They Call You Coach- Reestablish the Foundation- TUESDAY

Back to a Vince Lombardi quote. Vince was ticked off with his professional football players.  They had become lazy, undisciplined, and had lost.  He said that they needed to go back to the basics of football and build a correct foundation because they appeared as if they didn't know what football was all about and what their purpose was as players.  He told them it would start immediately.  In a cynical fashion, he then held a football up to the players and said, "Gentlemen, this is a football."  He then went on to describe its engineering and its purpose.  He got as basic as could be and then built a foundation under those guys about the technical aspects of football that they had forgotten.  From this point, they would become a World Champion football team.

I am amazed with how the basics of Christianity that was so clear early on about a relationship with Christ through the Holy Spirit has been replaced by religious activity or modern day forms of "church" that try to reinterpret scripture to make it socially relevant.  We see supporting and maintaining our forms and our modern day agendas as our mission, rather than being right with God and being right for Him.  Now don't get me wrong about the need for Christians to show our society Christ by our actions, by the way we serve, and especially the poor in our society.  This is a stark contrast in a dog-eat-dog world and our Christian works point to Christ.  But, our busy works can also push out the intimate fellowship with Christ if they become more important to us than Him.  This change of focus will then lead to the condition mentioned in scripture of, "having a form of godliness but denying its power" (2 Timothy 3:5).  Therefore we must see our mission to keep what we do about Jesus, and help people go to him, rather than our programs, or even ourselves.

So this is a key thought.  If we want to go back to the basics of our faith so we can see what we may have lost, let's look at the early Christians, for after all, many of those people would have seen, heard and touched Jesus personally.  They would have heard Jesus speaking about bringing glory to God as their mission.  He would have said loving Him with all their heart and loving their neighbor as much as self would be their mission.  He would have said that making disciples would be their mission.  He would have said that the ability to do these things asked of them, and many more things, would be enabled only by their abiding relationship with Him.  These things would have been clear to those early pioneers of the Church.  Those people had yet to develop forms and traditions to box them in.  So they didn't struggle to maintain traditions or church forms.  They would have been swimming in the freedom from religious legalism and would have celebrated every day that their redemption had been secured by Jesus.  This would have brought praise and thanksgiving to their lips, and, by the way, praise and thanksgiving of Jesus Christ with any expression that is used is not a form of worship.  It is the heart and core of worship.  When did it become a "my way or the highway"option for those who do not like or permit any form of worship except their own?  When did leaving our church become an option because we do not enjoy the youth led worship, and feel uncomfortable with the loudness?  When did we see maintaining our forms more important than building up those young men and women to become godly followers of Christ?  But this is what we do when we start to exalt our forms over our purpose and choose to stay in the stands as a "fan."   When did taking our self out of the game rather than playing ball with younger members of our team become an option?  Since I am encouraging Christian fans to become players or coaches by looking at our time and station of life for re-investing our life, I must address the most glaring limitations I see.  I see older believers making themselves irrelevant to the younger generations around us not because we are not wanted, but rather because we take our self to the stands.  So let's go back to some fundamentals to help with understanding a generation in great need of a life coach, and the exhortation that you and I play for Jesus as a coach that He raises up for those younger players.

The statement that "the basic core values and needs of this generation and an older generation are different" is a myth.  Have you forgotten what a challenge your generation was to the one before it?  We were misunderstood by our previous generation as greatly as this one is today.  It is just the way a society grows into maturity.  Each generation will always appear different to the previous.  So dispel the myth about differences and concentrate on the challenges this generation has that we did not have.  Then we can put our coach's hat on and enter the stadium to win some games for Jesus.

The basic core needs of all humans for all times are the same.  The basic pursuits to satisfy those needs are the same.  The basic fears and basic physical and mental limitations are the same.  If you or I were magically transported from our teens, twenties and thirties from our era to a modern day era, we would be initially astounded by the technology and moral decay and instability of the home and society as a whole.  But we would likely react to those things as any normal young adult would do now days.  Why is this? There are no differences in the core needs of people.  So, nail this down.  It is not the core needs or core pursuits that intimidate us or turns us away from them.  It is simply the form the younger generation operates in, and our unwillingness to go into it to help them where they need help.

As a spiritual life coach, how do I relate then to this younger generation?  Most importantly, we must be unwilling to be resistant to a younger generation because "they are not like us," and instead be focused on the core needs of the person.  As an older guy, we have a tremendous amount of experience equity that a younger generation respects.  Make that your strength in investing your life in a younger person.  Don't disqualify yourself by making it about his generation adapting to your preferred form.  We must be adaptive with their forms of worship, their music, their likes and dislikes, and not be intimidated by their technical savvy.  We do this because those are only outward forms of a person.  But the inner struggles in a younger man, the areas that you and I have processed through in countless battles in surrendering them to Christ, is new to those same battles.  He needs an experienced life coach to help him process through them.   How do we do this?  Well, Lombardi told a younger generation of athletes they needed to get back to the basics of football to understand how to play the game and win it.  We need to do the same.  We get a young man back to the basics with building a life foundation based on an intimate, abiding relationship with Christ.  That is where we start.  It is about taking him to close proximity with Christ.  That is what he is longing for, just like you do.