Having been highly influenced by my high school coaches, I believe I am one of the rare people that left my high school days knowing exactly what I wanted to do for my profession. I loved sports and they always came natural for me, so I wanted to employ that venue to impact people in the same way my coaches shaped my life.
I was blessed to be hired and coach for twelve years under a Texas High School Coaching Hall of Fame member, Randy Allen at Abilene Cooper High School. Coach Allen was a strong follower of Christ and led his staff and teams with a conviction to be men of character. Coaching was so much more than winning games, which we often did. It was about developing men. I was fortunate to be present during a pregame Bible study when a future NFL player and Super Bowl champion, Dominic Rhodes, gave his life to Christ. It was in this coaching environment that I learned what coaching was all about. I would like to share what I have learned about the connection between coaching sports and coaching in a pastoral role.
One of the terms often used to describe the activity of discipleship is “mentoring.” According to Louis Zachary, “An old African proverb says, ‘If you want to travel fast, travel alone; if you want to travel far, travel together.’ At its core, that is what mentoring is: traveling far, together in a relationship of mutual learning.” A mentor is seen as a wise and trusted counselor. The focus of a mentor/mentee relationship is the mentor. A mentor leads the way and opens doors for the mentee to walk through. In this relationship, the mentor says, “Watch me, and I will show you how to live.” Coaching, on the other hand, is different. In this relationship the focus is on the player. The coach says, “I am watching you, and will guide you along your journey.”
It is my opinion that as pastors, it is necessary for us to be both mentors and coaches to the people we have been called to shepherd. There are times that we need to say, “Watch me” and other times when we say, “I am watching you.” For this article, I will focus my words on discipleship from a coaching perspective.
The term “coach” as we use it today is derived from old western movies where a stagecoach would pull into a town, pick people up, and take them to their desired destination. That idea eventually made its way into the athletic arena where a coach would pick up an athlete and help them get to their desired destination of becoming a great player. Coaches are charged with pulling out maximum effort from their players. They can see the potential in an athlete and help develop that player into a fine-tuned, skilled player.
As this relates to discipleship, it is my opinion that we need to consider a few factors.
During football practice, the head coach can not observe each player at practice during all of the individual drills. He had to rely on assistant coaches to assess and train his position players. The assistant coach would observe, evaluate, and teach skills needed to improve. The same is true for pastors; there is no way a Senior Pastor can observe each member of the church up close. It is necessary to have assistant coaches or small group leaders, Sunday school teachers, and Bible study leaders to observe, evaluate, and teach skills needed for spiritual growth.
For my doctoral project, I addressed this very issue. I didn’t have any way of establishing where a disciple was currently in their walk with Christ. I needed a way to determine where to pick them up and then a tool that would help get them to their destination. One of the places we find that destination mentioned is in Ephesians 4:12-14 (ESV), “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”
The tool I developed comes from Luke 2:52 and called it the 4 Square Life. In context, Jesus and his family had been in Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. Mary and Joseph were headed back home and Jesus stayed behind in the Temple listening and asking questions of the teachers. After Mary and Joseph found him, we read in verse 52 that “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” It is around these four areas of growing that I developed a tool for our small group leaders to assess a baseline of where they were “picking up” people in their group and start moving them to spiritual maturity.
- Wisdom: are they growing in applying God’s Word to their life? Are they only growing in academic knowledge of Scripture, or are they taking that knowledge and applying it?
- Stature: are they taking care of their body? “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, who you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). I understand that this Luke passage is referring to growing up, but as a disciple, we need to take care of our body.
- In favor with God: are they growing in their Bible study, prayer and serving of one another, etc.? Is their life reflective of honoring God?
- In favor with man: are they developing healthy friendships?
While coaching football, we would record how fast every freshman player could run 40 yards. We would strive to knock off 1/10 of a second each year. If he ran a 5.0 second 40-yard dash his freshman year, we wanted him to run a 4.9 his sophomore year, 4.8 his junior year, etc. In our discipleship, what goals are we setting for our people? When we help establish metrics and goals for a disciple of Christ, we can begin measuring. We developed a pre-self-assessment in the four areas of the 4-Square Life. After six months, we would ask the disciple to take the assessment again to measure growth.
Coaching our people is a way to recognize potential, drawing things out of people things that they have never seen in themselves and helping them toward maturity in Christ. I would encourage all pastors to recognize the unique position they are called to and their ability to stir up the disciples under their care to grow. You can see potential in them that they might be able to see. Helping them to discover their unique shape, as Eric Reese points out in his book S.H.A.P.E., is so important in their growth journey. (S-spiritual gift, H-heart or those things that ignite passion in their life, A-abilities, what are they naturally good at? P-personality, introvert/extrovert, type A, etc. E-life experiences).
I believe that God still has me coaching. No longer am I installing an offense with a football team. Rather, I am coaching out of a different Playbook and helping disciples of Christ move from where they are to where God wants them to get.
Pastor, I hope you will join me in that endeavor.
Joel Bundick is the pastor at Community of Grace in Centennial, CO.
