Jerry Maguire. Why? What? How?

Yesterday I was having lunch outside with some of the staff.  We were on a lunch break from a day-long staff retreat.  I brought up Jerry Maguire (a movie from the 90's because all I know is hopelessly dated movies like Jerry Maguire and Roadhouse).  When I said the words "Jerry Maguire," the staff responded just as you would expect: "Show me the money!"  "You complete me."  This is preferable to the reaction I would have received if I had mentioned the movie in youth choir.  The youth would have either stared blankly or perhaps asked, "Who's that?"  I have proof.  Last week I said something about the matrix, and none of them knew what I was talking about...or that they are living in it.

But that's not important right now.  This isn't a post about the matrix, so let's take the blue pill and get back to Jerry Maguire.

The movie opens with sports agent Jerry having an epiphany about his work.  He helped build a massive sports agency company but found himself lacking purpose in a world where he spent all his time wooing more and more clients to earn more and more dollars with no personal relationship to show for it.  His solution and proposed new direction for the company (written down in a mission statement that he distributed to the whole company) was to have fewer clients and invest more in their well-being.  He was, of course, fired immediately by one of the agents he trained who then also secures all the clients Jerry used to represent...except one, setting up the ultimate fulfillment of his mission statement.  [oops...retroactive spoiler alert!]

I was thinking about the opening sequence of the movie and about the importance of investing in personal relationships, which is why I looked up the opening of the movie.  I discovered something that blew my mind.  In the movie, all you get is a voiceover and some references to this "25 page mission statement" called "The Things We Think and Do Not Say."  But the writer of the movie, Cameron Crowe, actually wrote the entire mission statement even though it never appears in the movie.  So while I intended to spend about 5 minutes reading the introduction of the movie, I wound up spending more like 30 reading the mission statement (which, by the way, is actually only 14 pages).

There are two NSFW passages in the mission statement.  With that warning, if you'd like to read it, you can find the whole thing here if you're interested:

https://www.theuncool.com/2016/04/25/jerry-maguire-mission-statement/

Why did I read the whole thing?  It's because it resonated so deeply.  By the end of the first paragraph I began to feel uneasy.  "There's a cruel wind blowing through our business. We all feel it, and if we don't, perhaps we've forgotten how to feel. But here is the truth. We are less ourselves than we were when we started this organization."

I felt uneasy because when he said, "our business," I read, "our Church."  That's the big C Church.  All of it.  The whole thing.  Christianity in toto.

That was just the first of--I'm not sure how many--passages that sent my head spinning. I was just going to write one article referencing this, but it's rich and deep. There may be more than one article coming on this. I can't speak for anyone else, only myself.  It's certainly not an official position or statement. Like Jerry's original, it's just my own thoughts...using Jerry's thoughts as a catalyst.

The Things We Think and Do Not Say: 

We are less ourselves than we were when we started this organization.

I started in ministry with a kind of idealism of what it is.  At its core, ministry is service. I felt a call to that service, and I answered it.  But anyone who has served in any official capacity in any church can tell you that pragmatics can and do supersede ideals more often than we'd like to admit.  I was quickly dis-illusioned (which I don't mean in a negative way).  In my first years of ministry I saw that pragmatism is necessary in order for the church to live.  We have bills, and they have to be paid no matter how pretty the music is or how kind the people are.

The thing is, the "how" so frequently gets in the way of the "what" and, more importantly, the "why."  When I started out, I knew what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it.  Any energy spent on the how takes me away from what and why.  I've been in meetings that were about nothing but how.  I've served with people who have spent so much time thinking about how that it seems like they've forgotten why entirely.  That's the sense in which we are less ourselves than when we started.

To be clear, how is a critical question.  It just needs to be held in check, balanced delicately with what and why (and not in equal parts!).

It's easy to get lost in the weeds of ministry.  Under the pressure of budgets and pandemic limitations and changing attitudes about church, it's easy to wonder how we can continue and to focus our energy there.  But we shift our focus to how at our own peril.  I have, from time to time, lost sight of why I do this: I feel strongly called by my faith to lift others up.  Each time I did, I was less myself than when I started.

The Church started as a movement to reveal God's universal love to the world--to love the unloved and the unlovable.  That is our why, and it matters more than the what and the how put together.