Thursday, October 7, 2010

The Pittsburgh Steelers


I know that the title of this one might polarize some people. After living in Dallas, Tx for nearly 4 years, I have come to find out that there are several people in this world who don't share my enthusiasm for the greatest NFL Franchise of all time. That is ok, in fact I am perfectly fine with fans of other organizations who don't like the Steelers, but I heard something this morning on the way into work that caused me to like the Steelers even more.
Mike Tomlin, the Head coach of the Steelers was being interviewed by Mike & Mike of ESPNRadio this morning. The hosts were asking Coach Tomlin about his teams success without their starting QB Ben Roethlisberger who was suspended for 4 games because he violated the NFL's player conduct policy (whether you think Big Ben is a good or bad person is irrelevant to this discussion). Coach Tomlin said that "we are measured by winning and it is never graded on a curve". He was letting the interviewers know that his team knew their responsibility was to win football games, no matter who was "under center".
What if we as church leaders operated like that? What would it look like if we built our ministries not on personality but on teams? Ministry today is so personality driven, it is easy to think that everything rises and falls on one key player. A lot of times, this is true, and the loss of a key team member will set the team back for a little while, but what if we built our ministries with the depth of a major league bull pen? When the "starter" stepped out, we would have someone right there ready to step in. Just a thought!
Go Steelers!