I am the Fantasy Football champion. Well, at least for my league. The guys in my community group created a league for the 2nd year, and after being blown out in the 1st round of the playoffs last year, I was able to withstand some serious close calls to pull out for a championship victory.
I have so arrived.
What’s interesting about fantasy football is your attention becomes solely on the players instead of the teams. I didn’t care if the Vikings or the Panthers won, I just wanted Adrian Peterson and Cam Newton to rack up points. I was more concerned with the success of one than the victory of the team.
And the majority of the Church in America is operating out of the same perspective.
We have created the Fantasy Church League in America. We aren’t concerned as a whole with missions as long as we can latch onto a person or product that does it well. We don’t worry about Christians everywhere evangelizing as long as we find a pastor who can do it with successful results. We are not concerned with the worship as a whole as long as we find a worship leader that does it our preferred way.
We create Christian celebrities that are successful in our eyes and we slowly slip into personal complacency.
We rally around our favorite local church or ministry or program more than we do the Kingdom of God.
We are more concerned with our ministry’s width than we are the Kingdom’s depth.
We tout personal accomplishments more than the grand movement of the gospel.
We have created a Fantasy Church League, and we are endangering the big “C” Church. When we become more impressed with one person’s or one organization’s results than we are the unified Church, we are in trouble.
Just a reminder today: your scoreboard might be looking successful, but are we really unified behind the gospel? Or are we separated by our own drives for personal success?
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.
Loved it! This is good stuff.