Celebrated football coach Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers famously said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up.”
Sickness, suffering, discord, disruption and debate has knocked down many in 2020; including churches.
One example of that knock down to churches was quantified in a recent Gallup poll finding. A March 2021 poll found that for the time since church membership was tracked in 1937, less than half of Americans belong to a local church. The report found that, “In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.”¹
This year, 2021, presents the opportunity for churches to get back up. Therefore, churches in 2021 are in a rebuilding year.
In sports, a team that is in a rebuilding year commits to: focusing on the fundamentals of the game, building team unity, working on physical strength and stamina on the team, and introducing new recruits to the team’s values and goals. While wins are sought after in the current season, a team in rebuilding is preparing for success years down the road. Coaching through a rebuilding year requires a wise and experienced coach who helps the team envision and prepare for success, without the momentum and fanfare of immediate victory. Most coaches agree that rebuilding a team takes two to three years.
Vince Lombardi’s experience in rebuilding
Vince Lombardi was a coach who knew how to rebuild football teams—from high school, to college, to NFL teams—to great victory. As Assistant Coach for the football team at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Lombardi coached the team to a 7-1-1 record, two years after a cheating scandal removed 43 out of 45 players in the 1951 season. After three years on the coaching staff for the New York Giants, an NFL team previously plagued by defeats, the team secured the National Championship.
It was with the Green Bay Packers, however, that Lombardi showed his true prowess to rebuild. Lombardi arrived at Green Bay in 1959 for his first season as a Head Coach. The 1958 squad had a terrible season with only one victory. In only a year he coached the team toward a 7-5 record. The year after he coached the team to the Western Conference Championship. Three years after arriving at Green Bay, the Packers won the national championship in 1961. The team went on to win four more championships in the six subsequent seasons (1962-1967).
Lombardi and the football teams he coached are proof that rebuilding can be done.
As churches face a year of rebuilding, there is some inspiration we can derive from Lombardi. Three pieces of his advice are in bold below.
Churches cannot place their hope in the strategies or folklore of a football team. Yet church leaders can use the analogy of a coach and a football team to understand how the Lord is leading his team (the Church) to victory through rebuilding.
May the following coaching advice equip you to coach the ministry or church you lead through the rebuilding year of 2021.
#1. “Success demands singleness of purpose.”
In 2021, many people, both Christians and non-Christians alike, are asking questions about their priorities and schedules. For Christian leaders, successful coaching/ discipleship in this season (and every season) helps their members to focus their priorities, time and money on what Jesus commands of them.
Jesus simplified the purpose of his followers by saying: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”³
In a rebuilding year, churches have an opportunity to retool their liturgies, schedules and ministries in order to fulfill those two commandments. Last year provided a virtual clean slate where everything can now be re-evaluated and nothing is considered ‘something we have always done.’ Let us choose to rebuild with sole focus on Christ and his Word.
#2. “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”
A healthy church is always building, unifying and strengthening its team for the singular purpose to glorify God. The triune God is himself a team. The Father, Son and Spirit are a team united in their diversity while also having separate and synergistic roles. God designed his Church to be a team.
If you belong to a local church, you have been on the membership team from the first day of your membership. And every healthy church has teams within teams: the children’s ministry team, the greeting team, the deacon team, the music team, the elder team, and so on. In a year of rebuilding, focusing on the cohesion, chemistry and common calling on every team is vitally important.
Ezra 3 captures team dynamics in a rebuilding year. Firstly there is great celebration, “And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.”⁴ Yet there are two seemingly contradictory emotional responses. “But many of the priests and Levites and heads of father’s houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of his house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping.”⁵ Rebuilding is a complex emotional process.
Leaders (coaches) who can distinguish between those weeping and those rejoicing in this time, and coach them separately, will help their teams rebuild more healthfully.
For the veterans of your church, providing for time and strategies to lament and heal is required. There is grieving over those who have left in 2020, there are scars from the many tough conversations, there is disappointment to process, and there is the realization that the church will never quite be the same. For those newer to the church, there is discipleship and leadership training needed and vision to impart.
It is a difficult tension to manage. The energy, momentum and zeal that newcomers bring is so encouraging and can lead you to move quickly. However, the veterans (even the most resilient of the group) need time and compassion to heal. The wisdom of Ezra is to continue to lead all people to “praise the Lord” as the rebuilding continues, while leading individuals in what they need in this season.
#3. “Leaders aren’t born, they are made.”
Especially in a rebuilding year, leadership training is vital. Your leadership team likely looks different than it did in February 2020. Therefore, now is the time to step up to invest, train and seek the Lord about who he is calling to rebuild the church at this time. I have been surprised by the composition of leaders this year as some have really stepped forward and some have stepped back. How do you “make” leaders to rebuild the church? The Book of Ezra is a helpful guide.
Well before the rebuilding of the temple took place, the Lord had been “making” Ezra into a leader.⁶ While living in captivity in Babylonia, 900 miles away from Jerusalem, the Lord led Ezra to “set his heart to study the Law of the Lord . . . and to teach his statues and rules in Israel.”⁷ Ezra also knew the “hand of the Lord his God was on him.”⁸
When the opportunity to rebuild came, Ezra responded with great diligence and boldness to fulfill the call upon his life. The years of preparation provided Ezra with wisdom and winsomeness, both practically and spiritually, to lead the Lord’s people to rebuild the temple and their lives around the Word of God.
Ezra was “made” into a leader even as many of his Jewish contemporaries fell away from the faith or fell into spiritual lethargy.⁹ In 2021, many people have left the church and/or have fallen into spiritual tiredness. Ezra’s story should build faith to continue to train leaders and trust that God will continue to call and prepare his people (even if just a remnant) for the work of rebuilding.
Even Jesus, the perfect human leader, “learned obedience”¹⁰ and thus was “made” into a leader. His leadership journey included: studying the holy texts,¹¹ developing discipline through a trade, being baptized,¹² knowing the call of the Father,¹³ enduring testing,¹⁴ being empowered by the Holy Spirit,¹⁵ and being refined as he himself led, discipled, preached, and faced opposition.
Fittingly, leadership training for this rebuilding season, whether formal or informal, should include the same patterns we see in Christ’s leadership development. Paired with this training there should be an assurance that God is sovereign and moving to prepare men and women to fulfill the call upon their life to build his church as he sees fit—as seen in Ezra’s and Jesus’ life.
Conclusion
In this rebuilding year, we can draw some inspiration from Lombardi. His rebuilding efforts led to great success to the point that they renamed Lambeau Field where the Packers play, “The House that Lombardi Built.”
What we need in this season is beyond what inspiration alone can provide; we need great assurance that only God’s Word and Spirit can provide.
In the empowerment of the Spirit, let us rebuild the House the Lord; not for our name, for Christ’s name be the glory.
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¹ Jeffrey Jones, “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time,” Gallup, March 29, 2021, https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx.
² “Vince Lombardi,” Britannica, accessed April 7, 2021.
³ Matthew 22:38-39
⁴ Ezra 3:11
⁵ Ezra 3:12
⁶ Wayne Burgaroff, “Ezra: An Example of Leadership,” Calvary Baptist Theological Journal, Spring 1988, 48, https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/cbtj/04-1_043.pdf.
⁷ Ezra 7:10
⁸ Ezra 7:6
⁹ Burgaroff, “Ezra,” 45.
¹⁰ Hebrews 5:8
¹¹ Luke 2:46
¹² Luke 3:21
¹³ Luke 3:22
¹⁴ Luke 4: 1-12
¹⁵ Luke 3:14 and throughout his life