“I looked at myself and I realized I am no longer the best coach to lead this program in this current environment.” Tony Bennett, University of Virginia Head Basketball Coach.
I have long been a fan of UNC basketball and their coaches, but there is another basketball coach I’ve long counted among my favorites: Tony Bennett of the University of Virginia.
In an athletic conference of full of GOATs, Tony Bennett still stands out. His career as a high school, college, and professional basketball player is impressive, but as a coach, he is even more extraordinary.
It’s not only because his team won the NCAA title in 2019 and not only because he has been voted national coach of the year multiple times, but because he is also a most excellent human being. He has modeled good sportsmanship and humility in a field where NCAA violations and arrogance are not uncommon.
And then the NIL rules kicked in. Starting in 2021, college players could be paid for the use of their Name, Image, and Likeness – which is fair. Even Coach Bennett says so.
Also in 2021, collegiate basketball players were allowed to enter the NCAA Transfer Portal which means a player can transfer to another college without having to sit out a year before playing for their new team.
“This game, I think it’s right for players, student-athletes to receive revenue. Please don’t mistake me, I do. I think it is. But the game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It’s not, and there needs to be change. It’s not going to go back — I think I was equipped to do the job here the old way. That’s who I am, and that’s how it was.” Coach Tony Bennett
I can imagine that it’s hard to coalesce a team of college students while some players are making serious money with shoe deals and others might be leaving just as the team starts to gel.
Believe me, I know the feeling. I once served a congregation just outside D.C. which we often called “a way station.” We were the church they joined fresh out of college or grad school when they moved to Our Nation’s Capital to change the world. But just as we’d equip a team of leaders to lead, they would move “back home” to Nebraska or Kentucky or Ohio. Or they would decide to settle in the suburbs where they could afford a home with a yard. I kind of had abandonment issues.
2021 was a year of dramatic shifts not only for college basketball. Every profession and every community changed forever because of COVID. Those post-COVID shifts deeply impacted The Church and professional ministry.
It’s been true for a long time that clergy need different skills in 21st Century ministry than were needed in the 20th Century. In addition to preaching, teaching, administration and pastoral care chops, 21st Century ministers need so many things I’ve been writing about for a while now.
But there is an important skill all pastors need in these particular days of political division, unprecedented misinformation/disinformation and general meanness:
We need pastors who know how to be conciliators. In other words, we need pastors who can not only read the room; they also know how to calm anxious people and mediate pot-stirrers. We need pastors who are equal opportunity offenders in terms of secular politics – because the Bible is an equal opportunity offender. (Jim Wallis: God is not a Republican or a Democrat.) But they can be pastors to almost every kind of personality and political persuasion.
We need pastors with the energy to coalesce a congregation of independent-minded, individualistic, Biblically semi-literate, serenity-challenged individuals who live in a world where people are generally out for themselves. The largest generations living today are basically distrustful.
Today an unprecedented number people are incapacitated by fear, anxiety, abandonment, discomfort, and insecurity.
Again – we need spiritual leaders who can lead the Church in the old ways but also help congregations become spiritually healthy today. This is not for the fainthearted. To paraphrase Coach Tony Bennett:
“The Church is not in a healthy spot. It’s not, and there needs to be change. It’s not going to go back — we must be equipped to do the job here in new ways.”
It’s a rare gift to work with leaders like Coach Bennett who knows when it’s time to step away because things have changed and he’s not up for it.
It’s a rare gift to work with leaders in the Church who know when it’s time to step away because things have changed and they are not up for it.
It’s a rare gift to work with leaders in the Church who are very good at the classic duties of a Pastor AND they know how to coalesce a community of diverse people into a congregation of effective followers of Jesus.
Such gifted Church leaders are out there. We need more of them.
A Church for Starving Artists 