Church run like football
Should a church run like football? I have been thinking how crazy it has been in the football world lately. We can tell there is no recession/depression in football as the average salaries continue to escalate for the head coach and now the assistants are getting in on the act.
There is pressure to perform obviously and your shiny new six year contract can be terminated in two years. No doubt it is a high risk high gain arena. Now I have been thinking that the Church could be doing better.
I had the pleasure of reading Michael Catt reminiscing about the Ole Miss glory days and how the church could be better. He had some very valid points as usual. If a football coach suffered from declining attendance and few baptisms than they would be asked to clear the desk out.
It is amazing how corporate many churches have become. Some are church run like football.There is even debate out there whether they should utilize metrics or not. I will give credit to Bishop Willimon he certainly displays it nicely and easy to understand. There is no doubt that churches in Northern Alabama are in a high gain high risk arena.
The biggest question is what are we doing in the church today? Is there any wonder why memberships are dying and the church is in decline in the United States. While tracking attendance, baptisms, and tithing is very important I believe part of the importance comes from the reality of paid staff.
We have to justify the need for paid staff so we try and emulate the world and put corporate practices in place. Let us put the brakes on that practice now! It is not the Bishop, Pope, or your local pastor that should be running the church. It is all the members of the church that should be running it.
We should not be emulating the world and the Church run like football should not happen. One part that you can not capture in metrics are the seeds planted. Sometimes we may have placed a mustard seed, but if we put it in an area that has fertile soil and we get the rain it will grow. Some seeds take longer than others.
I think we need to get back to preaching like John the Baptist or even the circuit riders of the old Methodist fame. I think the bare minimum that is needed in today’s church is Revival.