2 Lessons Learned from Sandy Koufax

Late in June, I got an issue of Investor’s Business Daily.  When I was looking through newspaper, I saw an interesting article about Sandy Koufax. Being the baseball enthusiast that I am, I was quickly drawn to it.  You can read the IBD article here.

Reading the article, I was shocked to read that Sandy Koufax was close to quitting baseball after the first 6 years of his professional career as he was struggling hard. His record after those 6 seasons was 36-40!  Considering that Sandy is a Hall-of-Famer who is viewed by many as one of the best pitchers every to play major league baseball, this was very surprising.  I had no idea!  I thought he was great from the moment he stepped on the mound for the first time.  Despite this rough start, he did not quit and ended up with a record of 165-87, going 129-47 from 1961 on.

So what made the difference?  How did he go from an bad to Hall-of-Famer?  He did 2 things during the offseason that changed everything.  He:

1. worked out. Never before had he worked out and took care of his body.  So he started running in hopes to better equip his body to find out exactly how good he could be a a pitcher.
2. started listening to advice. People within the Dodger organization had always tried to give Sandy advice but he never listened.  It was during the offseason a Dodger Scout found an issue with his pitching mechanics.  Once he corrected it, he was better able to see the target.  Also, Sandy started listening to his catcher, Norm Sherry.   Norm told Sandy to throwing more curveballs and change-ups to keep the opposing batters guessing.  Even though Sandy had heard this before, he never applied it.  This time he did and it really helped!

Ultimately, the bottom line is that what made Sandy Koufax a Hall-of-Fame pitcher and living legend was his willingness to adapt and change.  Too often in ministry we can be set in our ways and do the same things all the time.  Why?  Because that is how we always did things.  Well, that just isn’t acceptable. If we are to stay in ministry long term (especially youth and other “transition year” ministries like children’s, college and young adult work), then we HAVE to be willing to adapt and change.  This age range changes all the time so our attempts to minister to them needs to change.  The ideas, events, lessons that used to work all the time do not necessarily work now.

The problem is, how do you know what you need to do to change unless you have an effective way of evaluating yourself?  Sure, you may have a general idea of where you need to adapt or what you need to change, but it is always great to have an “outsiders” perspective.

So right now, TAKE A MINUTE and set up a plan to evaluate your ministry.  Here’s just 1 way you can get a good evaluation:

1. Contact a parent whom you trust and respect or another youth minister from another ministry or church.  Ask them to come by and evaluate an upcoming ministry event (i.e., “youth group” or a social function).  The key here is to have someone you know and trust while being honest with you at the same time.
2. When they arrive to evaluate, give that person(s) a set of 2-3 goals you hope to accomplish during the meeting. You can also tell them what principles you value highly as a leadership team (You can look at what we value here as an example).  Therefore, they will know what you are striving for and what you view as important so they will be able to discern whether or not you are hitting your mark.
3. Give them a few days to collect their thoughts and/or write them down on paper.  Then set up a meeting with them and your volunteer leaders to go through the evaluation together.  That way you can all hear how it went, unfiltered.
4. Lastly, pray through what you all heard, process and start implementing change where needed.

Evaluation and self-examination is not always easy or fun.  But it is necessary to build a lasting ministry.  Had Sandy Koufax not taken a hard look at himself, we may have never heard of him and he would probably have always lived in a state of “what if”.  Let’s be like Sandy and evaluate, adapt and change where needed.

Got a comment or thought?  Post it so we may all benefit and grow as followers of Christ and ministers.

Thanks to my Sources:

• Investors Business Daily
• Wikipedia