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What the NBA tells us about Christian leadership
It may come as a galloping surprise, but I’m a bit of a sports fanatic.
Last year, a killer website called GRANTLAND was launched by my favorite sports writer, Bill Simmons. There’s basically nothing he writes that I don’t find insightful and terribly funny. It’s a great combo. (I’m arriving at the point of this blog post, I promise).
Yesterday I was reading an article on this site by Steve Kerr, who was a guard with the Chicago Bulls that won five NBA championships. He was making a case as to why the NBA should put a rule in place that wouldn’t allow players under the age of 20 to enter the league. Wonderfully insightful, well articulated and thoughtful. You can read the whole post here. But I wanted to take a two paragraph excerpt to illuminate something I think we often screw up in the church as we look at developing young leaders.
Here’s the excerpt:
Even if today’s players are incredibly gifted, they grow up in a basketball environment that can only be called counterproductive. AAU basketball has replaced high school ball as the dominant form of development in the teen years. I coached my son’s AAU team for three years; it’s a genuinely weird subculture. Like everywhere else, you have good coaches and bad coaches, or strong programs and weak ones, but what troubled me was how much winning is devalued in the AAU structure. Teams play game after game after game, sometimes winning or losing four times in one day. Very rarely do teams ever hold a practice. Some programs fly in top players from out of state for a single weekend to join their team. Certain players play for one team in the morning and another one in the afternoon. If mom and dad aren’t happy with their son’s playing time, they switch club teams and stick him on a different one the following week. The process of growing as a team basketball player — learning how to become part of a whole, how to fit into something bigger than oneself — becomes completely lost within the AAU fabric.
And for elite players who play one college year before turning pro, that process remains stunted. That’s the single most important part of a player’s development and we ignore it like it doesn’t totally matter — basic foundation points like learning how to commit to a team, embracing the unity of a group, trusting your teammates, and working within a larger framework. Harvard coach Tommy Amaker puts it well, saying, “We’ve become a culture of skipping steps.” So many young NBA players might be physically gifted, but they skipped crucial development steps along the way. It would help if they were forced to make one or two more of those steps within the framework of the college game.
I loved that quote in the 2nd paragraph from Tommy Amaker: “We’ve become a culture of skipping steps.”
It’s so very true, isn’t?
And I see this all the time in leadership development with young leaders (heck…even older leaders!). How often do we prize talent and charisma OVER AND ABOVE wisdom and maturity? We skip the steps often of refining character.
Here’s the thing: You may get fruit with a gifted and charismatic leader. But that doesn’t mean it’s Kingdom fruit. And it doesn’t mean it’s fruit that lasts.
It just struck me in reading this article yesterday, yet again, of the importance of shaping true Christian character in the leaders we are investing in.
We just can’t afford to skip that step.
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5 Responses to What the NBA tells us about Christian leadership
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Doug,
Once again, very insightful post. To extend the basketball metaphor, I think missional communities function like college ball. They are a vital step of leadership development and the one most often skipped over. In fact, at least in my denomination, by requirement our leaders often go from membership in a congregation, straight to seminary and then come out the other end as the pastor of a congregation. It seems the equivalent of going from high school ball straight to the pros. In both, that critical stage of leadership is at best skipped and at worst not even recognized as a stage of development.
Grant - Thanks for those adds! Maybe the equivalent of a basketball practice would be that discipleship “huddle” where Jesus spent time with the 12, away from the crowds.
Sports metaphors are the 3-point plays of ecclesiology.
Great post! I read the same article in Grantland and also thought it extended as a metaphor to so many facets of our culture today. I’ve been leading music for worship in a contemporary setting for a number of years, and have felt that is an area of the church which often has many under developed leaders. Too often I come into contact with another “worship leader” with great passion for the Lord, who just lacks basic musicianship to be truly effective as a music leader; or a great musician who lacks the theological depth to use the songs of worship as the could be used.
Hopefully our churches will begin to recognize the style shouldn’t trump substance - because that is what will carry our congregations into future generations.
Doug,
Loved this thought! I have agreed with it for quite some time but have yet to have good articulation of it. I think you nailed it on the head.
What are some base principals/resources that help you disciple your people’s character into the likeness of Christ? Is there a grid you use to hold disciples accountable to the necessary steps of developing? Have any extra thoughts on what this would look like for our culture and college aged folks?
Thanks.
This will sound like a plug, but the book Mike Breen has coming out next week has a lot of keen insights on this. It’s called Multiplying Missional Leaders.