you might as well sit down, because you can't win that way. 

Coaches motivate, coaches lead, coaches can lay out the perfect game plan, but it comes down to the players' hearts and attitude. Energy, passion, and vision come from coaches and are instilled by them, but the drive has to be there too. A good leader cannot do it all, but leaders that live on the court, the court of life, who live and breathe the vision given to them, they will create real change.