Leadership & Life Lessons from My First (and Probably Only) Season of Coaching T-Ball

The Fightin' Super Tigers -- Champs!

I was going to help coach.  You know, be an assistant.  I had two boys that would be playing together.  One 4 and one 6, at the time.  But, I had two other sons playing flag football, and it was a busy season at church.  Then I got the call:  "We need one more head coach.  Would you be willing to coach?"  I love my community, so I begrudgingly agreed.  I really, really didn't have time for this.  And I'm a football guy.  I quit baseball after the 8th grade and most of my glory on the diamond happened in church softball leagues.  But I know enough to coach Kindergartners.  And I know a lot about kids.  So I did it.  We had a blast, gave ourselves a cool name (Fightin' Super Tigers), made a lot of new friends and good memories and won the league championship, with a 14-0 record.  I was so proud of our boys, and I learned a good deal about life, parenting, leadership and even a little about church.

• You can't change the past, so why rehash it.  Point to a better future.  T-ballers make mistakes all the time.  They throw it when they should hold it, hold it when they should throw it.  They run the wrong direction and tag the wrong runner.  After a mistake and play has stopped, if you yell at a T-baller, they're just going to cry.  The only thing you can do is point to them to the next opportunity.  "Hey, next time throw it here."  "Next time get your glove down."  "Next time, run to this base."  People are the same.  They don't need our judgment, but they do need people who care about the them to point toward a better future.  The church could learn something from this.  We need to stop yelling at the world for the mistakes it's made and point toward a better future with Jesus.  People need hope, not condemnation. 
• There are often a lot of voices telling us what to do.  Be sure and listen to the right ones.  People are screaming like crazy in the stands when a fielder has the ball in T-ball, telling them what to do with it.  About half of those are right.  Kids have to learn to trust their coach, which says a lot about authority but also listening to the right voices in life.  All of us have voices telling us a lot of things.  Not all of them are telling us to throw it in the right direction.  Who are the influences you're listening to?
• Every organization needs team members to play their role well.  My youngest wasn't crazy about playing right field and batting last, but he was very inexperienced and the smallest guy on the team.  There is only one circle (pitcher position) and only one kid can play it.  You have to have others do their part.  I heard one comment after we won the championship game that our outfield won the game because they got the ball in to the infield after every ball hit to them.  This is an accomplishment in T-ball.  But the 'role players' made the difference in the championship.
• Listen to experts and learn from them.  Like I said, I don't know much about baseball, but last year, we played on a T-Ball team that went 15-0 with one of the best coaches my boys have ever had.  He knew baseball and I came home after the 1st practice and said, "We're going to be pretty good."  I modeled our practices and gameday routine after him.
• Winning is fun and creates organizational momentum.  The bottom line is that winning is fun.  We went 14-0.  People say the kids don't care about winning, but after every game they were shouting "We won, we won, we won!"  They came up with this on their own.  We had fun anyway, and I've been a part of teams that had a lot of fun, kids got better and we didn't win a lot of games.  Winning isn't everything, especially at this age.  But, winning creates organizational momentum.  When staffs, businesses, teams, churches, or organizations don't ever feel like they are winning, it's hard to create momentum.  So, is your organization winning?
• People don't mind working hard if they they believe in the vision.  Our last week of the season, after a 2 1/2 month season, we had games on Monday, Thursday and Saturday in the end of year tournament.  I scheduled a practice on Friday night.  Nearly all the team showed up and I think it made the difference in the championship game.  We didn't play great that Thursday, and we needed to work to play better.  The vision was not to win.  The vision was to make sure we play our best.  That's all we can control.  We needed to practice to be our best.  Parents bought into the vision of excellence.
• Sometimes others have to step up.  We had games where kids were sick, injured our out of town and kids had to switch positions.  They did great.  Families, churches, businesses, and teams all have times others have to unexpectedly step up.  Nearly every game a kid who wasn't one of our biggest hitters got a key hit and got on base we needed to avoid an out.  If your organization has a mantra of "That's not my job," that's dangerous territory.  People have to step up and share responsibilities if an organization is going to be successful.
• People skills matter.  I don't know baseball, but I know how to motivate young people to be the best they can be.  I truly believe that in our culture today, you have to have people skills.  I am concerned about a generation that spends most of its time with a face in front of a screen.  Will they have the capacity to communicate with people in 10, 20, 30 years?  I hope so.  I believe people skills are the most important.  Love people, communicate with people, encourage people.  And people respond.
• There will be days you are not at your best.  Can you still compete on those days?  No one feels like a million bucks every day.  We had days when we didn't play our best, but we had to pick ourselves up and play as hard as we could.  Life has seasons we're not at our best.  Sometimes it's as simple as putting one step in front of the other.  You have to keep going.
• Running from third base to home is a dangerous trek.  As the pitcher to my team, I ran over two kids running home as I exited the field while looking down the first base line.  One of them was my older son on the team.  Both kids lived to tell about it.  
• My youngest led the league in hat and glove throwing while in the outfield.  I mean, he was a champion at glove throwing.  Best I've ever seen.  He had a blast this season.  And I'm pretty sure he would have had just as much fun if we'd have been 0-14.  Because he was coached by his dad and got to play ball.

                                               

                                                                Brooks, my youngest, the team clown.

It was a fun spring.  Sports teach us a lot of lessons.  And I've learned one more.  I think I'm going to retire from coaching and go out on top!

Sunday Preview & Thought for the Week (8.14.14)

I hope you're having a great week.  God is doing some awesome things among us at Church of the Way.  Last night we had 53 students at our One Way Kickoff.  Praise God for what James Savage and our One Way Team are doing to impact the next generation.  I'm super excited about this Sunday as we continue the "Legacy" Series.  I'll be speaking on what it means to leave a good name for those that come after us.  What goes into a good name?  We'll see what God's Word has to say about it.  Hope to see you there an invite a friend!  As always, go to www.churchoftheway.net to send an eVite to friends.

Thought for the Week
"All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness."  2 Timothy 3:16

Do you believe that verse?  The implications of that passage are staggering.  I have come to the conclusion that many don't believe it.  We like some ideas in the Bible, but we're not sure if they're all applicable to our lives.  They don't really "fit" our lifestyle.  Let me put it this way.  Doctors tell us that some foods are bad for us.  Now, many of us still choose to eat those foods.  Why?  Well, there are many factors, but here are the main three:

1. We believe we'll be THE ONE for whom those foods don't have an adverse affect.  They might be bad for others, but not for us.  Deep down, we sometimes believe that we won't be negatively affected by those foods.  They rules simply don't and won't apply to us because our bodies will respond differently than doctors predict.
2. We don't care and like them.  Our appetites and desires are powerful forces.  I know cheesecake and red velvet cake are not good for me.  I don't care.  I like them.  I try to practice moderation and only have them on special occasions.  Maybe moderation will help?  It's certainly better than having a piece of cake every day.  I care enough to cut back, but I don't care enough to never have a piece of cheesecake or red velvet cake ever again.  After all, I don't think they're THAT bad for me.  I'll just run a couple extra miles and make up for it.
3. We're not really sure the doctors know what they're talking about.  This is a big one, and it's legitimate.  We are learning new things about the human body all the time.  And what we're learning is that things we thought we used to know we don't know any more.  We used the thing eggs were bad, remember?  And, we all have an uncle or grandma who ate bacon every morning and fried vegetables at ever meal and lived to be 96.  So, for us, this is evidence that Physicians don't quite have our physiology completely figured out.

Now, think about that when it comes to ALL of God's directions for our life found in the Bible.  They are directions for the most full and healthy life we can have in Christ.  If we are honest, we often treat God's Word like eating directions from our doctor:

1. We think not listening to Him won't have as adverse an affect on us as predicted.
2. We don't care and really like our vice.
3. We're not sure He knows what He's talking about.

Essentially, we're not sure it all has authority for us, but this is not the plan for the full life God desires for each of us.  Let me ask you one question:  of all the people you know, which ones have the most full and joy-filled lives, the ones who are most closely aligned with God's Word or the ones who steer farthest from it?  And which one do you want to be?

In Christ,

Carter

Who is my neighbor?

Volunteers organizing food for local families.

Volunteers frying 70 turkeys to give away to local families.

Christians have been asking ourselves "Who is our neighbor?" for centuries.  It was a question posed to Jesus.  He followed the question with the story of the Good Samaritan.  Often, churches have used this question as motivation to reach the world.  Everyone is our neighbor, no matter where they are.  This is true.  And the Church has done a world of good across the world fighting hunger, starting orphanages, curing disease, and reaching people with God's love in tangible ways.  The Church has also spread the Gospel to places that have never heard of God's amazing grace.

I've often struggled with how to put the global and local together in ministry.  This past Sunday, our church hosted our 7th Annual Turkey Fry.  In 2007, we moved into a warehouse across the street from one of the poorest streets in our county.  It is a street that has been heavy on crime, drugs, and prostitution.  We decided to love on the community.  We did a number of things to love our literal neighbors, the biggest of which was fry turkeys around Thanksgiving and give them away.  We actually went into the neighborhood, camped out in one of the front yards of a duplex, fried turkeys right there and handed them out door to door.  Over the years, the outreach has morphed and grown.  We now fry them at Archer High School, where we meet.  We still provide a fried turkey to those 50 families in our old neighborhood.  The last couple of years we've also given nearly a week's worth of food along with the turkey to about 20 families whose names the Archer cluster schools have given us.  Most of the families are those that have foster kids.  Some are just families that could use a helping hand this time of year.

I'm not against foreign mission trips.  Please don't hear me say that.  My wife went on a dental mission trip this past summer to Costa Rica.  It was needed ministry and opened doors for the church down there with which her group was working.  Nevertheless, I just think that the question of our neighbor isn't that hard to figure out, and it seems like it's something the Church has often gotten wrong.  We Christians have $5 barbecue plates fund-raisers to help fund our mission trip to a foreign country.  Shouldn't we just be paying for the barbecue ourselves and giving it away to the folks in our own community?  Isn't the work of the Church in our local communities the actual mission?

For me, this has always been my heart.  I think it's a both/and.  I hope our church can send people to other countries one day to be in mission and ministry.  Even now, we work to financially support missionaries sharing God's love in foreign lands.  But there is so much to be done here.  There are so many people to love in the Archer community.  There is so much work to be done up and down New Hope Road.  Then, there are so many people to serve and minister to in neighboring communities in Dacula, Grayson, Snellville, Loganville, Bethlehem, and the rest of Lawrenceville.  And I'm not sure we'll ever be done loving our neighbors right in our own backyard.  This week 70 families know that God loves them, but there are 70,000 more that need to hear that same message.  I am not sure that each church has the potential to change the world.  However, I am certain that each Follower of Christ can change his or her neighborhood, and each church in the world can change its community.  We can all love the people we are around every day with the love of Christ.  And if we would all do that, together, we'd change the world for Jesus.  Dear Lord, let it be for your Church.