When I was in elementary and middle school, my uncle coached the high school football team. His teams were extremely successful. But their success wasn’t necessarily about superior athletic talent. The school didn’t have a lot of kids going on to Division 1 football, let alone to the NFL. His players were average Iowa farm kids. And the playbook was … limited. Opponents pretty much knew what plays were going to get called. And those plays still worked, because my uncle’s players had been coached up one sideline and down another. The had the basics of blocking and tackling down cold. And so they knew how to execute those plays each and every time without even really thinking.

I thought about my uncle a lot the last year of seminary when one of my professors, who’d spent years in active ministry, noted that he’d had a “coach” sign hung in his office. At first I was a little taken aback – it’s not like sports and religion go together all that well. But the more he talked about it, the more it made sense. In many ways, Jesus was first and foremost a coach – teaching his disciples the basics of ministry, then inviting them to try those ministry skills with him, and then sending them out to try it on their own and report back.

Coach Jesus gives congregations like ours a helpful model for doing ministry. I can do a lot of great work – and there’s plenty of work that’s mine to do, like pastoral care and preaching and celebrating the sacraments. But the reality is that I can’t do it all. And really, I shouldn’t. The Spirit calls each and every one of us into some kind of ministry. But we need that coach who can help us learn the playbook. Who can teach us the basics and give us the tips we need to grow in those places where we need to grow.

These days, a lot of coaching in ministry is helping us integrate our faith and our beliefs into our daily living. And we do that by doubling down on the basic practices of spirituality: prayer and listening and loving our neighbor. The more we can do that, then the more we can authentically live as followers of Jesus in everything that we do, and the more real, and powerful, and life-giving our faith will be.

This next year we’re going to have plenty of opportunities to practice integrating those basic spiritual practices into our daily lives. I hope you’ll take the time to let Coach Jesus (with help from some of his assistants) start to help you think what his playbook might mean for your lives. And how we might take those next steps into deeper and more rewarding teamwork – with each other, and with the community around us.

In Christ, Pastor Aaron Twait