BLOG 3/14/13. IT’S NOT WHAT TAKES PLACE IN THE LOCKER ROOM, BUT …

Here we are again in March, and some of us are looking forward to the NCAA basketball tournament. Those forthcoming games are going to be an amazing expression of well trained players, bodies well conditioned, good coaching, skill, luck, breaks of the game, and so much more. What takes place on the hardwood will have begun months, maybe years before.

For those of us who tend to inhabit church meetings (too much?), it is worth reminding ourselves that it is not what takes place in the locker room, but what takes place on the court that ultimately determines the effectiveness of a team. In the locker room the coach can rehearse strategy, alert the team to the strong and weak points of the opposing team, talk blunt talk to the players, encourage them, and give them a good mindset, and create team spirit.

But then there are those, sometimes tedious, hours of practice, perfecting plays, discerning the teams own strengths and liabilities. Some years a team will have a super-star, or two, but even super-stars depend on the rest of the team to be effective.

Finally, it all comes down to the game. This is why the team is there. This is the purpose of all that has taken place from the start.

Translate all of that into the church.

The church does not exist to have church meetings. The church is called to have feet on the   ground in the very real world, in the very real mission of God, in the midst of the humanity that Jesus came to seek and to save—God’s great search and rescue mission. The church gathers because God’s “players” need to be equipped, need to understand the setting they live in, need to be encouraged, need to be reminded of the strategy necessary to “storm the gates of hell.”

But the real game is not in church meetings, but in what happens as a result of church meetings. The pastor-teacher, equipper, coach of the Christian community is not there to entertain, but to condition the people of God mentally, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, ethically, and in their understanding of God’s glory which is to be radiantly displayed on the ground, and in a broken world, when the church is scattered into the field “which is the world” for the period between coaching (worship and instruction) sessions.

That sounds so obvious, but it is so often ignored. Church institutions can be consumers of time and energy and attention, so much so that in the real calling to Christian mission in neighborhood, office, laboratory, trade route, engagement with people … we are oblivious to the very reason we have been called, that of being “salt and light,” of having our light so shine that men and women may actually see our good works and know that God has a hand in our lives.

Pastors and teachers, who see themselves as only ecclesiastical figures who are keepers of the church institutions, are like a coach who only sees the meeting in the locker room as an end in itself. If he can only make the players happy with the locker room he/she assumes they are successful. So tragic.

Who models the faith to God’s people? Who coaches them on living it out in the realities of this fallen world? Who demonstrates grace and truth and God’s love in action? Who encourages each one of God’s “players” to pursue excellence in all that they do? Who gives them a compelling vision of what “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth …” looks like?

Duke University and Davidson College don’t get to the NCAA by hanging out in the locker room!