Starting about 15 years ago, I remember hearing stories in the news about how sports can damage a child’s self esteem. For example, keeping score in a soccer league for six-year olds means someone has to lose, so we should stop keeping score. In other instances, I would hear where “choosing teams” during recess was hurtful because the less athletic kids were chosen last, thus damaging their self esteem and hurting their chances to ever be good at anything. I even remember hearing about some towns outlawing dodge-ball because the least athletic, or the slowest, or the fattest kid would always lose.

 

     Of course, the response from conservative evangelical men was predictable. We all said that this was political correctness running amok. I heard many men say that keeping score and allowing kids to lose teaches them lessons that they will learn later in life. After all, winning and losing is at the heart of our capitalistic society. Competition is what makes life better for all of us. Managers in businesses get paid to manage resources and make decisions that will earn money and preserve jobs. Part of management involves selecting the right people in order to produce the best results, and sometimes removing people that are not performing. Good managers train their people to win because they know someone must lose. Everyone wants to be a manager, so we work hard to prove we are capable. Competition keeps us all working hard. We learn a lot about competition when we play sports as children.

 

     All good evangelical Christian men seem to “get” this.... Until it is time to apply them in the church.

 

     Then, for some reason, the rules change. The principles that we believe should govern society get thrown out the window at church.

 

     At church, it would be wrong to identify a faithful man as being mature and make him a leader over other men, because that would imply that others are not mature and not ready to lead. That sounds a lot like picking teams on the playground. We can’t do that.

 

     We can’t suggest that a person that has served faithfully in one ministry be put in charge of another ministry, because that would hurt the current leader’s feelings. So we will just allow the good leader to become bored and frustrated while the underperforming leader continues to keep the church from meeting it’s full potential. After all, his job is safe so why bother improving?

 

     A businessman that would cease production of a product that loses money would never consider halting or retooling a ministry that has outlived it’s usefulness. We will just wait for the leader of that ministry to die or leave and we will not replace them.

 

     Leaders that would never tolerate lateness and low productivity from their employees turn a blind eye to this behavior at church. After all, they are all volunteers, so we will take what we can get. It does not matter if the committed people become frustrated with the apathy around them, they need to learn to deal with it.

 

     Leaders in business that muster the courage to do performance reviews, lay people off, delegate responsibility and speak truthfully are absent in churches. Or... maybe they are there and they are just tired from working.

 

     This is political correctness running amok in the church. God is not amused, and He is keeping score. I think we need to re-visit all of our arguments that we use against liberals in society and see how we are doing in church. We look more like the liberal culture than we think.