Several years ago the Mountaineer basketball program was in a rough spot. Having failed to qualify for the NCAA Tournament in consecutive seasons, Coach Huggins knew he had to do something to restore pride in the program and return to national relevance. And that something, as Mountaineer folklore goes, would be the full-court press. If you were going to beat West Virginia, you were going to do it with a man in your face from the moment you crossed the baseline.
Since becoming “Press Virginia,” the Mountaineers have won over 25 games each season and advanced to the Sweet Sixteen three times. And if this were a basketball blog, I would go on to predict a Final Four in one of the next few seasons…
It’s not about forcing turnovers, really, I’ve heard Huggs say so many times. It’s about the cumulative effect of forcing an opponent to play harder than they’d like for forty minutes. The goal of applying pressure 94-feet from the basket isn’t necessarily getting cheap points in the first few minutes as much as it’s wearing you down for the final few minutes.
WVU’s basketball transition sort of coincided with a spiritual transition of my own. As a child of the worship wars and late-comer to the church growth movement, I found myself primed for an ecclesial arms race, if you will – a race for the most creative, innovative, and immersive worship experience. Sundays were about excellence, energy, momentum, and crowds. “Old” ways had lost, “new” ways had won, and the key to growing your church was having a cooler Sunday morning experience than the one down the street. Exciting churches were growing, boring ones were not. I’m not presently interested in evaluating methods of doing church or expressions of being church. I just have a much simpler question.
What if church attendance is kind of like the ole full-court press?
What if it isn’t necessarily that one incredible Sunday that changes your life but the cumulative effect of thousands of ordinary Sundays?
I’ll be honest with you, I don’t have the personality to be peppy, bright, and just so excited every Sunday morning. I have bad days, and the people I love go through hard stuff. The zip and pep of a modern worship experience simply doesn’t always meet us where we are when we find ourselves in the muck and mire of real life. I need to confess my sin. I need to hear of my pardon. I need to hear a preacher just give the sense of a biblical text. I need to commune with Christ and his people in the Lord’s Supper. And I need to do this every week. I need desperately to be formed into the image of Christ because everything in the world is stacked against me. I don’t need to consume better religious goods; I need to be re-shaped by the Spirit of God.
If the music is good – great! If the preaching is good – great! If there is momentum in our midst and the Spirit moves in a fresh way – praise God! But even when Sunday is just kind of average, God is working. Through word, Spirit, fellowship, and sacrament, he is shaping us into his people. And he’s doing this all over the world, in churches big and small, with all types of people from all sorts of cultures. Believer, do not neglect the imperfect gathering we know as the church.
The cumulative effect of a life’s worth of gathering with God’s people, under his Word, around his table, and in the power of his Spirit will yield something far greater than the Sweet Sixteen.
MB
