So often sports, leadership, and church come together to provide some incredible teaching opportunities. I believe the college football national championship game this past Monday night is an example of this. Today and tomorrow, we will look at a few lessons we as Christians can learn from game. Today we will look at two points, then tomorrow we will look at two more.
- Be who you are (Gal. 1:10). Alabama wasn’t going to try to be Georgia, they weren’t going to try to be Clemson, or Florida State, or anyone else. Alabama was going to be Alabama. They knew who they were. In the same way, Westlake must be Westlake. We can’t try to be Halesford or Eastlake or Cross Pointe. Those are great churches with great leaders. But we aren’t them. Paul in writing to the Corinthians said, “What I am saying is this: each of you says, ‘I am with Paul’, or ‘I am with Apollos’, or ‘I’m with Cephas’, or ‘I’m with Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was it Paul who was crucified for you? Or were you baptized in Paul’s name? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say you were baptized in my name.” God has given us a mission field, and He has given us gifted people with the proper spiritual gifts to reach that mission field. Westlake should be grateful and confident that we are who God is making us into.
- Have a plan (Prov. 24:3-5). Scripture is full of verses that talk about the wisdom of planning. As the old saying goes, “people don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.” One of my favorite verses in Proverbs is Proverbs 11:14 that says, “Without guidance, people fall, but with many counselors there is deliverance.” Not only should we plan, but we should run those plans by spiritually mature people. The head coach has an overall strategy for what he wants his team to be. The offensive and defensive coordinators are hired to accomplish the vision. They have their own plans, but they make sure that their plans align with the overall vision for the team. This is how our staff should function as well. The head coach doesn’t micromanage. Instead, he empowers the other coaches to come up with their game plan within the framework of the overall vision for the team. Then they have coaches under the coordinators that work with the team to put the game plan into practice to prepare for the game. The other side of it is when the position coaches implement the coordinators plan in practice, they have the power to go back to the coordinator and say “hey this isn’t working.” Then if necessary the coordinator has the power and right to go to the coach and say, “coach I know what you want to do, but we don’t have the players to do it.”
I hope you enjoyed looking at these first two points. Hopefully they challenged you in a few ways as well. Tomorrow we will look at two more lessons we can learn to help us in our walk with Christ and challenge us to become stronger leaders.