Systematic Bracketology: What the Church Can Learn from March Madness

This time of year is filled with so much excitement.

During the month of March, people from all over the country call in sick and stay glued to television to watch college basketball. Last Thursday, the opening day of the first round of games, should be declared a national holiday, in my opinion.

What puts the madness into March Madness, of course, is the bracketology. Filling out brackets the day after Selection Sunday last week and entering them into office pools and contests with your family or buddies from around the country are oftentimes more fun than the actual games themselves. Whether or not you can name one athlete on Bradley's team or even know what state Northwestern State is actually from or not, if you picked them in your brackets they have become your team. If the team you picked in the brackets won, you're thrilled. If the team you were so confident would advance far into the tournament but lost (see Illinois and North Carolina) you are hanging your head right now.

But that’s what makes the madness so much fun.

For many years I’ve pondered what makes March Madness so mad (besides wives getting upset when their husbands turn into couch potatoes for three weeks in early spring). Finally, about two years ago I was able to put my finger on the brackets have given the fan the permission and the opportunity to take the reason: the brackets give the fan ownership of the games themselves. They are no longer merely games between two teams; they now become games that impact our lives, small as it may seem. In a sense, we participate in the games themselves. (That’s why game shows such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and Jeopardy! have been so popular).We have vested interest in the games played and we are impacted by the results, directly or indirectly. When we fill out our tournament brackets, we’ve been given ownership, and it means a lot to us. Much more than we think it does.

In a sense, we play the games, too. Websites are created to track the brackets (by the way, I’m leading both ESPN online pools as we speak), emails fly back and forth commenting on each other’s picks, people call to talk about upcoming match-ups and who they have chosen as their winner.

Compare this with the NBA playoffs that occur each summer. By nature, the NBA has created a league which focuses primarily on marquee match-ups of individual star players, not necessarily on team basketball. Network ratings are much higher when teams have a star player who scores forty points a game than when a team is made up of self-less, hard-working teammates who will play great defense and win in low-scoring games. (To me, the difference is that college basketball is sports, while the NBA has become purely entertainment). The entire NBA playoffs are created by the league’s front office and the television networks to provide an environment where you, the viewer, are entertained. You are encouraged to be a spectator. You are able to watch great games, but of little consequence or significance to your life. Certainly, the NBA playoffs are well-watched by millions of fans, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the success of college basketball’s March Madness.

Nothing can compare to the sight of upsets and obsessively checking your brackets compared to your buddies.

The secret behind the success of March Madness has some amazing implications for the Church, especially in the area of ownership. Several months ago I taught on the Christian’s collective identity as a ‘royal priesthood.’ As a community, we unpacked the implications of what it means for us to be priests in the work of God. It’s both a privilege and a responsibility. Our privilege rests in the fact that we have direct access to God, but with that privilege comes the responsibility to take ownership of ‘church.’

Unfortunately, a culture has been created in the church that communicates, “You’re the pastor. You do the work. That’s not my job.” In a sense, we’ve created a culture similar to that of the NBA playoffs, where the stars (i.e. pastors and paid staff) perform while everyone else watches. It’s a great performance, but it’s of little consequence to the lives of those in our congregation. We shuffle out of church having been religiously entertained.

What would it look like if we gave people in our communities of faith the opportunity to catch the vision of ownership in much the same way that filling out brackets accomplishes for the tournament in college basketball? What if we created a culture of participants in being the church, rather than a culture of spectators who merely go to it? What if we gave people opportunities to invest and participate in what was happening in our churches in the same way they do on their couches watching the tournament on CBS?

As pastors I strongly believe that we have a responsibility to give those people involved in our churches a sense of ownership in how we participate in the work of God together. We have a call to think through, pray through and brainstorm avenues in which we can give people in our communities of faith permission to get involved, to get in the game. We must think through, in a sense, what are the brackets that we can allow people to fill out and take on as their own. When we allow tangible opportunities for people to take ownership in being the Body of Christ, they have made an investment that directly involves their lives.

Erwin McManus in his book An Unstoppable Force wrote that “servability is stickability.” In other words, when people are serving and taking ownership, good things happen. Studies show that if people attend church and do not serve that within twelve months a majority of them will no longer will be at the church. However, when people attend and serve in their local church, a large majority of them will stick around for several years.

When people grasp this March Madness idea of ownership as royal priests they will begin to see their lives as be missionally-minded, thus regaining the mission-mindset that has been lost for quite some time. We must shift our ministry paradigm from the NBA playoffs approach to the March Madness mindset. When we do this, people will be able to catch the vision of ownership and will begin to see themselves as being a significant participant in the Church, rather than merely attending it and watching it pass them by.

The questions pastors should be asking is, "How can we give ownership to our people so they know deep down that have an important role to play in the Kingdom of God?"

In other words, how can we hand them brackets and encourage them to fill them out?

Comments

[Dave]

*Stands and applauds*

[DougG]

JR, Your verse for this is Ezekiel 33:30-33. I had a rather pleasant argument (we agreed to disagree) with a 20-something about this very subject (my point: most of the truly faithful are abandoned or ignored, I have lots of stories); every fiber of my sinful nature desires to slap the next Pastor/Leader that says they can't get people involved .... IT'S CALLED DISCIPLESHIP. Arrrgghh! Sorry, both my brackets have been torched (Bye, Duke).

DougG

PS: Thanks for being a Pastor I love to follow.