Quarterbacks

I spent much of Sunday afternoon and evening watching NFL’s Championship Sunday. The winners of Sunday’s two games will compete in a couple of weeks in the Superbowl. It was Manning versus Brady and Kaepernick versus Wilson. Those weren’t the teams that were playing, just the quarterbacks. There are over fifty players on each NFL team plus coaches and staff, but if you listened to the sport’s press there were only four players that matter – the quarterbacks. The winning or losing all was up to them. Deep inside we know that just isn’t so, but it doesn’t stop us from talking that way. Those guys get the big bucks, the glory or the blame.

It’s kind of like that in church. Ask someone about their church and you will probably mostly hear about the pastor.  If  you ask someone why they left a church, same story. . . it was all about the pastor.  Except for the big bucks, he’s a lot like the quarterback. We seem to believe that the success or failure of a church rests on the pastor, the quarterback. It’s just not so.

Just like a football team, if we expect the quarterback to do all that’s necessary, we will be disappointed. No one person has all the skills necessary to preach, pastor, counsel, administrate, and pick up the trash. A church needs folks to work with the kids, act as ushers, clean the place, welcome the guests, offer prayer support and a dozen other things. A pastor needs a strong offensive line to protect him from getting sacked. He needs players he can hand off to or throw a long pass to. When the enemy is on the move, he needs a defense to hold the other team back and give the pastor some time off the field to rest up.

Look around your church, there are things that need to be done or that could be done better. Someone is dropping the ball. It’s not the pastor. It’s someone like you who isn’t stepping up and doing a job.

Church is much more than a game, but it often seems awfully like one.

Time to play and be blessed.