Seeing the Game Away from the Ball

Stepping back to listen deeper

When my daughter turned four, I asked her if she wanted to join a soccer team. She emphatically said yes. When I went to sign her up on the website there was a little box that asked if I’d be interested in volunteering as her coach. I was in the middle of Ted Lasso Season 2 and was feeling inspired, so I clicked yes.

I got pretty into it (as I tend to do with these kind of things). I bought a whistle and one of those dry erase clipboards with the graphic of the soccer field. I vastly overestimated the amount of strategy that four-year-olds were ready for.

A few years ago, I wrote a newsletter about an article in the New Yorker that described how Lionel Messi, the greatest soccer player in the world, walks the field and maps out the opposing team’s defense. The article contained a little nugget that I’ve wanted to come back to ever since.

In the article, the author gives some advice for watching soccer,

“The idea is this: to apprehend the main thrust of the narrative, to really wrap your mind around what’s going on, you must shift your focus from the foreground to the background.”

The average fan watching soccer follows the ball with their eyes. If the ball goes in, then your team gets a goal. If your team gets more goals than the other team, then you win. So, following the ball with your eyes makes a lot of sense.

However, when you’re watching professional soccer there’s intricate strategy happening across the field. There are formations, shifting player positioning, presses, overlapping runs, attacks and counter attacks. It’s a beautiful and complicated game and the only way to understand the deeper strategies at work is to take your eye off the ball and see the whole field.

Despite my dreams of imparting soccer strategy upon the kids, after a few weeks I felt good when my players were going for the ball and not using plastic cones to pretend to be turtles.

Deep Listening Requires Taking a Step Back

After 15 years of ministry, I’ve seen that most pastors and church leaders have their eye on the ball. Church leadership is demanding work. There are countless duties like sermon and worship prep, programs to plan and execute, administrative duties, fundraising, property management, volunteer coordination, visitations, dealing with difficult church members, just to name a few. With all of these demands it makes sense that our eyes are kept on the ball.

For many of us our frantic busyness is not producing the results we’ve hoped for. Many of our churches are rapidly declining, many congregations are disconnected from their central calling, many churches are failing to pass the faith onto the next generation, and many have become isolated from their immediate neighbors. I’m not saying we’re pretending to be turtles, but we desperately need to take a step back, to see the whole field, and begin to adjust our strategy.

A Season of Pause

Winter is a season of pause and contemplation. The darkness and cold weather have encouraged us to slow down for millennia. Once the busyness of Advent and Christmas has passed perhaps it’s time you took a step back and did some deep listening. What would it take for your church to step back and shift its strategy? Maybe it’s time for you and your congregation to slow down, pause some programming, and listen to God and your neighbors this winter.