I wanted ministry to be like football— explosive bursts of power and drama that repeat and resolve themselves with every snap. But ministry is like baseball and I just didn’t have the attention span or natural skill set for America’s pastime. My chief athletic ability was running into people at full speed, which is hard to translate into the pastorate even as an analogy. Many unsuspecting saints endured my ministry before I realized that. May they be shown mercy. Despite my temperament, I finally accepted baseball as a nearly perfect metaphor for the slow, steady, often boring, sometimes beautiful, occasionally maddening work of ministry.
The metrics certainly fit better. Who wouldn’t be happy to hit .280 from the pulpit? Don’t kid yourself either, I bet your congregation would take that. Also like ministry the sport is a little odd. The defense has the ball, and the coach wears a uniform. And baseball loves history and tradition and hates change. Neither ministry nor baseball adapt easily to the prevailing media culture. Flashy graphics and next-gen stats are fine, but games still take too long. There can be excitement, but you need to earn it by enduring a whole lot of not-excitement. Finally, the sleepy pace is narrated by a voice that fades to the background while people surf their phone. That’s a fair description of a lot of Sundays.
It took me a long time to accept this analogy and longer still to celebrate ministry’s baseball ethos. But now I’m glad it’s not like football. Whatever baseball lacks in dynamism, it more than makes up for with the space it provides for presence, relationship, and thousands of new chances to do it right. Miracles and conversions are exciting like walk-off homers, but staying in folks’ lives for decades, knowing them deeply, and assuring them of God’s gracious offer of one at bat after another until eternity is what makes ministry truly satisfying.
So what lessons does baseball offer a ministry leader?
Frist, ministry is not fast and it’s not supposed to be, so grab some sunflower seeds and get ready to sit around. The season is long. The games are slow. You’re going to work hard from the cool days of spring through the heat of summer. If you’re blessed, you get to keep playing into your autumn years. That means you’ll need to pace your expectations. Our vocational progress is measured in steady decades, not big moments. That means your last 200 sermons or songs or small groups mean far more to the hearts of your people than the horrible (or awesome) effort you made last week.
Secondly, don’t be a loner. This is not only a team sport. The team spends a lot of time just sitting next to each other. I’ve never been in a clubhouse, but I’ve spent a lot of time with football teams. I know what it’s like to share loses, victories and endure miserable drills for a twelve-game season. I can only imagine how those relationships would intensify over 162. They are a lot of team sports, but none make the players deal with one another as much as baseball. Obviously, ministry leaders can’t sit around and shoot the breeze for hours every day. But, if we spent even a little more time together, we might learn that it’s not just us. Everyone’s playing the same slow, steady, often boring, sometimes beautiful, occasionally maddening game.
Finally, be thankful ministry isn’t like soccer. Eventually, something happens in ministry.
