The Monday Morning Debrief: You ARE Brad Pitt

Actually, you’re not Brad Pitt but you are Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team.  Brad Pitt does play Billy Beane in a new movie trailer based on the book by the same name “Moneyball” that was just released for viewing this week.  You can check it out here. In the book, it outlines Billy’s attempt to field a competitive baseball team when Oakland has a competitive disadvantage because of what many people believe to be “unfair” revenue situation of Major League Baseball.

“By re-evaluating the strategies that produce wins on the field, the 2002 Athletics, with approximately $41 million in salary, were competitive with larger market teams such as the New York Yankees, who spent over $125 million in payroll that same season. Because of the team’s smaller revenues, Oakland is forced to find players undervalued by the market, and their system for finding value in undervalued players has proven itself thus far.” (thanks Wikipedia!!!).

Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) was at a comepetitive disadvantage but through his new, creative and innovative system fielded a great team that made it to the playoffs multiple times.  In fact the 2002 A’s went 103-59 and made it to the playoffs.  103-59!!!!  That is amazing considering the payroll they had.  If you know nothing about baseball and money, traditionally the more you pay your players, the better you are because you can afford the best players.  In this case, as described above, in 2002 the Yankees had a payroll of  $125 million and the A’s had a payroll of $41 million.  That’s a huge difference.  Yet the A’s were able to have over 100 wins and made it to the playoffs.

So how does this apply to ministry?  A few ways:

1. You are the GM and sometimes what your budget is and how big your church is does not equate to the bigger churches in your area. It can be frustrating at times because you may feel that because you are “smaller” you can’t attract more students into your programs or events…at least that is how I have felt when I worked at some smaller churches.  But instead of looking at reasons why you can’t do this or do that, you have to think outside of the box and think what CAN we do?  As Jim Collins describes in his book “Good to Great”, think through, what CAN you be GREAT at?  When I was the Youth Director at Cedar Run Community Church I valued community and built that bonding atmosphere.  I felt that if students felt cared for, affirmed, valued and that we were pumped they were at our events, then they would want to come back more and more which means they would be more open to hear about Christ more.  In our situation, that worked out great and we built a community that students were pumped to be apart of.
2. Who are your volunteers and help?  Oakland couldn’t afford the best players but they found the RIGHT players for their system.  In the same way, there may be “ideal” leaders out there that you would love to have.  But maybe you can’t pursuade them to join you.  Dust off your pants and move on to find people with what you do have.  Who are the people with great hearts who can serve you in different roles.  My ideal leader has always been a college aged student.  But I have often used parents or older adults who had great hearts and wanted to serve.  And they made a difference in the lives of students.  Don’t get tied down with what you don’t have and think outside the box to get the result that you want with who you DO have.

Here is the ultimate point.  Billy Bean could have pouted and said “life isn’t fair” as he continued to play by the rules of how to be a “GM”.  But he didn’t.  He changed the way things were done and he put together a winning team!  I want to encourage you as Brad Pitt says in the trailer, “Turn the odds on the Casino” this year!  Seriously, the only thing preventing you from developing the best youth program you have is YOU.  Don’t let the “rules” and “traditions” of how to build a successful youth ministry program get in the way of something wild and amazing you can create!

Right now, TAKE A MINUTE or more and think through, process through what it is going to take to open up your Fall program in September with a winning program.  What will it look like?

If you need some help or encouragement, email me and I would love to discuss things over with you.  You can do this and the kingdom of Heaven will be more blessed because you do.  Youth ministry evolves all the time.  Let’s get out ahead of it and be the ones evolving it.