November 27, 2023 - The Design of the Game (Part 3: Biblical Coaches are Decisive and Deliver!)

The last few days have reminded me of an important truth… I’ll set the stage, as usual, with some news from the wide world of sports…

The past couple of weeks, I have noticed the firing of many football coaches. Most of them involved support staff / assistant coaches that were deemed to not be getting the job done.  And a few cases involved head coaches getting axed… (Frank Reich got fired from the Carolina Panthers after just 11 games as their head coach…)

I want to focus for just a moment on the assistants getting fired. Say it was an offensive coordinator… this guy is getting axed due to decisions he was making that players were not executing well. The problem is that ultimately the head coach still had to approve of what the OC was doing, yet not held responsible. There is the old phrase, “The Buck Stops Here!” Good leadership requires an understanding of where the buck stops…

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in plurality of leadership for wisdom and direction, but at some point someone has to be responsible… This came to mind over the past couple of days that I spent in a hospital. Let’s just say there was a lot of frustration on the customer service and communication side of things… frustration that easily could have been directed at nurses and support staff, even though it was about things in which they had no authority. And then when I did talk with some brilliant, well-trained specialists in their respective fields, I was told over and over again that they didn’t have the authority to discharge me. Each time a high level member of the team said things like, “I’m good with you going home as long as so-and-so signs off on it.” When working with my nurse this afternoon he stated that I was “discharged if…” and then read stipulations of approval from these different doctors. The nurse simply stated that discharging me was above his pay-grade. Eventually he got each member of the physician coaching staff to answer the “if questions.”

When there is not a clear leader, it is hard to get things accomplished in a timely manner. “Ifs” are not good leadership strategies. (In honor of the season I’ll remind us how Don Meredith answered Howard Cosell in an interview in December of 1970: “if ifs ands and buts were candies and nuts, we’d all have a merry CHRISTmas!”)

We have been talking the past few weeks about The Design of the Game… How God intended for Team Jesus to play the game. This week the plan is to talk about strong, decisive coaching/leadership. Decisions are made based upon either the methodology and/or the message…

Well The Playbook (Bible) gives us many leadership lessons… In Ephesians 4 it says: Verse 15b… we should "…grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ –"!

I realize that it sounds like I am just being spiritual in talking about the headship of Christ… but this statement was preceded by the how to in doing this, by being grounded in the decisiveness of the Scriptures as the Word of the Head of the church… that we would “no longer  be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting… (Verse 14)

So the first rule of leadership, be it a church… a home… a team… etc., is that ultimately the buck stops at Jesus and His word! When ifs ands and buts carry us away from His truth we are in trouble!

And as for the decision making of leadership, the Head (Jesus) is clear… “But let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’, ‘no’. For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37)

And before you think this is just about the words we speak, this is Jesus following up the command to “perform your oaths to the Lord.” (Matthew 5:34) That word “perform” literally means to deliver…

In Biblical leadership “the buck stops” with Jesus and His word!

In Biblical leadership, leaders are decisive and deliver!