Letter No. 3: Cheering or Playing?

Put me in, coach

I was thinking about enthusiasm the other day.

I pictured a football stadium full of passionate fans. Everyone is into the game, and everyone is an expert on how to play it. Most of them believe they could do it better than the players on the field. That made me laugh a bit. It also made me think about the differences between the fans in the stands and the players on the field. Wow, those are two radically different groups, both caring intensely about the same thing. Both groups are focused on the same game, the same rules, and the same execution. But only the players have to carry it out. The crowd can sit at a safe distance and analyze; the players take the hits.

I sat with that for a while, and then I saw something I didn’t entirely want to notice. I have spent parts of my Christian life in the stands.

I don’t mean that I haven’t believed. I have. I do. I’ve believed hard enough to preach it, to lead people through crises, and to keep the faith when circumstances tested my own confidence. What I mean is something that goes beyond belief itself. There is a difference between believing in Jesus and following Him, and I have not always been on the right side of it.

A fan can know everything: quote the stats, wear the jersey, and tell you, with genuine conviction, what ought to be done out there on the grass. He can even get angry on the team’s behalf — yell at the referee, argue with the fan next to him, go home hoarse, all the time believing that “we” won or “we” lost. But none of that puts him on the field. He hasn’t run a single play. The only ball he might have touched is one that went into the stands. He’s a genuine believer in the game. He’s just not a player.

Now picture the field itself: players in pads, breathing hard, with grass and mud stains on their uniforms, bleeding lips and knuckles. They don’t know what the crowd is yelling, and they haven’t got time to find out. They have a job to do, and the next play is already coming. Nobody’s asking them whether they feel like running it. They run it because they have an assignment, and that is what players do.

Between those two extremes — from the casual fan in the nosebleed seats to the best player in pads on the field — there is a long scale of people. Some fans are barely interested, just showing up to the game, more interested in the concessions. Some are passionate, screaming at every play. Some are practice-squad players, backups, veterans nursing an injury, rookies who haven’t yet proven their worth. And some are all-pro players. They are all, at some level, connected to the game. The difference is not whether they care. The difference is where they are: in the stands, on the sideline, or on the field.

The transition from the stands to the grass is not a matter of learning more about the sport. It’s about deciding that you are finished with just watching. It is the moment you stop offering commentary on how the church ought to be moving in the world and start asking Jesus to move through you. It is the realization that your faith was never meant to be a hobby you learn about and cheer for, but a life you occupy.

I wonder sometimes, when I look at the quiet, unglamorous work of discipleship, where I actually fall on that scale. Am I leaning back with my stadium snack, earnestly reading the playbook, memorizing whole passages of it, then critiquing the play-calling, or am I breathing hard in the huddle and running as fast as my legs will carry me?

Where are you on the casual-fan-to-all-pro scale? And, more importantly, how do you feel about where you are?

Perhaps the most haunting thought is this: you can spend your entire life as the team’s greatest supporter, only to realize at the final whistle that you never once broke a sweat for the cause you claimed to love.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

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