Burrow's Rookie Season Tells the Story of Pastors Everywhere

Pastors everywhere can look to Joe Burrow's rookie season with the Cincinnati Bengals as a metaphor for what they face every day! Burrow's transition from being at the top of the game to a season-ending injury his first season with the Bengals tells every Pastor's own story--even among the best of them. 

The burning question--both for Joe and for pastors--is this: where does the story go from here? But first, a quick retrospective. 

As quarterback for LSU, Burrow made history leading LSU's Tigers to dominate FIVE Top Ten teams in a single season, orchestrating a flawless 2019 team many called "the greatest team to ever take the field in college football." The power-packed team would go on to tie the NFL record for the most players drafted from a single team. Burrow passed for over 5,600 yards with 60 touchdowns that season, the latter being the most in a single season in an NCAA Division, FBS history. 

Showered with awards, Burrow himself went on to win the coveted Heisman trophy even shattering Heisman voting records in the process, handily eclipsing the other three stellar prospects. Not surprisingly, Joe became the number one draft pick for the NFL.

So, let's pause the story here. How does that relate to pastors? 

In every church, pastors are considered the top person among the faithful. Among pastors, he or she might be good; might be great. But they are the quarterback for their team. They scan the field. They run the plays. They motivate their team. Just as though much is expected of quarterbacks because he makes the difference in how high his team can rise, likewise, churches seldom "outperform" their pastors. So much hinges on them.

Making Your Mark

Let's compare Burrow's time at LSU with pastors who are completing their training for full-time ministry. Pastors' spiritual impact has been marked by a history of strong youth ministry experience, well-developed preaching and teaching, faithful work in short-term missions, excellent scores in seminary, and receiving considerable recognition for outstanding and tireless work in ministry over the years. Burrow perfected his skills through high school and college and so do pastors.

Now, they are going to step into the role as Senior Pastor of a congregation with their community as their mission field. This is like when Joe Burrow gets the nod to quarterback an NFL team that desperately needs some wins in their column! Joe is just the guy who can do it.

Or can he?

Baked-In Problems

Early in the season, it is clear that his offensive linemen are ill-equipped to protect Joe. They lack the strength and heart to be a wall. He is fast on his feet and often evades being sacked but over time takes hit after hit, one play after another! How can he squeeze out enough time to make a play with his opponents all over him? Pastors face that same prospect. The men in his church show up, but over and over he himself takes the hits.

Burrow can try a hand-off to one of his team, but the O-line offers no more help to his runner than himself! When a pastor attempts to hand-off responsibility so one of his men can gain yardage for the team, he gets hit before he can cross the line of scrimmage or else fumbles it. Either way, they lose yardage!

And there's another problem. Burrow's receivers can't position themselves to receive a pass. They stay tangled up with the opposition. No one is open for him to pass the ball to gain yardage. So over and over, the much-battered Joe has to ALSO run the ball to at least earn a first-down as best he can. 

A pastor faces the same dilemma. He needs men who are trained to cover just one zone of the field that he can pass the ball to.

Quarterbacks don't get the ball to receivers and running backs because they themselves can't make plays. They pass the football because as a team, they should be able to play to their strengths so, as quarterback, he has energy to last till the end of the game is called!

No quarterback should be expected to carry the whole team. Neither should any pastor carry the whole church.

Playing the Long Game

Pastors need longevity, too. They need men they can count on to do their part to advance the team. They can't do it all themselves. But pastors are both quarterback AND coach. So its up to them to prepare their men. That's where discipleship comes in.

Discipleship is the day-in/day-out practice of discovering weaknesses and building strength. Its one on one. Its in your face. Its exhausting. Some of your guys may puke! So, its messy. And no one is there to cheer you on. But its what transforms men from just being "players" into becoming a team! 

Pastors who overlook doing the grunt work of making disciples, will forever be the one carrying the team on every play, leaving all of his heart on the field with no assistance...and taking all the hits.

BUT, when he invests himself in his men--his heart, his soul, and his vision--he multiplies his team's successes.

How Does This Play Out?

And what about the wonderkid, Joe Burrow, and his promising rookie season? Just when it appeared Cincinnati's team might just be beginning to show a little life, his linemen continued to not do their job and he took one too many bone crushing hits. Joe's knee was snapped. His team was going to have to finish their season without him. 

He gave it his all till he had nothing left to give. Since then, he's spent EVERY day from then until now being repaired, rebuilding, and retraining.

Is that where our pastors need to be? Doing it all until life takes them out?

Our men need to step up and do the tough work of being discipled. They're not on the team to be cheering from the bench! And our pastors need to commit to the day-in/day-out work of making disciples--not developing a booster club.

The Church needs its winning strategy back!

Jack Ortego is Area Director for Man in the Mirror in the St. Louis/Gateway Region for Missouri. A men's leader since 1994, Jack partners with the pastors and men's leaders of churches everywhere who are committed to growing their men into leaders by helping them enhance and revitalize their discipleship efforts.

On Christian Engagement in Politics

Something has been eating at me lately. Maybe you, too, have noticed the growing rift I'm seeing.

But first, I think we can all agree upon this verse: Righteousness exalts a nation, But sin is a reproach to any people. (Proverbs 14:34). And I think we could also all agree that America is under reproach--a judgment of God that only His own people can reverse. But how? 

Over the past year, I've noted a vocal body of Christian leaders are making the case that believers can no longer remain silent citizens. We are being encouraged to personally engage in the political process at every level. Letter-writing, petition-signing, and voting appear no longer sufficient to bring about change. 

Believers are being encouraged to not only attend board meetings but to run to be seated on those boards, commissions--even political office--in sufficient numbers as to shift the culture of government by personally carrying biblical values with them into those arenas.

Meanwhile, there are contrary voices to those calls. Other ministry leaders are attempting to reign in politically active believers to instead stay focused on Christian service. Those leaders deride such political involvement calling it "Christian Nationalism," a thinly-veiled association with pre-Hitler Nazi Germany. In their estimation, patriotism and love of country are a misplaced loyalty and are at variance with being kingdom-minded. 

Their contention seems to be that Christians should maintain a neutral stance in our growing political divide. In this way, they contend, Jesus followers can best serve the spiritual needs of the population. Never mind that they also fear political involvement by some will be bad PR for the others.        

I truly value those leaders on both sides of this divide and understand their respective concerns. Both make good reasoning. Strong, differing opinions are nothing new to Christianity. Consensus is not something we're known far. Impasses such as these can be traced all the way back to the epic one between Paul and Barnabas and beyond.

Here is the pivot point that I find jarring. The label "Christian Nationalism" is poisoning as it implies a superiority similar to the Arian racism that gave rise to the Nazi Party. Use of that derogatory label does not make it so of Christian activism.  

On the contrary, in all that I've read and heard from Christian leaders calling for more political will to be exercised, I do not detect even a whiff of an air of superiority. Instead, their message is a hearkening back to the deep, God-honoring devotion of America's forefathers who first constructed this republic to be the embodiment of biblical standards of human conduct. These leaders' appeal is for a reformation back to civility and the rule of law and true justice that can only be rooted in biblical faith. Not at all superiority, but humility before the Judge of us all.

So in sorting out my own thoughts, I have to block out the rhetoric and instead dig in to the REAL motivations to determine which of those motivations best reflect the spirit of God's Word. To do that, I've spent the past many months pondering if there is any political activism portrayed in the Bible and, if there was, was that a good thing?

First, the warnings about so-called Christian Nationalism. Using labels is a non-starter for me. Labels are divisive because they pigeon-hole people into segmented groups who all become packaged and branded by those various labels--and there are a LOT of labels flying around these days. The use of them creates an "us and them, black and white" framework, even when not intended, which kills open discourse at the outset.

Now to the other side. 

Only recently did I suddenly view MANY of the exploits of faith recorded in scriptures in light of their own political context. And it was an eye-opening, game-changing paradigm shift in a major way! 

Rather than looking at these episodes from my Holy Book "light vs. darkness" lens, I approached them as though I were discovering them for the first time in an historical record. I placed myself in the position--not with the patriarchs--but rather of those outsiders who had no faith framework with the God of the Bible whatsoever. For example, how would the mainstream media of those days written about what we today consider great faith exploits? That's the perspective I was trying to get to.

In doing so--MUCH to my surprise--we can see afresh our favorite lessons in faith by using a purely geo-political point of view. All of these following events could be easily construed as POLITICAL, headline-making stuff:

• Moses' petitioning Pharaoh, then ultimately challenging his rulership and threatening the empire, and finally leading the entire working class into staging the ultimate walk-out
• Daniel immediately defying the a royal edict by his king so he could go about worshipping his own God his own way
• The three Hebrews defying Nebuchednezzar refusing to bow before his brand, new golden image he had made as a tribute to himself
• Esther intervening before King Xerxes to reverse his edict to kill all Jews, an edict he had issued to uphold the prestige of all nobles after Mordecai refused to bow to Haman
• All of Samuel’s life story is political in nature, serving as the last Judge over Israel before he installed its first king
• The entirety of David’s adult life is a political expose' on the celebrated fame that results from overwhelming conquest and the corruption it produced in his own household
• Nearly ALL the prophetic books expose the failures of the Hebrews’ faith ONLY AFTER their backslidden condition become so flagrant that Israel’s political future now hung in the balance, invaders crouching at their door
• Nehemiah taking a leave of absence to become Governor of Judea and rebuild Jerusalem’s walls, a territory already conquered and intended to remain subservient to Persia. Nehemiah brought about vast political reforms in Israel setting the stage for its re-emergence as a sovereign kingdom
• Jesus snubbing the Roman government by refusing to respond to Pilate’s interrogation
• The disciples refusing their Jewish leaders’ orders to quit preaching in Jesus’ name choosing incarceration instead
• Rather than quietly going into cities doing door-to-door evangelism, Paul preached publicly stoking upheaval and risking being charged with inciting riots and insurrection
• Paul declined to allow lower governmental authorities to resolve his case insisting he must go on trial in Rome to make his case
• The Book of Revelation is an entire treatise warning of the political realities of that dreaded hour

All these episodes are seen as acts of faith to you and me because we see them as the courageous actions of those living out their faith. But to their opponents they were political challenges, grand-standing, and even rebellion! So, too, American Christians exercising their political will do so as the natural outflow of their repentance from faithlessness. But to others, it simply may look only like wielding political muscle.

Seeing how the faith of the patriarchs moved them to fearlessly take on governmental powers, it is very difficult to make the case that true men and women of God are to keep their heads down low and out of the political arena. In fact, can we even act with bold faith that is NOT a clash with a godless culture? Check out this characterization of the early Church shown in bold:

But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also..." (Acts 17:5-6)

 

Those who position themselves as Christian leaders but attempt to shame God’s people to remain disengaged and stay clear of the political realm, are at risk of conning God’s people into a dead religion.

In the United States, it is the people who have been invested with power to govern, not some ruling class. So what does James warn us in that regard? "Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do, yet fails to do it, is guilty of sin." (James 4:17)

Further, James provides an entire discourse addressing MEANINGLESS faith in his second chapter summing up with his verdict, “faith without works is DEAD.” Christians (at least in America) who pray for our governments but do not act out upon those prayers are nursing a dead religion by James' definition.

As a self-governing people, the LORD Himself also has a similar warning for praying Americans but who do little more: "But if the watchman sees the sword coming and fails to blow the horn to warn the people … I will hold the watchman accountable…." (Ezekiel 23:6)

So I have come to a conclusion over this divide: both voices are true!

 

When a once faith-filled nation has so greatly failed to embody God’s truths that their own nation is at risk of collapse, no blood-bought, child of God’s covenant blessings has any recourse but to first personally and corporately repent of their own callous lifestyle and then reject every godless authority in their land to make their repentance complete and cleanse their land of evil. 

That means, in a representative form of government, believers MUST assert themselves into political and governmental positions and restore this nation's biblical foundations there. 

But that ALSO means the work of one-on-one disciple making must be Priority One in churches across the land. The two-pronged approach of winning hearts while winning seats is what we've seen before in our history: Revival and Reformation.

Let's do the work of the Kingdom in concert with each other...and let's refrain from branding each other with labels.