On Sunday I linked to Adam McLane’s post on using a new metaphor for small churches by shifting from business to farming language.
I would like to propose another possible way of describing a community of faith that has been on my mind lately. Recently, we have had a lot of sports conflicts with various youth ministry events, which is bound to happen. That isn’t surprising. But what I have been noticing (which has always been the case, I just haven’t picked up on it) is that the reason students and parents give for choosing sports over church events is that “We don’t want to let our team down.” By a team member not being at a game, the whole team loses out; they are depending on everyone giving their all to succeed.
On the other hand, when people haven’t been to church in a while, we usually say, “We missed you.” There is oftentimes no sense that the mission of the church was hindered because someone wasn’t there. We just missed that person’s company.
What if we started using team language to describe our churches? What if we had a mission that was going to take everyone contributing towards in order to achieve it? What if someone not contributing meant that they were letting the whole church down because their contribution was so valuable and important? Isn’t the church called to be a team?
Hey Matt, good word buddy. There is a whole lot of truth to that! We should get together again and catch up. I want to hear how things are going for you and your church. God bless!
Chase
Hey Chase, thanks for dropping by. Check your Facebook.
Great thoughts. I think you’re onto something that people can understand. I find it interesting that parents are totally willing to mess over a youth ministry for the sake of a soccer team… mostly because they paid $200 for the kid to be on the team. Weird how they don’t make that same connection between what they invest in the church.
Yeah, I didn’t talk about the money aspect of sports teams, which does bring a certain dynamic into it. However, a lot of sports are done for free through the school, so that doesn’t always come into play. I’ve had some conversations with friends about charging for things like Confirmation to combat this, but it always left a sour taste in our mouth.
I think the real value of thinking in terms of team is that is pushes us to think towards mission. You can’t be a team of contributors unless you are working towards something. Often, the team language isn’t even an option because of the lack of mission.