Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Ted Williams' Wisdom for Pastors

This past week, I read Ted Williams' 'The Science of Hitting.'  And in the Science of Hitting, Williams claims over and over and over again that hitting is baseball is 50% mental, and in reading his book, you might just be led to believe that he is understating the case, as more than 90% of the book's instruction revolves around plate approach, pitch recognition, and situational strategy.

For Williams, the cardinal rule of hitting a baseball is, "Hit a good pitch."  The entire drama of baseball is captured in the interplay between the pitcher and the batter, as the pitcher does everything they can to get hitters to swing at pitches that are in weak hitting zones (low and away, high and inside, etc.).  Williams says several times throughout the book, that a mediocre hitter will hit pitch in their zone better than the best hitter will hit a pitch out of their zone, and since he is quite possibly the greatest hitter of all-time, I tend to think he is right.

As pastors, I think there is wisdom for us in this image.  The most effective and memorable sermons we preach will be the ones that when we are finished preaching, we leave the pulpit saying to ourselves, "I don't know about anyone else, but I sure needed to hear that."  Likewise, there will be times when parishioners ask us questions for which we don't know the answer.  Like a great hitter lays off a curveball in the dirt, we need to grow comfortable with admitting that we don't know.  And sometimes we might actually know the answer, but the "right" answer is not the pastoral response and once again wisdom tells us not to swing at the cut fastball in on our hands.

I think this image also works when we think about the way we manage our time.  How many hours a week do we waste in non-strategic pursuits?  If we laid off those pursuits that were out of our zone, how much more effective would we be the things that are strategic?  Now I must be clear here, there is a difference between what is strategic and what you like to do best.  You can't simply blow off visiting folks in the hospital because you don't like it and claim that you are ignoring the sick because they aren't strategic.

Another nugget of wisdom from Teddy Ballgame is to (almost) always take the first pitch and to never swing at a pitch you haven't seen before.  So often as pastors, we manage a system with a high level of anxiety.  Folks are lost, hurting, down-trodden, addicted, oppressed, and fearful... and the church is THE institution designed by God to embrace the pain of the world.  So naturally, the church will be a setting of high anxiety as broken people come together, and with this cultural makeup, every single week you will hear from someone how the sky is falling.  Listen to Ted, take the first pitch.  Under-react.  Absorb that anxiety, don't stoke the fire.  Not every emergency is a real emergency, and not every complaint should be acted upon.  So take the first pitch.

In the same way that hitting is 50% mental and takes up 90% of the content, being faithful as a pastor might just be 50% internal.  From time to time we will get lucky with a see ball, hit ball mentality, but more often than not, we need to be the masters of internalizing what is going on around us, and deliberately and intentionally planning our actions and reactions.